The Summer of 1998, The Truman Show, is the story of a young man whose entire life, from the moment he was born, has been televised. The minute-by-minute chronicle of his daily existence becomes the most popular television show of all time, When Truman Burkbank discovers that he is constantly viewed by millions of people around the world, he tries to escape. He wants his own life, he wants his privacy, he wants his dignity. Who wouldn’t?

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Twenty-one -year old Jennifer Ringley, for one, doesn’t seem to share Truman’s values. Her JenniCam broadcasts every moment of her life in her Washington D.C. apartment to more than 500,000 viewers. Audience members can see her sleep, play with her cat, work at her computer, even change clothes. “Initially the JenniCam had an audience of half a dozen of my close friends, and it spread like wild fire from there,” said JenniCam star.The JennieCam is a site on the World Wide Web (http://www.jennicam.org) not a movie, not a television program. Yet regular viewers can pay an admission price - like at the movies ($15 a year buys updated video images of every three minutes; still photos are free.) And audiences do sit in front of a screen to watch pixilated, moving images - like television.

This convergence, the blurring of the distinction among various forms of communication, is transforming the mass media environment.Ms.Ringley’s early use of the Web can be seen as analogous to the telephone or home video. It was designed to allow her to stay in touch with her friends. But now it is more like film and television.But as the media environment changes, so too do the individuals and societies that use the media.The relationship between Ms. Ringley and her friends has been altered. The definition of “friend” has been expanded.People opt for this “real life” viewing at the expense of other real life activities and forms of mediated communications.

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We are in the midst of a revolution in communication technology that is transforming social orders and cultures around the world.Each new technological device expands the possible uses of the existing technologies. New media can be combined to create media systems that span great distances but that can also serve as a broad range of highly specific purposes.In retrospect, we now regard this first century of mass communication as one dominated by expensive, clumsy technologies that provided a limited array of services to gigantic audiences.We were forced to accommodate our needs to what the older media technologies could provide.

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Highly centralized media systems were established and controlled by large corporations located in the largest cities.For most of us, the term “mass media” still is synonymous with the “big media.”Now although we are caught up in a communications revolution, much of our attention is still riveted on the media dinosaurs.We are now only beginning to understand the potential of alternative media to serve the needs we didn’t know we had. If this were not so, the Internet and the World Wide Web would neither be as popular, nor as controversial as they are.

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The new media have largely expanded our options for entertainment and information content.Instead of choosing from a handful of movies at local theaters or on three network television stations, we can select from hundreds of titles available on cable channels, videotapes, and video discs.By exchanging copies of records, tapes, and discs with friends, we can create large home music libraries.At any given moment, we can tune to several different news casts on television and radio.Using personal computers, we can access remote data bases and scan endless reams of information on diverse, specialized topics.

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We can use the internet’s interactive capabilities to experiment with and create new identities.An array of print media are available - many edited to suit the tastes of relatively small audiences.The old market place of ideas has become a gigantic super market.IF YOU WANT IT, YOU CAN GET IT SOMEWHERE.

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We will examine:✴ how media scholars have conceptualized the role of

media during the past century.✴The purpose is to provide you with a broad and

historically grounded perspective on what media can do for you and to you.

✴we will review some of the best (and worst) thinking concerning the role and potential of media.

✴ Look back to the origins of media and the early efforts to understand their influence and role.

✴ Trace the challenge of new technology and the rise of various media industries, focusing on the theories that were developed to make sense of them.

✴Finally, conclude with a review of current theory and assist you in developing a personally relevant perspective on media.

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There are three issues or questions provoked by mass media that have driven and continue to drive the development of mass communication theory:

What potential is offered and what threats are posed by new forms of media technology?What forms of media bureaucracies or industries should be create to control or regulate media technologies so that their potential is realized and their threats minimized?How can media serve democratic and culturally pluralistic societies?

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These issues have provoked ongoing debate and controversy during the past century. Recently, the Internet and the World Wide Web have inspired many of the same controversies sparked in earlier eras by penny press, dime novels, and nickel movies. Cable television did the same, as did television before it and radio before that.The debates surrounding the Internet and Web - protection of children from indecency, control of offensive content, limits on hate speech, maintenance of personal privacy, protection of copyright, the threat of over commercialization, the impact on our democracy of disparities in access to information and technology - have all raged more than once before.These controversies are not new. They recur routinely in predictable fashion.

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In every era, proponents of the new media technology would argue that it had the potential to interconnect people in powerful new ways, that technology could aid the formation of new communities by bridging cultural differences and dissolving barriers posed by space and time.Inevitably, media proponents were and are opposed by critics who charge that new technologies are inherently dangerous, that they will inevitably undermine the existing social orders, and precipitate widespread unrest and disorder.

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New media proponents that the new technology can expand each person’s cultural and experiential horizons. They envision newly energized, active audiences in which people find ways of making media serve them so that their lives are more interesting and purposeful.Media opponents fear that average people will be overwhelmed by new technologies, paralyzed by the mesmerizing power of new media, and ultimately be transformed into gigantic, passive audiences - a world of couch potatoes and cyber addicts.Proponents foresee the rise of a responsible citizenry that uses new media to construct increasingly democratic forms of government, but opponents see the rise of demagogues whose power is based on the cynical manipulation of the public.

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Proponents envision ideal social orders in which new technology fosters cultural understanding so that people practicing many different cultures can live in harmony.Opponents argue that the same technology will sharpen and deepen cultural stereo types and spread fears about other cultures. Thus, instead of creating harmony, new media will incite conflict or even open warfare.Within academia, many scholarly communities developed to investigate the role of media.Sometimes these scholars worked in close association with either proponents or opponents of the media.Funding for their work came from groups, foundations, or corporations that lauded or feared media.

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If we have learned anything about the media over the past century, it is that media are not demonic forces that inevitably precipitate societal or personal disasters.

Media alone don’t create couch potatoes and cyber addicts, or foster massive political demonstrations.

But neither are they benign agents of a New Order ushering in the new Age of Enlightenment.

People using media have the power to create either division or community.

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Media technology alone is powerless to initiate useful change.But technology can augment and amplify the actions of individuals and groups and in doing so facilitate rapid and widespread social change on an important scale.

Media technology does have certain inherent biases - it amplifies and encourages someways of understanding the social world and some forms of action more than others.

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Rather than simply provoking fear or inspiring optimism, media theory should serve as a tool that guides our understanding and use of new technology.

Media theory should enable us to shape media industries that serve our needs and minimize unplanned disruption to our personal lives and the society around us.

Defining and Redefining Mass Communication

Definition: When an organization employs a technology as a medium to communicate with a large audience, mass communication is said to have occurred.e.g: The professionals at ‘The Times of India’(an organization) use printing presses and the newspaper (technology and medium) to reach to their readers ( a large audience)

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But, the mass communication environment is changing. When you receive a piece of direct mail advertising addressed by name to you, at which your name is used throughout, you are an audience of one - not the large audience envisioned in traditional notions of mass communication.When you sit at your computer and send an email to 20,000 people who have signed on to a LISTSERV dedicated to a particular subject, you are obviously communicating with a large audience, but you are not an organization in the sense of a newspaper, cable television network, or movie studio.Light weight, portable, inexpensive video equipment makes it possible for an individual like you to profitably produce and distribute videos to quite a small number of viewers.

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Most theories we will study were developed before the modern communitions revolution. This does not render them useless or outmoded, but it does require that we remember that much has changed in how people use technologies to communicate.One useful way to do this is to think of mediated communication as existing on a continuum that stretches from interpersonal communication at one end of the traditional forms of mass communication at the other.Different media fall along this continuum depending on the amount of control and involvement that people have in the communication process.

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e.g.: The telephone, it is obviously a communication techology, but one that is most typical of interpersonal communication - at most very few people can be involved in communicating at any given time and they have a great deal of involvement and control over that communication. - the conversation is theirs, they determine its content.A big budget Hollywood movie or a network television telecast of the “Roadies” or “F.R.I.E.N.D.S” or “IPL” sits at the opposite end.Viewers have limited control over the communication

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that occurs. Certainly people can apply idiosyncratic interpretations to the content before them, and they can choose to direct however much attention they wish to the screen, but their control and involvement over the communication is largely limited to attending or not or viewing or not.

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FOUR ERAS OF MEDIA THEORY

The era of mass society theoryThe emergence of a scientific perspective on mass communicationsThe era of limited effectsand The era of cultural criticism.

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THE ERA OF MASS SOCIETY AND MASS CULTURE

This mass communication theory begins with a review of some of the earliest notions about media.

These ideas were initially developed in the latter half of the nienteenth century as new media technologies were invented and popularized.Although some theorists were optimistic about the new technology, most were extremely pessimistic.

They blamed new industrial technology for disrupting reaceful, rural communities and forcing people to live in urban areas merely to serve as a convenient work force in large factories, mines, or bureaucracies.

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These theorists were fearful of cities because of their crime, cultural diversity, and unstable systems.

Most theorists were educated members of dominant elites who feared what they couldn’t understand.

The old social order based on landed aristocracy was crumbling and so was its culture and politics.

Were Media responsible for this, or did they simply accelerate these changes?

The dominant perspective that emerged during this period is referred to as MASS SOCIETY THEORY.

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Interpreting mass society notions is difficult because they come from both ends of the political spectrum.

These notions were developed by monarchists who wanted to maintain the old political order and by revolutionaries who wanted to impose radical changes.

Media industries, such as penny press, were a convenient target for their criticisms.

The essential argument of mass society theory is that media undermine the traditional social order. To cope with this disruption, steps must be taken to either restore the old order or institute a new one.

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This conflict often pitted a landed aristocracy whose power was based on tradition against urban elites whose power was based on the industrial revolution.

In time, the leaders of the industrial revolution gained enormous influence over social change.

They strongly favored all forms of technological development, including mass media.

In their view, technology, was inherently good since it facilitated control over the physical environment, expanded human productivity, and generated new forms of material wealth.

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New technology would bring an end to social problems and lead to development of an ideal social world.

But in the short-term, industrialization brought with it enormous problems - exploitation of workers, pollution, and social unrest.

Mass society notions greatly exaggerated the ability of media to quickly undermine social order. These ideas failed to consider that media’s power ultimately resides in the freely chosen uses that audiences make of it.

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Mass society thinkers were unduly paternalistic and elitist in their criticism of average people and in their fear that media’s corruption of these masses would inevitably bring social and cultural ruin.

But technology advocates were also misguided and failed to acknowledge the many unnecessary, damaging consequences that resulted from applying technology without adequate consideration for its impact.

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EMERGENCE OF A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE ON MASS COMMUNICATION

During the 1930s, world events seemed to continually confirm the truth of mass ideas. In Europe, reactionary and revolutionary political movements used media in their struggles for political power.

German introduced propaganda techniques that ruthlessly exploited the power of new media technology, like motion pictures and radio.

These practices seemed to permit political leaders to easily manipulate public attitudes and beliefs.

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All those across Europe, totalitarian leaders like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini rose to political power and were able to exercise seemingly total control over vast populations.

Private ownership of media, especially broadcast media, was replaced by direct government control in most European nations.

The explicit purpose for all these efforts was to maximize the usefulness of media in the service of the society.

But the unintended outcome in most cases was to place enormous power in the hands of ruthless leaders who were convinced that they personally embodied what was best for all their citizens.

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An important exception occurred in Great Britain where and independent public corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was established to operate broadcast media.

At the very peak of their popularity, mass society notions came under attack from a most unlikely source - an Austrian immigrant trained in psychological measurement who fled Nazi Germany on a Ford Foundation fellowship. That immigrant was Paul Lazarsfeld, and for the field of mass communication research he proved to be the right person in the right place at the right time. Within a few years after arriving in the United States, he had established a very active and successful social research centre, the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia University.

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Though quite familiar and very sympathetic to mass society notions, Lazarsfeld was above all a scientist.

He argued that it wasn’t enough to merely speculate about the influence of media on society. Instead, he proposed to conduct carefully designed, elaborate field experiments in which he would be able to observe media influence and measure its magnitude. It was enough to assume that political propaganda is powerful - you needed hard evidence to prove the existence of such effects.

His most famous efforts, the Voter Studies, actually began as an attempt to demonstrate the media’s power, yet proved at least to him and his colleagues, just the opposite.

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By the early 1950s, Lazarsfeld’s work had generated an enormous amount of data (by pre-computer standards).

Interpretation of this data led him to conclude that media were not nearly as powerful as previously imagined.

Instead, he found that people had numerous was of resisting media influence and were influenced by many competing factors. Rather than serving as a disruptive social force, media seemed to reinforce existing social trends and strengthen rather than threaten the status quo.

Though Lazarsfeld never labeled his theory, it is now referred to as the limited effects perspective.

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• Today, the limited effects perspective encompasses numerous smaller media theories.

• Many of these theories are widely used in guiding research even though their shortcomings are recognized.

• They are especially useful in explaining short-term influence of routine media usage by various types of audiences.

• Several of these theories are referred to as administrative theories because they are used to guide practical decisions for various organizations. e.g.: these theories can guide television advertisers as they develop and evaluate campaign strategies to boost sales.

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THE LIMITED EFFECTS PARADIGM EMERGES

During the 1950s limited effects notions about media continued to gain acceptance within academia.

Several important clashes occurred between its adherents and those who supported mass society ideas (Bauer & Bauer,1960) In 1960, several classic studies of media effects ( Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes,1960; Deutschmann & Danielson, 1960; Klapper, 1960) were published that provided apparently definitive support for the limited effects notions.

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By 1961, V.O.Key had published Public Opinion and American Democracy, a theoretical and methodological tour de force that integrated limited effects notions with social and political theory to create a perspective that is now known as elite pluralism. Advocates of mass society notions came under

increasing attack as “unscientific” or “irrational” because they questioned “hard scientific findings.”They were further discredited within academia

because they became associated with the anti-Communist Red Scare promoted by Senator Joseph Mc Carthy.

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• By the mid-1960s, the debate between mass society and limited effects notions appeared to be over - at least within the mass communication research community.

• The body of empirical research findings continued to grow, and almost all these findings were consistent with the latter view. Little or no empirical research supported mass society theory.

• This was not surprising since most empirical researchers trained at this time were warned against its fallacies.

e.g: in the 1960s, a time of growing concern about the violence in the United States and the dissolution of respect for the authority, researchers and theorists from psychology not mass communication, were most active and prominent in examining television’s contribution to these societal ills.

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Many communication scientists stopped looking for powerful media effects and concentrated instead on documenting modest limited effects.

In a controversial essay, Bernard Berelson, one of the people who worked closely with Paul Lazarsfeld, declared the field of communication to be dead. ( Berelson 1959)

He wrote and essay just before the field of media research underwent explosive growth. Throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, students flooded into journalism schools and communication departments. As these grew, so did their faculty. As the number if faculty increased, so did the volume of research.

But was there anything left to study?

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CULTURAL CRITICISM: A CHALLENGE TO THE LIMITED EFFECTS PARADIGM

Though most mass communication researchers in the United States found limited effects notions and the empirical research findings on which they were based persuasive, researchers in other parts of the world were less convinced.

Mass society notions continued to flourish in Europe where both left-wing and right-wing concerns about the power of media were deeply rooted in World War II experiences with propaganda.

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Europeans were also skeptical about the power of scientific, quantitative social research methods to verify and develop social theory. These methods were widely viewed as distinctly American fetish.

One group of European social theorists who vehemently resisted post-war U.S. influence are the neomarxists. (Hall,1982) neomarxism: Social theorists asserting that media enable dominant social elites to maintain their power.

Media provide the elite with a convenient, subtle, yet highly effective means of promoting world views favorable to their interests.

Within neomarxist theory, efforts to examine media institutions and interpret media content came to have high priority.

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During the 1960s, neomarxists in Britain developed a school of social theory widely referred to as British Cultural Studies.

It focused heavily on mass media and their role on promoting a hegemonic world view and a dominant culture among various subgroups in the society.

Researchers studied how member of these groups used media and demonstrated how this use led people to develop ideas that supported dominant elites.

Although British cultural studies began with deterministic assumptions about the influence of media (that is, the media have powerful, direct effects), their work came to focus on audience reception studies that

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revived important questions about the potential power of media in certain types of situations and the ability of active audience members to resist media influence - questions that 1960s American media scholars ignored because they were skeptical about the power of media and assumed that audiences were passive.

During the 1970s, questions about the possibility of powerful media effects were again raised within U.S. universities.

This cultural criticism,although initially greeted with considerable skepticism by “mainstream” effects researchers, gradually established itself as credible and valuable alternative to minimal effects notions.

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EFFECTS RESEARCHERS STRIKE BACK: EMERGENCE OF MODERATE EFFECTS.

Communication Science: A perspective on research that integrates all research approaches grounded in quantitative, empirical, behavorial research methods.

At the heart of these perspective are notions about active audience that uses content to create meaningful experiences (Bryant & Street,1988).

The moderat effects perspective acknowledges that important media effects can occur over longer periods of time as a direct consequence of viewer or reader intent.

People can make media serve certain purposes, such as using media to learn information and induce meaningful experiences.

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Factors that intrude into and disrupt this making of meaning can have unpredictable consequences.

The perspective implies that future research should focus on people’s success or failure in their efforts to make meaning using media.

Both intended and unintended consequences of media should be studied.The limited effects perspective was unable to understand or make predictions about media’s role in cultural change. By flatly rejecting the possibility that media can play an important role in such change theorists were unable to make sense of striking instances where the power media appears to be obvious.

for example: limited effects theorists are forced to deny that media could have played a significant role in the Civil Rights, Anti-Vietnam-War, Women’s & the 1960s counter-culture movements.

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Yet leaders of these movements made significant use of the media, both to recruit and communicate with members and as a vehicle to express their views to the public.

One possible cause of the limited effects perspective’s failure to account for these obvious examples of large-scale media influence rests in the notion of levels of analysis.

Levels of analysis: The focus of a researcher’s attention, ranging from individuals to social systems.

Social research problems can be studied at a number of levels, from the macroscopic to the microscopic.

Microscopic Theory: Attempts to explain effects at personal or individual level.

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Macroscopic Theory: Attempts to explain effects at the cultural or societal level.

The Limited Effects Researchers tended to focus their attention on the microscopic level, especially on individuals from whom they could easily and efficiently collect data. When they had difficulty consistently demonstrating effects at micro level, they tended to dismiss the possibility of effects at the cultural, or macroscopic level.

for example: the limited effects perspective denied that advertising imagery could cause significant cultural changes. Instead, it argued that advertising merely reinforces existing socil trends. At best (or worst), advertisers or politicians merely take advantage of these trends to serve their purposes.

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Moderate effects theorists developed reinforcement notions into a broader theory that identifies important new categories of media influence.

These theorists argue that at any point in time, there will be many conflicting or opposing social trends.

From among the trends that can be easily reinforced by existing marketing techniques, advertisers and political consultants are free to base their promotional communication on those that are likely to best serve their short - term self interests rather than the long-term public good.

Saturday morning cartoons that promote the sale of sugared cereals might just as effectively encourage child viewers to consume healthier food.