Language and Media Dictionary of Key Terms (April 2016) Martin Montgomery

cultural imperialism media n. refers to the process or practice of extending the power of one country over another through a formal policy or informal processes that shape ideas, customs, and social behaviour. Cultural imperialism is usually supported by strategies of diplomacy, economic sanction, rather than by the direct application of military force, conquest and settlement. SJ

cultural industries media n. => creative and cultural industries. mmo

culture media n. a much contested term (‘one of the two or three most complex words in the English language’, says the Welsh critic and specialist in cultural studies Raymond Henry Williams (1921-88) in Keywords, 1976, p.87), ‘culture’ is used differently in different fields of enquiry. In the social sciences, particularly in anthropology, it means the whole way of life of a people, taken to include not only material artifacts, whether for ornament or practical use, but also myths, rituals, kinship systems and culinary practices. What binds these diverse practices together is their role as symbolic systems in giving meaning and structure to everyday life. As the US anthropologist Clifford James Geertz (1926-2006) put it: culture is “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life”. But ‘culture’ has a narrower sense that can be summed up in the words of the Victorian poet and intellectual, Matthew Arnold (1822-88): “culture [is the] pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits”. This sense of intellectual and artistic culture (and self-cultivation) is the one still active in debates around the fault-lines between mass culture and minority culture, popular culture and high culture, where notions of popular and mass culture carry implicitly less value than minority or high culture. mmo

cyberculture media n. a multivalent term used to refer to the culture evolving from the widespread use of the Internet and that often refers to information and knowledge exchange. Cyberculture includes a wide variety of human interactions that are mediated by computer networks, including online gaming, blogging and other social media, peer-to-peer file sharing, and e-commerce. It can also refer to intellectual and cultural issues and movements such as cybernetics and cyberpunk. sj****

cyberspace media n. a term first attributed to science fiction author William Gibson and which in common usage refers to the global network of computer processing systems, information technology infrastructures, and telecommunications networks through which online communication takes place. Cyberspace can be understood as being a social rather than a technical space, in which people share information and ideas, engage in business and entertainment activities, and initiate social and political discussions****

Dalits a term derived from the Sanskrit for “suppressed,” or “crushed,” it refers to a multi-religious, multi-lingual section of Indian society traditionally excluded due to caste discrimination from mainstream social, religious and political society. Also referred to as “untouchables,” Dalits have achieved a significant degree of empowerment in post-independence India through constitutional changes initiated to improve health, education, and employment opportunities, although prejudice and discrimination still remains=> caste system. sj

data mining media n. a field of computer science that involves the process of analyzing large data sets to extract information and discover patterns. It is also known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases, a term coined by Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro in 1989. Data mining is an interdisciplinary field that utilizes methodologies from applied statistics, artificial intelligence, and database management. It can involve cluster analysis of groups of data records, anomaly detection of unusual records, and association rule mining of dependencies in records. sj