 Hi everyone, welcome to this video on pragmatic analysis as a critical lens for critical media studies. I'm really excited about this one. I love pragmatic analysis, probably because I'm a pragmatic guy, I'm a very practical guy and just interested in all these things. So a lot of this just makes sense to me and I love looking at things through this pragmatic lens. But anyway, so I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's take a look at pragmatic analysis. So pragmatic analysis examines artifacts from a perspective that assesses truth in terms of effect, outcome and practicality. So those are the key things we want to keep in mind, effect, outcome and practicality really determine the purpose and the meaning of an artifact and its utility. That's really, it's very utilitarian lens that we're looking through here with pragmatic analysis. So what do we mean by that? What are the major premises of pragmatic analysis? Well first of all, pragmatic analysts are people looking at this lens would say that truth should be based on tangible results and possible consequences. So in other words, truth is not this kind of metaphysical idea that exists out in the ether. Truth exists in the world of reality. Truth is what happens. What is the resulting outcome and the impact of this thing that we're talking about? So truth is based on these tangible results and these possible consequences. However, truth is also dependent on contextual factors. And so this really is important when we look at things in its place in history. So if we look at things from the perspective of, okay, we have this artifact and maybe today it seems totally outlandish or unreasonable or maybe just that it doesn't hold up very well. But what was the truth of that time, so to speak, right? What is the truth of that time? In the simplest form, we can look at things like this and say, well, we look at old shows. Like when I was growing up, I loved Gilligan's Island, loved the show Gilligan's Island. It was on reruns all the time. I watched it at every chance it was on. And not too long ago, it was on. I thought, oh my gosh, I love Gilligan's Island. I'll watch this episode. And I realized, well, that really doesn't hold up very well. You know, it was really good for that time. And at that time it was really good. But now it just doesn't really hold up all that well in a lot of respect. So you really have to place that artifact in that place in time and measure it and weigh it against what was true or what was appropriate at that time. So truth is dependent on contextual factors, though, such as its place in time and things like that. So habits, pragmatic analysts would say, habits are changeable qualities that predispose us to future actions. So habits are formed sociologically, they're not things that are ingrained within us. Naturally they are things that are built within us sociologically and through our engagement with others. And so because of that they can be changed and things do change and things do evolve over time. But these habits then predispose us to particular future actions. So these are all things that are important to keep in mind as we look at pragmatic analysis. These are things that they would say are essentially true. These are the facts of what we're dealing with here. Habits are also socialized. I mentioned this. Okay. So habits are socialized and they're changeable qualities and they do predispose us to future actions. We can kind of predict and have an idea of what somebody's going to do based on previous habits. Society is constantly evolving. I can mention this before. We are constantly evolving. So that's why it's important to place things in context in time and what was happening at that time, what was appropriate at that time, what was, you know, that's an important consideration for us. The idea of time in all this and the fact that we are not the same today as we were 15, 20 years ago or however many years ago as a society as individuals or any other way. So we are constantly evolving. Our expectations of what is good and what is bad, so to speak, are constantly evolving and changing. And so society is a constantly evolving system. So the bottom line here in terms of the major premises are that artifacts are then regulated by the norms and the context of that specific time. So these artifacts when they're created and they're judged and regulated and created within that certain time and within the context of that specific time and that matters. The norms and the context of that time matter in the development and the interpretation of this artifact and it can't be separated. We can't just separate that artifact from that historical context. So also the boils down to the bottom line here is that good in terms of pragmatic analysis, good would be defined as anything that is beneficial or corrective for that society, anything that has a positive impact on that society, anything that benefits people in that society or corrects some issue, correct, you know, as an effort to correct some wrong would be termed as good, would be identified as good and bad would be the opposite. Anything that is not beneficial or does not act in a corrective way toward some ill in that society would be considered bad. So good is beneficial, corrective, bad is not beneficial and not corrective. Yep. That's the umbrella. That's the nutshell version of pragmatic analysis. So those are those are the types of things we need to keep in mind in terms of major premises. As far as contemporary perspectives on how this affects us with media today and our examination of critical studies of the media today, the contemporary perspectives comes down to really kind of two major ideas. Consequences is the first one, this idea that that is not every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? So for everything that we do, there's going to be consequences. Sometimes those consequences are good. Sometimes they're bad as we just identified good in this context would be the consequence of benefits or correct something in society and bad would be that it does not do those things. So but every, everything we put out in the world is going in terms of media is going to have consequences and every decision we make about regulating the media and regulating that output is going to have consequences, right? Both good and bad. Sometimes they're going to be effective and regulations that help us improve society and then have a positive impact on society and other times they're regulations that have a negative impact and end up setting us back. So every every action that we take is going to have a consequence. It's going to have a cause and effect identified with it. Then also contingencies. This idea that everything that we do, there's a but there's an exception. There's a variety of things like that that are going to be involved as well. So in terms of American media today, we look at things like free speech and public interest. That's a contingency. We make regulations about media. We make identification about good and bad and media. But we also have to identify this bounce between free speech and public interest and what falls in which category falls under free speech. What is public interest? So things like social media is a massive area for this right now, right? Some contingencies, should we regulate social media? Should we be regulating posts or is this a matter of free speech or public interest? The COVID vaccinations are the idea of COVID vaccinations has been a spark point for some of these things, right? For the idea that, well, I can say what I want on this is my Facebook page. It's my Twitter account. It's my Instagram, whatever. I should be free to say whatever I want. That's in the First Amendment, right? It's free speech. I can do whatever I want. But what if what you're saying is deemed to have a negative impact on public interest, on the public interest, on keeping people safe? That would be the argument of some people that if you're exercising free speech, that's fine. But what you're saying is harming other people potentially, right? So where does that bounce? Where does that regulation fall? Do we regulate social media? And if we do so, are we violating free speech? But if we don't do so, if we choose not to, are we putting public interest at risk, which would be bad and pragmatic sense as well, right? So when we look at artifacts in a pragmatic sense, we need to think about those types of contingencies. For example, in the regulation of free speech and public interest, another area would be government regulation and media self-regulation. That's this idea of how involved should the government be in regulating these items, as opposed to the media outlets themselves. So you think about this really started with like movies, movie ratings and things, but in a more contemporary sense, we have, you know, video game ratings, for example. And it's all kind of the same idea, right? If you're a video game person, you may see these ratings, or if you go to a movie or you buy a CD, you may see these ratings, right? And these ratings, this is content rated by the ESRB. And it's important to note that these are not the ESRB and the organizations that develop ratings for movies and music also are not government institutions. They are not affiliated with the government. They are not connected with the government. The government does not regulate these things in part because the media organizations have decided to do it themselves, which is really pretty smart because the government back in the day with movies, especially was about to regulate these things and to say, you know, we got to protect children from seeing these horror movies or seeing movies that have, that have, you know, nudity and things like that. We need to let the audience know the government was about to step in and do that. And the movie industry said, we don't really want the government regulating what we do. So let's just do it ourselves. Let's find some way to do it ourselves. And that's what they did. And now lots of major industries do this, right? The movie industry does it. The video game industry does this. They identify different levels that they think appropriate. But so there's something to be said, you know, is this a government regulation or is this self-regulation from the media or or whatever other industry that you're talking about? But, you know, in our context, we're talking about media. So there are contingencies for these things. And that depends on the kind of the era as well. We need to put those in historical context. So there are consequences to all these things, but there are also then contingencies and things that impact, you know, how we how we regulate and how we identify these things. Some issues in media regulation in general, just some just some issues in media regulation. First, the first group of these would fall under media ownership. There's an issue issues within media ownership. So for example, combating monopoly is an issue that media regulation seeks to work on. And through pragmatic analysis, we can look at that. How is this effort working to combat monopoly or working for against media regulation? How is that impacting things? So regulation oftentimes will seek to combat monopoly of a particular industry and which would restrict free competition, for example, and a capitalist economy. Theoretically, that's what we want. We want that competition protecting intellectual property becomes an issue in media regulation, and it's really one of the things that can be very challenging to regulate and to protect the intellectual property. First of all, establishing what exactly is intellectual property? Where does it begin? And where does it end for an industry and for a particular artifact? And then, you know, it's but it's something that is regulated and again, all these regulations have consequences and also contingencies and so forth. So it can get complicated in some ways, right? Maintaining national securities and other media regulation issue. There are these chips in there that allow the government kind of to have an easier way to kind of, I don't want to say try. I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole of, you know, the government is tracking all of us and controlling all this and so forth. But there are ways that they can. I mean, for what they would identify as national security issues that they can identify, trigger words and different things like that. And be able to monitor communication via electronic means. So in order to maintain national security, there are government regulations in place, both in the hardware of technologies, communication technologies and also other aspects of the media as well. So we have those issues kind of in the media ownership realm. We also have media content where we have media regulation happening. And that can create issues as well. Again, anytime you have a regulation or consequences, there are contingencies and so forth. So one point the government was big on promoting diversity. And what we mean here is by diversity of ideas, really. They wanted free and fair exchange and opportunities for all different viewpoints to be heard on anything that was publicly held like radio stations, air on public airwaves and things. So and network television does the same thing. So they were required to have these programs that offer diversity of thought. And what they found was actually there was more limiting factors in trying to regulate that and trying to mandate that and regulate that. So but promoting diversity is an issue in media regulation. We also see managing morality, which is, you know, first of all, the question of is that the government's role to manage morality, to manage, you know, to say, well, this is immoral and should not be on the air. It should not be able to be a part of media, you know, and then you get a whole obscenity thing with the Supreme Court and the famous Supreme Court Justice that said, you know, how do you how do you define obscenity or pornography? And he said, I don't when I see it, you know, it's one of the things you know. So how do we manage something like that that's different for each person? How do we manage morality? How do we establish that framework as an as an institution and regulate that in the media? Then that person's challenges and then ensuring accuracy. You know, I use this as fake news, but fake news really has a different meaning. What we're talking about here is false news, things that are actually untrue. Fake news is more identified with I don't like that. So I'm going to identify that as fake and and call it fake. False news is just flat out inaccurate. Right. So we want to ensure accuracy, but that requires regulation as well. So again, all of these things may be important. Each of them may be important in some way, but they're also very complicated because again, every issue, every regulation has consequences that has contingencies that has, you know, exclusions and things you have to take into account. So there are lots of issues in media regulation. So we're going to look at some common questions that we ask, maybe in pragmatic analysis when we're employing pragmatic analysis. Some common questions would would include when was the artifact created? Again, that historical context is incredibly important. What were the prevailing social norms at that time? Does this artifact conform to those norms? Does it fall into the norms there? And again, we need if we need to judge it according to that contextual timeframe. And then with this artifact at the time have been seen as beneficial. Again, in that context, in that historical context, would it be seen as beneficial? So I want to take a look at a couple of different shows, TV shows here. I thought we'd put a couple of different TV shows here and look at kind of compare and contrast them and because they come from different areas. But I want to look at the Cosby Show and Martin to popular television shows. Cosby Show in the 80s, Martin really in the 90s, late 90s, early 2000s. And we're going to set aside the whole Bill Cosby thing and just look at the Cosby Show, which at the time is a major influential show. I'm not setting aside not to excuse what Bill Cosby has allegedly done or was convicted of doing, but just to look at the piece of media without and setting aside that particular added piece to this. So the Cosby Show in the 80s was immensely popular. Martin was really popular as well. Not as quite a broad-nose audience for mainstream and audience as a Cosby Show, but both very important and especially very important in representation of African-Americans in television, in network television, which at the time was rare, especially for the Cosby Show. That was really the first presentation of an African-American family on major television that had that kind of audience. And then Martin introduced a kind of a different viewpoint of African-American life. Some people call more realistic one and more, but then there was also the issue of Martin with one of the characters that Martin Lawrence actually portrayed was this character named Shanae, which some people felt like was a characterization and really kind of, in some ways, a negative portrayal of African-Americans and was kind of a stereotype representing a stereotype of what people had in their mind that an African-American woman of that age and that time was like and maybe probably not a fair representation, necessarily, and maybe a negative stereotype there. So let's take a look at these, though, just in terms of pragmatic analysis. Women's The Artifact created Cosby Show again in the 80s and the Martin program aired in the late 90s, in mid to late 90s, maybe in the early 2000s. So that's when they were created. They were created at different times. What were the prevailing social norms at the time, especially in television? The social norms in the 80s were very bland compared to today. There was, you know, really on network television, there was no cursing. There was absolutely no nudity of any kind. And there really was no cursing. And it was very what they would have called family friendly, so to speak, not very edgy, kind of, kind of smooth, keep everything low key, keep everything smooth, keep everybody happy. In the 90s, you started to see a little more of an edge to television, especially when Martin came around on the Fox network. It was really Fox was was just starting out. It was one of the first major programs in the Fox network. And at that time, Fox was really trying to appeal to the African-American audience. And so they developed shows around, developed several programs around African-American characters and that highlighted African-American characters. That was not the case in the 80s when the Cosby show was on. Again, you you had been hard pressed to find much diversity at all in the casts of television shows in the 80s. It was it was pretty homogenous, pretty, pretty white, pretty Caucasian. So the Cosby show stood out because of that. And also just, you know, the idea that they were portraying African-Americans when they were portrayed were not really usually portrayed as professionals. But Cliff Huckstable was a doctor. Claire was a lawyer. They were professionals in high end professions. And so that was that was unique at the time. And so there were there were norms that they were breaking in that regard. But but Martin broke a lot of norms, you know, really introduced people to what we would call maybe a more accurate portrayal of that time period of an African-American cast and a group of group of people. That really I can tell you from from the perspective of somebody grew up in a very, very small town and a very, very white area. That was some of my first exposure, really, to to African-American culture, you know, especially in a larger city like that. And so it was, you know, it was really a cultural experience for me. So it really did go against in some ways the social norms at the time. Did it conform to those norms? You know, again, the Cosby show did, in a lot of ways, apart from the the the the ethnicity and the and the racial background of the the cast, it did conform to a lot of norms on television. The the basic setup was there. Martin did not necessarily. It introduced some different things. It was really very creative in the way that it did not conform to the norms of what we expected from network television at that time. Again, Fox was looking for edgier content. And so the Martin program had a lot of, I think, a leeway in in pushing the envelope in that way. So it was it was quite interesting in that way. And would it have been seen as beneficial at that time? I think so. I think both of them were viewed positively at the time in the Cosby show for the representation of of an African-American family that was really more positive, probably than most of the views that you would have gotten on other programs and just the fact that there was such a diverse cast and had had a lot of representation in the cast of different different races and different ethnicities and things like that would have been seen as beneficial at the time and expanding the horizons of many people, Martin the same way, I think. Again, it had a smaller audience. It was a little more edgy. It's probably geared more toward younger people in particular. But I think it was beneficial at the time, despite the some of the kind of the stereotypes that it portrayed, maybe negatively that the people might have held about the African-American community. But I think overall, it was really was a positive representation and really provided a window for many people into the world to what it was like to be a youngish African-American person in the United States in a city at that time. So I think it would have been seen as beneficial at that time as having a benefit for society, both of the programs would have. OK, that just gives you a little insight, a little my perspective on pragmatic analysis. So I hope you will continue to explore the idea of pragmatic analysis on your own, thinking about things in a very practical way. Very, very much. Does this have a benefit or does it not? And is it appropriate for that contextual time frame or not? And is the regulation that is represented in this media that was that was employed at that time appropriate or not? Those are the types of questions we look at in pragmatic analysis. If you have questions about this or any other content related to critical media studies, I hope you'll feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you in that regard. In the meantime, get out there and start and continue looking at media through these different lenses, including now the pragmatic analysis lens and being able to look at media in different different ways and different aspects. So I hope you just have a great week. Thank you.