1500words

Encyclopedia of Communication Theory

Frankfurt School

Contributors: Alessandra Padula

Edited by: Stephen W. Littlejohn & Karen A. Foss

Book Title: Encyclopedia of Communication Theory

Chapter Title: "Frankfurt School"

Pub. Date: 2009

Access Date: June 29, 2017

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9781412959377

Online ISBN: 9781412959384

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384.n152

Print pages: 410-412

©2009 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of

the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

The Frankfurt School is a group of critical theorists who joined the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research) of the University of Frankfurt am Main (Germany) from 1923 to 1933. Felix Weil, an orthodox Marxist, founded the Institute in 1923 with the aim of planning, organizing, conducting, and evaluating social, historical, and cross-disciplinary research. For political reasons, the institute was relocated in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1933 to 1935, then in New York (1935–1949), and finally back in Frankfurt (from 1949 to present).

In the 1920s and 1930s the Frankfurt School theorists dealt with Marxist analyses of social and economic processes and examined the role of the individual and the group in relation to these processes. Many of the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School directed their studies toward particular aspects of communication, seeing various links between the historical, social, and economic processes they investigated and communication—among them Max Horkheimer, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal, and Jürgen Habermas. T h e m o s t i m p o r t a n t c o n c e p t s f o r t h e f i e l d o f communication theory are Horkheimer and Adorno's ideas on the culture industry and mass media and Habermas's notions of the public sphere and communicative action.

The Culture Industry and Mass Media

In The Dialectic of Enlightenment of 1947, Horkheimer and Adorno developed their theory on the culture industry. They coined this term to refer to the rise of mass media and other forms of communication whose production is industrialized. As a general rule, they argued, increase in technology led to an increase in the production of commodities, and this in turn enhanced the consumption of goods. As industrialization processes created leisure for millions of people, a large demand for cultural products emerged, such as film, radio, popular music, and the press. Assuming that this great number of diverse consumers has identical needs, the culture industry aims to fulfill those needs with identical goods. Therefore, through technical means of production and reproduction, organization and management, a small number of companies produce under monopoly a large number of products that seem different, but are standardized, making wide use of formulas, types, and clichés. In this way, media production can be controlled by large corporations whose targets are economical and political at the same time: earning profits by maintaining subservience to the system of consumer capitalism.

Before the advent of the culture industry, culture had a critical function in showing original alternatives to existing society. As culture became a business, cultural products such as films, broadcasts, records, or newspapers turned into stereotyped reproductions with minimal changes, having no autonomy. Occupying all their audiences' spare time and leaving little room for imagination or reflection, they foster conformity in language, gesture, and thought. Therefore, their political role has changed: They reproduce and support the existing society, providing ideological legitimation of capitalism. In this way, the culture industry manipulates consciousness, integrating individuals into the capitalist way of life. Its products become forms of social organization and control, criticism disappears, and opposition becomes ineffectual due to the elasticity and pervasiveness of the system.

Taking issue with Horkheimer and Adorno's opinion, Benjamin examined the progressive aspects of the new forms of culture. In T h e W o r k o f A r t i n t h e A g e o f M e c h a n i c a l Reproduction, Benjamin asserted that all new media made art products more approachable, shattering the elitist aura that had characterized works of art in an earlier era. Moreover, Benjamin claimed, film changed the perception of receivers, enabling them to process the

SAGE SAGE Reference Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

Encyclopedia of Communication TheoryPage 2 of 5

rushing of images. So receivers can become better able to analyze and comprehend the often chaotic experience in contemporary industrialized societies, developing into more critical individuals. Benjamin, then, discerning the revolutionary potential of new mass media, proposed their refunctionalization in order to democratize and revolutionize society. He s u g g e s t e d t h a t r a d i o c a n produce alternative information, broadcasting democratic discussions and interventions by critical-oppositional intellectuals. In this way, Benjamin claimed, radio can be refunctioned as a progressive medium.

The theory about the culture industry was pivotal in the 1940s because it called attention to the links between mass communication, ideology, and economic and political power. Later, it came under heavy criticism. Fredric Jameson evaluated this theory as historically limited and only effective when referring to societies between 1920 and 1970. After the 1940s, he claimed, societies changed extensively, and new media developed, with important repercussions for economics and politics. For instance, in the World Wide Web, a system of documents accessible via the Internet, there are Web sites where political movements and economic concerns can bring their ideas and products to a general public and forums where registered members can hold discussions.

Deborah Cook offers an additional critique of the culture industry. She asserted that Adorno neglected to analyze the interdependence between the culture industry and other business sectors. In what concerns the specific field of film theory, Diane Waldman stated that Adorno considered films as deeply conservative in their own nature, attributing to them the aim to duplicate and reinforce reality. In her opinion, Adorno failed to recognize that films can be characterized by various styles and aesthetic conceptions, which allow films to fulfill a multiplicity of functions. This variety of characteristics not only denies the films' conservative nature as hypothesized by Adorno, but enables them to promote autonomy of thought in the audience.

The Theory of the Public Sphere

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (published in 1989, but written in 1961), Habermas provided historical background to Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis of the culture industry. His research began with an analysis of bourgeois society, which grew up in the late 18th century. This society, Habermas claimed, was characterized by the growth of a public sphere, where individuals and groups could express their needs and interests. In this space, whose function was similar to that of the Greek agorà, they could discuss and evaluate important contemporary issues, opposing the power of the state and of other powerful groups and helping to shape public opinion. Since then, however, according to Habermas, the function of the public sphere in capitalism, mass democracy, and the welfare state changed: Discussions occur only between media experts, and the receivers become passive consumers of entertainment and information. He called this development refeudalization of the media, likening it to processes that are characteristic of feudal systems.

Some critics noted that Habermas idealized the bourgeois public sphere, neglecting other public spheres: Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge pointed out the existence of a proletarian public sphere; Mary Ryan discussed a women's public sphere. More recently, Douglas Kellner claimed that Habermas neither theorized the functions of communication media within the contemporary public sphere nor recognized their use by social movements in order to educate and organize oppositional groups.

SAGE SAGE Reference Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

Encyclopedia of Communication TheoryPage 3 of 5

Universal Pragmatics and the Theory of Communicative Action

In his article “What Is Universal Pragmatics?” and in his two-volume work The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas gave a linguistic turn to his social theory, theorizing about language and communication. Shifting from the issue of publicness to concerns of communication, he left behind historical analysis and used a more analytical approach to examine issues about communication in contemporary social life.

Building on John L. Austin's speech act theory, Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of language games, and George H. Mead's thoughts on symbolic interaction, Habermas stated that language contains in itself norms that permit criticism of domination and promotion of democratization.

He distinguished four types of action. The first type is teleological-strategic action, which concentrates on achieving success and can be directed toward subjects-objects; it has been highly developed under capitalism. The second type is normatively regulated action; in the third type—dramaturgical action—agents constitute a public for one another before whom they can present their selves. These first three types are already existing types; the fourth one, communicative action, seems more like a suggestion to be fulfilled.

In communicative action, people exchange verbal messages with the aim of understanding each other; Habermas ignores nonverbal languages and excludes from his model other types of social actions, such as conflict or competition. Indeed, in order to perform an effective communicative action, the communication partners must be sincere, accurate, and correct and have the authority to say what they are saying. A subject who becomes an active participant in a communication must put forward four basic validity claims: uttering something understandably, giving the hearer something to understand, making himself or herself thereby understandable, and coming to an understanding with another subject.

Therefore, communicative competence is based on the ability to apply language rules in order to emit and understand utterances. Indeed, Habermas stated, there is a difference between sentences and utterances: The former are judged from a grammatical point of view; the latter are judged from a communicative point of view.

In his article “What Is Universal Pragmatics?” Habermas focused on the necessary conditions for reaching an understanding through communication. He asserted, following Noam Chomsky, that every human being has the ability to construct grammatically correct sentences and meaningful utterances. Consequently, it is the system of grammar, on the basis of which subjects think and speak, that makes communication possible. In this way, sentences become intelligible for a speech community of speakers, hearers, and bystanders.

Yet utterances are multilevel: Through them, subjects create an atmosphere of trust, establish interpersonal relations, and express intentions in addition to transmitting content. For this reason, communicative actions can realize shared understanding; therefore, the locus of rationality is no longer the single individual (as it was in the Cartesian and in the Kantian perspectives), but is the interaction between individuals. Thus, rationality takes on a communicative trait. When shared understanding is achieved, coordinated actions can be undertaken. In this way, Habermas connected his two main theories: Effective communicative actions create the premises for a rebuilding of the public sphere.

SAGE SAGE Reference Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

Encyclopedia of Communication TheoryPage 4 of 5

culture industries communicative action public sphere pragmatics films the frankfurt school new media

AlessandraPadula http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959384.n152 See also

Communicative Action Theory Critical Theory Language and Communication Marxist Theory Pragmatics Public Sphere Speech Act Theory

Further Readings Cook, D.(1996).The culture industry revisited: Theodor W. Adorno on mass culture.Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Jameson, F.(1990).Signatures of the visible.New York: Routledge. Habermas, J.(1979).What is universal pragmatics? In J.Habermas (Ed.), Communication and the evolution of society (pp. 1–68). London: Heinemann. Habermas, J.(1984).T h e t h e o r y o f c o m m u n i c a t i v e a c t i o n : V o l . 1 . R e a s o n a n d t h e rationalization of society.Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J.(1987).The theory of communicative action: Vol. 2. System and lifeworld: A critique of functionalist reason.Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J.(1989).The structural transformation of the public sphere.Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W.(2002).Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Negt, O., & Kluge, A.(1993).Public sphere and experience: Toward an analysis of the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ryan, M.(1992).Gender and public access: Women's politics in nineteenth century America. In C.Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 259–288). Cambridge: MIT Press. Waldman, D.C r i t i c a l t h e o r y a n d f i l m : “ T h e c u l t u r e i n d u s t r y ” revisited.New German Critique12(1977).39–60. Wiggershaus, R.(1994).The Frankfurt School: Its history, theories, and political significance (M.Robertson, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

SAGE SAGE Reference Copyright © 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

Encyclopedia of Communication TheoryPage 5 of 5