 Hi everyone. Welcome to this video and discussion on organizational analysis here for critical media studies. Today we're going to take a look at how organizations impact the development of that media and how we can use that as a critical lens to examine and critically look at the different media that we encounter. So first of all let's define what we mean by organizational analysis. Organizational analysis examines artifacts from the perspective that media is inherently influenced by the organization creating it. In other words the the company that's making that that media artifact will have an influence. The fact that it's made by a particular organization will have an influence on the eventual output there. So some of the major premises here, the big idea behind organizational analysis, the major tenants here, first of all organizations have structures. Every organization has a structure and those structures are made up of three things. First a hierarchy. There's a there's a pecking order. There's a there's a power structure in place. Somebody reports to somebody else and whether that's formalized or informalized whether there's a lot of layers there or not a lot of layers. Somebody's in charge, somebody's making decisions and there's a hierarchy there. There's a power structure in play in organizations. There's also differentiation or what we would call specialization. Some people have specific duties, things that they're really good at. So that's something that you know back 150 years ago you had one person that kind of did everything and they had a lot of you had a lot of jack of all trades right jacks of all trade and but now we have a very specific kind. We expect a kind of specific skill skill set. You know we expect one person to do one thing very well and we pair that with somebody else who does something else very well. We have a lot of differentiation and a lot of specialization in organizations today and so that's a that's a major aspect of organizational structure. Then you also have this idea of formalization. Formalization how strict are those relationships between those things? What is the power structure there? How much separation is there between you know these things? Is this a you know a union shop so to speak where people are very specifically defined responsibilities and you're not really allowed to do other things right? If you're on a movie set people are hard to do a very specific thing. You're not if you're if you're not hired to move that light from one place to the other then you better not be touching that light right if you're on a if you're on a major movie set. There's a lot of specialization there but if you're you know just got an independent deal where it's you and your buddy making a movie then obviously there's a lot less formalization in those rules and in the hierarchy there. So different organizations have these different structures but they all have structures. They all have structures. The structure of each organization is unique though as we're just kind of indicating that every organization has its own type of structure between those three different things. They have different types and expectations between the hierarchy and differentiation and formalization. So every organization is unique which leads to the the unique output that each one has. That uniqueness affects the output right. So every organization every media organization is going to approach something differently and end up with a different product right if you if you take one movie if you take I don't care pick your movie if you take if you take the godfather and it's not directed by Francis Ford Coppola it's directed by somebody else it's directed by Martin Scorsese it's directed by somebody else it's a different movie. It's going to have a different sensibility it's not going to be the same thing it's going to be very different okay doesn't mean it'll be better or worse necessarily it'll just be different because it'll have that other person's fingerprints on it right. So the uniqueness of that organization of each organization is what makes it provide a unique output there we need to understand that that's the one of the premises of organizational analysis so understanding that. So some contemporary perspectives on this first of all there's a gatekeeping function this in modern times this the the structure of these organizations we need to understand that this establishes kind of a gatekeeping function where it goes through a process and so for example how the easiest example is the news who decides what gets on the news who decides what stories get reported and and what perspective we they take on those and who does what the organization does right so there's a gatekeeping function for that and that's true of any media organization not just the news but who decides what movie gets made somebody at the top somebody who's green lighting movies that thinks it's a good idea right so this movie's a good idea or that one is not there's a gatekeeping function here so that's important to keep in mind from from a contemporary perspective that that's something that influences the media as well what what gets put out there and doesn't there's a gatekeeping function that's created by this there's also lots of hands that touch a lot of these things right again by the time a piece of media gets to you it's been touched by a lot of people it's been you know selected by somebody that gatekeeping function but then it's also maybe going through you know just take a movie for example I get just it just as an easy example a movie goes through not only getting green light and picked to be made but then you know one or two directors maybe whoever decides to make it and then you've got the executives influencing you get different actors making choices you got a producer you got editors who are making editing choice there's lots of hands touching this film as it goes through you've got that that primary sense of direction from the director right but there's still lots of hands that are touching this and how it's promoted and all that kind of stuff comes in the marketing department so there's lots of hands that are touching media before it ever gets to you and then we now have the impact of social media right and the way that it has influenced the creation of media we have what we call citizen journalists right the people can kind of report on their own we see that through and it's not just reporting in a news sense but we see the impact that it's had in terms of the you know the if we look at the George Floyd murder right I mean that was primarily prosecuted on the back of what we would call citizen journalism by people just getting out their phones and recording it right I mean that was some of the primary reason that that came to fruition that that case and that that verdict came to fruition we look at the the insurrection on January 6th after that the 2020 election so January 6th of 2021 the impact that that we had there of social media that people have been prosecuted people have been found because people had their phones out and they were recording and as they went into the capital and other people were recording them as actual journalists coming in and and so there were lots of the impact of of social media and how people viewed that and how we frame these things has a we don't have necessarily that intermediary which is both good and bad there there's something to be said for the intermediary for example of news organizations people who are professional journalists who who report for a living and and I'm not talking about the pundits who come on at night on these major channels I'm not talking about you know the people who are just there for opinion shows I'm not real journalists who do real work who have a code that they that they work by and are reporting good things and and important information there's something to be said for that kind of function as opposed to somebody who just filmed something with their camera decides to post it on social media and make a lot of commentary about it so I mean the those are just that's what we live in though so that's that's a contemporary perspective that we need to consider the impact of social media to all these organizations and how they've had to operate how they've had to adjust so anyway that's how to major influence on these things some of the common questions we ask in organizational analysis include who created this artifact what's the purpose and the values of that organization or that individual so not only who made it but who are they really what's important to them what is their purpose what is their stated set of values where do they come from in in terms of their their belief systems and things like that how do that purpose and values impact the creation and presentation of that artifact right so when we look at it they can keep coming back to news but when we look at news and we get it from these different outlets is this an ultra conservative channel of news or is this an ultra liberal channel of news or is this something straight down the middle I have several news apps on my phone and I won't give them the specific ones but I can tell you what I have is the is the associated press because it tends to be straight down the middle just more regular I mean just straight up journalism and that's what they do is they report uh as opposed to having an agenda in a sense now they're still like a keeping function they're still as an agenda but it's they're they're really their goal is to remain as unbiased as possible and that's not the goal of all news organizations so so I want to know that I want to know what's their purpose and how did that impact the creation and presentation of the artifact you could turn on MSNBC and Fox News at any given moment and hear them arguing two sides of the same story presenting it completely differently because of their values and the and the impact that that had on the creation and presentation of that artifact and what's the agenda behind the artifact is there an agenda is you know they have one and if so what is it we need to recognize that what's and again that comes back to kind of the values and the purpose of the organization so one example we can look at and this is uh this is close to my heart as a fan as a fan of Saturday Night Live especially growing up Norm MacDonald was uh was fantastic as the anchor of Weekend Update I really looked forward to that every weekend and and appreciate what what he did with that and so for years he was the great anchor for Weekend Update did a lot of great work and one of the things he notably did toward the end of his career there was a comment a lot during the OJ Simpson trial and even after the OJ Simpson trial on on the situation that was happening there and and that was very clear about his feeling and belief that OJ was in fact guilty of murder and so made that very clear was there was no question about that but so it did a lot of talking about OJ Simpson as a as a broker in a in a negative light right so the the the head of NBC at that time though was a friend of OJ Simpson and a personal friend of OJ Simpson and and told Norm MacDonald several times stop talking about OJ stop talking about it entirely and got the producer talked to the producer and said you get Norm to stop talking about it and Norm said no no it's news and it's funny and it's I mean it's it's relevant and it's not it's not funny but I can make a joke out of it if they can put it on tv I can make a joke out of it and uh and and and bring some social awareness to this and so he refused and he kept doing that he kept talking about OJ week after week he would on Weekend Update he would find some way to to basically call OJ Simpson a murderer and eventually the head of NBC said fine you're fired from from Weekend Update you're no longer doing that and he forced the producer of Saturday Night Live to take him off Weekend Update and all because he was a personal friend of OJ's and didn't like him talking about him that way so that's an that's an you know an illustration to my mind of how an organization chooses a side in a sense right and some organizations do this and then makes decisions based on that this was a totally personal decision it was not a decision based on you know people are tired of hearing about OJ and they don't like what Norm is saying about OJ this was a decision based on he's a friend of mine and I want you to stop because organizations are made up of people and organizations have hierarchies and when you're a person that has more power in that organization you can say to somebody stop doing this or else and he did Norm was fired from Saturday Night Live's up Weekend Update eventually left the show I think after that season and went on to do some other things but but yeah totally on a personal decision so through that organization the organization supported it on down the producer said okay I mean at some point the producer said okay I guess because I want to keep making the show want to keep doing things so the organization there if we were to look at that particular artifact would would have a major influence right if we want to again some more low hanging fruit that we could look at here it comes to these news organizations especially the cable news organizations and it's it's no secret I don't think I'm spilling any means when I say that they have an agenda several of these have an agenda again the media the purpose of the media is to make money and so these organizations whether they start out this way or not their their objective is to make money right that's the as the end goal so if they find that they can make money by appealing to a certain audience then that's what they're going to do so Fox News has discovered that they can make the most money for their organization by appealing to the very conservative audience so that's that's what they put on the air is a very conservative perspective MSNBC decided they could make money by going the other direction and by presenting a more liberal argument see CNN's kind of in the middle and they're just kind of coming into this though really CNN for years was a pretty straightforward news organization had at one point about three times the number of editors and reporters and things strictly news people that Fox News did Fox News really has always hired more pundits and opinion people and I mean people that have no background in news and that's that's okay I mean that they're there to provide their opinion they're there to make money for that organization and they do that CNN's just coming around to this a little bit as you've you've made notice if you've been paying attention the last five years or so shifting from you know they still do a lot of of hardcore news stuff straight up the middle news stuff but they've started especially in the prime time hours presenting more opinions and pundit people and because they feel like that's where they can draw more audience and make more money as a result so so they're in the same business as everybody else which is making money and so it's hard to blame any of these organizations for that you may not like what they have to say any of these channels you can you know name one people watching this video probably there's some who are Fox News fans and some who are MSNBC fans and that's fine but you need to recognize that at the end of the day they're all there for the same purpose they're all really there to provide an audience for their sponsors and to make money because that is the purpose of media the media is to make money so but we need to consider the organizational perspective you know of this when we hear a news story from Fox News we need to understand it's coming from that conservative perspective and the same with MBC when we hear a new story from MBC we need to understand that they're parting that liberal spin on it and the organization impacts the eventual product again you can take a movie The Godfather goes through a different company it's a different even with Francis Ford Copeland it goes through a different company it's probably a different product all together there's a famous story about the Lord of the Rings trilogy when Peter Jackson first made it a company didn't want it that long so he had to pair it down to I think it was two movies or whatever and then they dropped the project and and he went to to the new company and he said I want to make this and they said okay but isn't it a trilogy why aren't you making three movies why is it two movies instead of three and he said oh I'd love to do three go to a different company it's a different situation all together that organization had a different perspective on things and so so that's true for all organizations so when we're when we're analyzing the media we're looking at the media critically we need to understand where did this come from and how did that organization impact the eventual product so next time you're viewing something you're taking into media of any kind of movie of a news channel any kind of thing like that be sure that you're thinking about the organization that it came through and how that impacted things so start to put some of that spin and look at things through that critical lens as well if you have questions about organizational analysis or or any kind of question related to critical media studies please feel free to email me I'd love to communicate with you and chat with you via email and continue the discussion there in the meantime I hope that you'll take up that lens that organizational analysis lens and really make that a part of your your tool belt as you continue down the journey here looking into critical media studies