American professor teaching Marxism media analysis

By Junchao Wang and Jie Qin (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-05-29 16:25

"Marxist Thought is one of the most powerful and suggestive ways available to the media analyst for analyzing society and its institutions." In his famous book Media Analysis Techniques, Professor Arthur Berger wrote so.

Standing at the classroom of Tsinghua University May 23th, he repeated the sentence to the students from different majors. He put forward a series of questions for the students to think:

"What is economic system behind media?

Who owns, controls the media?

What role do the media play in society?

What ideas are spread/neglected by the media?

What kind of heroes are shown in the media?"

Though the students claimed that they have read so many Marxism books and know very well about the concepts of "Class Conflict" ,"Materialism", "Alienation" etc, Berger's lectures are still useful, because he shows how to apply the concepts to television programs and other kinds of mass media.

Professor Arthur Asa Berger, the renowned Media Analysist and popular culture scholar in the United States, was invited for a ten-day visit starting May 18 that the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University.

During his visit, he offered a short-term course on Media Culture and Criticism at campus, which attracted 35 students from different majors of Tsinghua.

In the classes, Professor Berger introduced theories through many vivid games and activities. "I expect those theories to stay with the students, after they know how to play with them," He said.

Berger is Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University and a very prolific writer. During his 38 years of teaching, He has published 65 books and more than 100 articles. He has also done a little genre-busting with a series of academic mystery novels for class use. His Postmortem for a Postmodernist and Durkheim is Deadare very popular in China.