Ch.4: Theory of media and theory of society

There are three types of theories on the relation between media and society.

1. There are “macro-theories” concerning the relations between media and other social institutions, which relate to the extent to which the media are autonomous. Do media offer alternative visions of or simply reinforce other dominant lines of power?

2 There is theory that focuses directly on media institutions and organizations and on how they carry out their cohesion or given tasks, especially under conditions of changing technology and competition for resources and support.

3. Third type of theory focuses on the perspective and needs of the audience and the consequences of their using media to gain social experience. This also covers the question of everyday life experience of audience members and the social context of media reception.

Main themes for Media Theory

1. Power and Inequality

2. Social Integration and Identity

3. Social Change and Development

4. Space and Time

Main themes for Media Theory I: Power and Inequality

The media are related in some way or another to the existing social and political power.

• First of all, it is obvious that media have an economic cost and value and so are an object of competition for control and access.

• They are subject to political, economic and legal regulation.

• Mass media are very commonly regarded as effective instrument of power since they have a capacity to exert influence in various ways.

• The power of mass media is very unequally available.

In discussions of media power, there occurred two opposing models: one of them is a model of dominant media, the other one is a model of pluralist media.

Model of dominant media

• This model sees media as exercising power on behalf other powerful institutions

• Media organizations are likely to be owned or controlled by a small number of powerful interests.

• They disseminate a limited and undifferentiated view of the world shaped by the perspectives of ruling interests.

• Audiences are constrained or conditioned to accept the view of the world offered by ruling elite, with little critical response.

• The result is to reinforce and legitimate the existing structure of power and to prevent change by eliminating alternative voices.

The “dominance” model is consistent with a view of the media as an instrument of “cultural imperialism” or a tool of political propaganda.

The pluralist model

This model is the opposite of the model of dominant media; contrary to model of dominant media, it allows for much diversity and unpredictability.

• There is no unified and dominant elite.

• Change and democratic control are possible.

• Differentiated audiences initiate demand and are able to resist persuasion and react to what media offer.

The pluralist model is an idealized version of what liberalism and the free market will lead to.

Although the models are described as total opposites, it is possible to imagine that there can be mixed versions. In mixed versions, tendencies towards mass domination or economic monopoly are subject to limits and counter-forces, and are resisted by their audiences.

Because in any free society, minorities and opposition groups should be able to develop and maintain their own alternative media.

What is missing from this discussion of models is much consideration of the media as exercising power in their on right and interest.

However, this possibility exists and is to be found in portrayals of media empires.

McQuail's Mass CommunicationTheory © Sage Publications Ltd 2005

Figure 4.3 – Two opposing models of media power (mixed versions are more likely to be encountered

Main themes for Media Theory II: Social Integration and Identity

• Mass communication has often been characterized as mainly individualistic, impersonal and anomic and therefore, encouraging to lower levels of social control and solidarity.

• Addiction to television has been linked to non-participation.

• The media have revealed alternative value systems, which have a potential of weakening the hold of traditional values.

However, there is an alternative view of the relation between mass media and social integration. For this view, media have a capacity

• to unite scattered individuals within the same large audience• to integrate newcomers into urban communities and immigrants into a new country by providing a common set of values, ideas, and information, and by helping to form identities.

As a result, it can be maintained that mass media are seen as capable of both supporting and weakening social cohesion.

In other words, centrifugal tendencies are emphasized by some groups of researchers; centripetal tendencies are underlined by other groups.

However, in complex and changing societies both forces are normally at work at the same time, one compensating to some extent for the other.

So the main questions that arise for theory can be outlined on two criss-crossing dimensions.

1. One refers to the direction of effect: either centrifugal or centripetal.

2. The second dimension can be described as normative, especially in the assessment of these two opposite tendencies of the working of mass media. The question it represents is whether the effect at issue should be viewed with optimism or pessimism.

Centrifugal refers to the stimulus towards social change, freedom, individualism and fragmentation.

Centripetal refers to the effects in the form of more social unity, order, cohesion and integration.

Both social integration and dispersal can be valued differently, depending on preference and perspective. One person’s desirable social control is another person’s limitation of freedom; one person’s individualism is another person’s non-conformity or isolation.

McQuail's Mass CommunicationTheory © Sage Publications Ltd 2005

Figure 4.4 Four images of the consequences of mass communication for social integration

Therefore, we can say that there are four different theoretical positions related to social integration.

1. Freedom, diversity: The optimistic version of the centrifugal effect stresses freedom, mobility and modernization.

2. Integration, solidarity: The optimistic version of the centripetal effect stresses the integrative and cohesive function of the media.

3. Normlessness, loss of identity: The pessimistic view of change and individualism points to individual isolation and loss of social cohesion.

4. Dominance, uniformity: Society can be over-integrated and over-regulated, leading to central control and conformity.

Main themes for Media Theory III: Social Change and Development

An important question related to the direction of the relationship between mass communication and societal changes is that: are media a cause or an effect of social change?

As we have discussed, we cannot expect a simple answer, and different theories offer alternative versions of the relationship.

One of the important questions about social change and the role of mass media is: are the media typically progressive or reactionary in their working?

As an answer to this question it can be maintained that the story of the rise of the media that we have discussed before, tends to show media as a generally progressive force especially because of the link

• between democracy and freedom of expression and • between media and the opening of markets and liberalization of trade.

However, there are other answers to that question. For instance, critical theory has typically viewed the media in modern times as conformist and reactionary.

For example, in the early 20th century, as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the media were used as a tool of change.

Main themes for Media Theory IV: Space and Time

Communication has often been observed to have space and time dimensions and also to “build bridges” over discontinuities in our experience created by distance and time.

Related to space dimension we can say that communication is initiated at one point and received at one or more other points.

Bridges are built and physical distance seems to be reduced by ease of communication and reception.

• The Internet has created various kinds of “virtual space”.

• New technologies have made it possible for messages sent to materialize at distant points.

We can propose the same in relation to time dimension. By means of the multiplication and acceleration of channels for transmission we have immediate contact with other sources and destinations as everyday routine.

There is increasingly no time restriction on when we can receive what we want to receive.

There is effectively no time restriction on the amount of information that can be sent.

• We no longer have to wait for news or wait to send it.

Theories

• Media-Society Theory I: the Mass Society

• Media-Society Theory II: Marxism

• Media-Society Theory III: Functionalism

• Media-Society Theory IV: Critical Political Economy

• Media-Society Theory V: Social Constructionism

• Media-Society Theory VI: Technology Determinism

• Media-Society Theory VII: the Information Society

Media-Society Theory II: Marxism

The question of power is central to Marxist interpretations of mass media.

So the ideas of those who do not have the means of mental production are shaped by those who have means of mental production.

For Marxism, “the class that has the means of material production has control at the same time over the means of mental production.”

They have always underlined the fact that ultimately mass media are instruments of control used by a ruling class.

Therefore, it can be argued that Marxist theory puts forward a direct link between economic ownership and the dissemination of messages that affirm the legitimacy and the value of a capitalist society.

These views are supported in our times by evidence of tendencies to great concentration of media ownership by capitalist entrepreneurs, and by much evidence of conservative tendencies in content of media.

Revisionist versions of Marxist media theory in the 20th century concentrated on ideas rather than material structures.

They emphasized the ideological effects of media

in the interests of a ruling class

in “reproducing” the exploitative relationships and manipulation

in legitimating the dominance of capitalism and the subordination of the working class.

Louis Althusser maintained that this process works by means of “ideological state apparatuses” (all means of socialization). For him, they enable the capitalist state to survive without recourse to direct violence.

Ideological state apparatuses include the school system, the family, chruches, welfare institutions, and the media.

All of them have a key role in persuading people that the capitalist system is inevitable and unchangeable.

Their function explains why the rulers of capitalist societies so rarely have to use violence despite the systematic inequalities of capitalist societies.

Basic features of Marxist theory of capitalist media:

Mass media are owned by the bourgeoisie class

Media are operated in their class interest

Media promote working class false consciousness

Media disseminate an ideology supporting the established order

Media access is effectively denied to political opposition

On the whole, the message of Marxist theory is simple, but there are some questions to be answered. For example, how might the power of the media be countered or resisted?

The main contemporary heir to Marxist theory can be found in political economy theory.

Media-Society Theory IV: Critical Political Economy

Critical political-economic theory focuses primarily on the relation between economic structure and dynamics of media industries and the ideological content of media.

The consequences of this close connection can be observed:

According to critical political-economic theory, the media institution has to be considered as part of the economic system with close links to the political system.

It makes mainly the empirical analysis of the ownership structure and control of media and the way media market operates.

• the reduction of independent media sources,• concentration on the large markets,• avoidance of risks,• reduced investment in less profitable media tasks such as investigative reporting and documentary film-making.

The relevance of political-economic theory has been greatly increased by several trends in media business and technology.

1. There has been a growth in media concentration worldwide; more and more power of ownership has been concentrated in fewer hands, and there have been mergers between electronic hardware and software industries.

2. There has been a growing global “information economy,” involving an increasing convergence between telecommunication and broadcasting.

3. There has been a decline in the public sector of mass media and in direct public control of telecommunication especially in Western Europe, under the banner of “deregulation,” “privatization,” or “liberalization.”

4. There is a growing rather than diminishing problem of information inequality. The expression “digital divide” refers to the inequality in access to and use of advanced communication facilities.

Basic features of critical political-economic theory:

Economic control and logic are determinant

Media structure tends towards concentration

Global integration of media develops

Contents and audiences are commodified

Diversity decreases

Opposition and alternative voices are marginalized

Public interest in communication is subordinated to private interests.

Media-Society Theory VI: Technology Determinism

There is a long and still active tradition of searching for links between the dominant telecommunication technology and key features of society.

the invention of writing,

Some theorists are inclined to identify distinct phases. For instance, Rogers locates turning points at

Any history of communication technologies gives evidence of accelerating pace of invention and of material potential as an outcome.

the beginning of printing in the 15th century

the mid-19th century start to the telecommunication era

the age of interactive communication beginning in 1946 with the invention of main frame computer.

The sociologist Gouldner interpreted key changes in modern political history in terms of communication technology.

He connects the rise of “ideology” to printing and the newspaper because in the 18th and 19th centuries printing and the newspaper stimulated a supply of interpretation and ideas.

He then reveals that radio, film and television led to a decline of ideology because of the shift from “conceptual to iconic symbolism.”

In other words, there occurred a split between a “cultural apparatus” (the intelligentsia) which produces ideology, and the “consciousness industry” which controls the new mass public.

This predicts a continuing “decline in ideology” as a result of the new-computer-based networks of information.

Basic features of media technological determinism:

Communication technology is fundamental to society

The sequences of invention and application of communication technology influences social change

Communication revolutions lead to social revolutions

Media-Society Theory VII: the Information Society

The term “information society” has originated in Japan in the 1960s, although its origin can be traced to the concept of “post-industrial” society proposed by the sociologist Daniel Bell.

• The main characteristic of the post-industrial society were found in the rise in the service sector of the economy relative to manufacture or agriculture and thus the predominance of “information-based” work.

Bell’s work can be considered as part of a tradition that relates types of society to following stages of social and political development.

Theoretical knowledge (scientific, expert, data-based) was becoming the key factor in the economy, going beyond physical plant and land as bases of wealth.

Parallel to these developments, a “new class” was emerging based on the possession of knowledge and personal relations skill.

During the last quarter of the 20th century most of the observed trends of post-industrial society have been accelerated.

The production and distribution of information (especially using computer-based technology) have themselves become a major sector of the economy.

It is evident that information is significant in contemporary economy and society but there has not been much agreement about the concept of “information society.”

Melody describes information societies as those that have become dependent upon complex electronic information networks and which allocate a major portion of their resources to information and communication activities.

On the other hand, other researchers maintained that we have to admit that there is an enormous increase in production and flow of information because of reduced costs following computerization.

However, they called attention to our relative incapacity to process, use, or even receive the increasing supply of information.

So information and culture seem to be subject to faster outdated and decay. The limits are increasingly set by human capacity.

The problem of information overload has arrived in daily experience.

Several researchers have emphasized the increased interconnectedness of society as a result of “information society” trends.

For example, van Dijk and Castells choose to use the term “network society” instead of “information society.”

Van Dijk suggests that modern society is in process of becoming a network society:a form of society increasingly organizing its relationships in media networks which are gradually replacing or complementing the social networks of face to face communication.

A network structure of society is contrasted with a center-periphery and hierarchical mass society.

It exhibits numerous overlapping circles of communication that can have both vertical and horizontal range. For this reason it is less hierachical and more flexible.

Information society theory:

Predominance of information work

Great and accelerating volumes of information flow

Problems of information overload

Integration and convergence of activities

Growth and interconnection of networks

Globalizing tendencies

Dependence on complex systems

New media technology leads to an information society, characterized by:

Loss of privacy

Reduced constraints of time and space

Depoliticization