Research Of John B. Thompson On Media Culture Theory

Media culture,as a booming cultural pattern,has burst out great energy in the cultural changes of human society,and thus become an important problem field of current cultural research.By critically analyzing the previous academic research,John B.Thompson,a famous British sociologist,started from cultural sociology,adopted an interdisciplinary and media-oriented research paradigm,and explored and interpreted the basic characteristics and modern values of media culture from the perspective of modernity.Overall,he has developed an academic research road that organically links mass communication,media culture and ideology,and enjoys a high reputation in western sociology,cultural philosophy and communication circles.In his rich academic achievements,media culture theory is not only an outstanding academic research field,but also becomes an important observation point of his academic research.Thompson’s media culture theory is a theoretical response to the new changes in the development of industrial capitalist society after World War Ⅱ.Based on the rapid development of modern science and technology,the drastic change of social class structure,the constant iteration and upgrading of the media and the cultural turn of social critical theory,he took the media culture as the entry point,carried out the capitalist social criticism in the era of mass communication,and deeply involved the media culture with technical rationality and capital logic to reveal the essence of the "new changes" of capitalism.Thompson’s media culture theory obtained theoretical resources from the relevant theories of Marx and Engels,was deeply influenced by Horkheimer,Adorno and Habermas of Frankfurt School,and integrated Bourdil’s media culture theory and Ricot’s hermeneutic thought.On this basis,a unique media culture theory was formed.The construction of Thompson’s media culture theory is based on his unique understanding of media,culture,ideology and media culture.He studied media culture from the perspective of media analysis and believed that media is the core force reconstructing People’s Daily life,shaping social relations and driving social changes.By sorting out the history of cultural concepts,he proposed the structural concept of culture from the perspective of sociology,considering that culture is a symbolic form embedded in the structured social background and the meaning embodied in the symbolic form of exchange in social interaction.Starting from Marx’s concept of ideology,he constructed the concept of self-critical ideology,and claimed that ideology is the meaning of serving power,and ideological research is the way in which meaning serves to establish and support the relationship between ruling classes.In addition,Thompson analyzed the internal relationship between media culture and ideology,and revealed the potential ideological attributes of media culture,the nature of daily life,the representation of modernity and commercialization,technology and industrialization.Based on this,he defined his media culture as a symbolic system of daily life that adopts media as the framework and method to produce meaning in the era of mass communication.Thompson’s media culture theory is characterized by his interdisciplinary and cross-field research consciousness.He fully explained media culture using deep hermeneutics and semiotic analysis.His cultural mediatization theory,ideological theory,mediatization daily life theory and mediatization visibility theory have expanded the research boundaries of media culture,enriched the era connotation of Marxist ideological theory,and innovated the research horizon of media culture.At the same time,the study of his media culture theory is conductive to understanding the globalization of media culture,recognizing the essence of western media culture,and providing important inspiration for the construction of Chinese independent media discourse system,the consolidation of ideological positions and the construction of socialist cultural power.However,Thompson’s media culture theory also has certain limitations,which are embodied in the pan-media tendency,the deviation of ideological theory understanding,and the one-sided analysis of media culture.