Williams 1/29/07
I feel that Neuman’s critique of Williams begins to resonate with me in chapter 4’s somewhat lackadaisical content analysis and fully culminates in the theoretical questions posed in chapter 5.
Beginning with Chapter 4 “Programming: Distribution and Flow,” it is easy to see how one could critique Williams as being “uneasy” with data. His presentation of the raw data is somewhat overwhelming and tedious. The data are almost left to speak for themselves as Williams offers convoluted explanations of the establishment of flow in his “commentary” sections. I found myself reading these sections several times to fully comprehend what he was speculating. This awkward approach to a content analysis felt forced in his cultural/analytical approach to studying television.
Furthermore, Chapter 5 “Effects of Technology and its Uses” left this reader feeling quite dimly about communication studies and social science in general. Williams creates a sense that television is so intensely immersed within American culture that we cannot parse out its effects. Instead we are forced to study the socialization of an entire culture. In a discussion on the effects of media violence, Williams explains the potential dichotomy between a society that seemingly “discourages violent behavior; violent behavior is constantly represented on television; we need to study its effects” (pg. 126) and a society that “encourages violent behaviors; violent behavior is constantly represented and reported on television, its major communications system” (pg. 126). As provocative as this may be, Williams notes that the only way to study this contradiction is to study this “sociology of that contradiction.” Yet he offers no ways in which to adequately do this.
It is within this lack of an approach that Neuman’s critique resonates with me. I do realize the importance of asking these questions. Yet at times, for a novice scholar, the methods to these answers seem too overwhelming to obtain.