1741 First magazines appear in the colonies 1790 Bill of Rights and First Amendment passed 1833 Benjamin Day's New York Sunushers in cents. Ray Tomlinson develops email 1973 Watergate Hearings broadcast live 1974 The Uses of Mass by Blumler and Katz. 2008 Journal of Communication publishes a special issue on the 'intersection' of different research methods and theoretical approaches in the field of mass communication.
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His words and actions—indeed, how he has chosen to live his life and career—in the years since the first edition of this book have convinced us of the wisdom of our original decision.
C ONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION TO M ASS C OMMUNICATION T HEORY 1
Cycles of development and decline of the mass media 49 Critics of the mass society and the media debate 52 Assumptions of the theory of the mass society 55. Social responsibility theory of the press: a post-war compromise 114 The cold war tests social responsibility theory 116. Using social responsibility theory as a guide Professional practice 117 Is there still a role theories of social responsibility.
The Development of Limited-Effects Theory 138 The Two-Step Flow of Information and Influence 142 Limitations of the Lazarsfeld Approach 146. A Summary of Limited-Effects Generalizations 169 Disadvantages of the Limited-Effects Perspective 170 Contributions of the Limited-Effects Perspective 171 Hovland-Lazarsfeld Legacy 172. Marshall Marshall McLuhan: The medium is the message and the massage 229 Harold Innis: The bias of communication 230.
C ONTEMPORARY M ASS C OMMUNICATION T HEORY : F ROM A CTIVE -A UDIENCE TO M EANING -M AKING T HEORIES 238
P REFACE
Where was the democratic debate and public discourse in the run-up to this costly conflict. In this book, we assume that it is important for those studying mass communication theory to have a strong grounding in the historical development of media theory. Therefore, on the following pages, we trace the theory's history in a clear and straightforward way.
Readers familiar with previous editions of this textbook will notice that we have made some important changes in the way we present the development of media theory. The second theory, the knowledge gap theory, has reemerged in the Internet age because of its implications for the digital divide. We replaced it with an examination of the development of personal identity in the Facebook era and recent thinking on cultivation theory, as new media potentially challenge the cultural dominance of television.
This book should help us develop our understanding of the theory so that we can use media better and play a greater role in the development of new media industries.
I NTRODUCTION TO M ASS C OMMUNICATION T HEORY
U NDERSTANDING AND
E VALUATING M ASS
C OMMUNICATION T HEORY
At the same time, we tend to be more skeptical of the findings of social scientists. But although the core logic of the scientific method is quite simple, its application to the social (rather than physical) world can be more complicated. Nor do they seek to understand the social world as the ultimate goal of their work.
This dynamism can be easily seen in the transformation of our understanding of the mass communication process itself. While these types of theories have a commitment to a greater understanding of the social world, We examine some of the best (and worst) thinking about the media's role and potential.
For example, (a) all the media of mass communication are undergoing dramatic changes in form, substance and content. Our description of the eras of mass communication theory begins with an overview of some of the earliest thinking about media. In the second era of mass communication theory, the development of a scientific perspective on mass communication led to the emergence of the limited-effects perspective.
T HE R ISE OF M EDIA I NDUSTRIES
AND M ASS S OCIETY T HEORY
Some experts even say that yellow journalism got its name from one of the first comic strips: "The Yellow Kid". It is a great factor in the life of the masses, to be reckoned with, if it is possible to improve, if it is used for good purposes. Although it is unfair to lump all of these criticisms into a single category, many of the views expressed are consistent with mass society theory.
Mass society theory first appeared in the late nineteenth century when various traditional social elites struggled to make sense of the disruptive effects of modernization. The rise of the mass press after 1840 posed a direct threat to the political and business establishment. Media is only one of the many technologies that have shaped and continue to shape modern life.
This assumption was developed in the 1930s and peaked in popularity in the United States during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Gradually, power is consolidated in the hands of the most ruthless demagogue, who establishes a totalitarian state. Here, we prefer to limit the use of the term mass society theory to formulations that (a) were developed before 1970 and (b) do not take into account the findings of media effects research.
The first is the phenomenally rapid spread of the Internet and the World Wide Web; the second concerns changes in the way media companies are structured and operated. Today, advances in media technology are facilitating media formation in many parts of the world. Books are not out of the picture, but they are just one way to experience information in today's world” (in Rich, 2008, p. 15).
This is one of the reasons for today's staggering number and scale of media industry mergers. For much of the last two centuries, media criticism has taken the form of mass society theory.
T HE R ISE OF M EDIA T HEORY IN
In the United States, lawyers on all sides were convinced of the Truth and Justice of their causes. Voice or silence, people can always do the bidding of leaders. In other words, they accepted Eduard Bernays' idea of the need for government to engineer consent—the "freedom to persuade."
However, only part of this success can be directly attributed to the rise of powerful new media. These ideas could be applied, for example, to the analysis of the Nazi propaganda films described earlier. What good is a free press if it is impossible to effectively convey enough of the most vital forms of information to the public.
Third, O'Reilly is one of the most powerful voices in the media today, so he was worthy of study. This is especially true of the normative theory currently guiding mass media in the United States: It is a synthesis of ideas developed over the past three centuries. Economic theory-based interpretations of the marketplace of ideas emphasize efficiency, consumer satisfaction, and competition.
In the debate over the creation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), Secretary Hoover espoused one particularly important philosophy—the airwaves belong to the people. The synthesis of ideas presented in the Hutchins Commission report became known as the social responsibility theory of the press (Siebert, Peterson and Schramm, 1956). Tuchman cites early news coverage of the women's movement in the 1960s and early 1970s to illustrate her critique.
In the early 1970s, ABC, NBC and CBS controlled more than 90 percent of the viewing audience. It is useful to examine some alternative normative theories applied in other parts of the world. As such, blogs force a major rethink not only of journalistic practice, but also of social responsibility and the public interest.
Denis McQuail (1987) lists other normative media theories developed in other parts of the world.
T HEORIES : F ERMENT
IN THE F IELD
1927 Radio Act of 1927 creates the Federal Radio Commission. 1933 Payne Fund's Movies, Delinquency, and Crime is published. 1940 Paul Lazarsfeld's voter studies begin in Erie County, Ohio. 1941 The United States enters World War II. Kennedy holds the Schramm team's first live TV presidential press conference. Television in the Lives of Our Children, published in 1962, Festinger's cognitive dissonance article appears.
T HE R ISE OF L IMITED -E FFECTS T HEORY
WRIGHT MILLS AND THE POWER ELITE
For opponents, elite pluralism was a rationalization of the status quo that provided no direction for future development. Why were the interests of the few so often pursued at the expense of ordinary people. The several views of media influence described in this chapter can be brought together into a broader, middle-range theory of limited effects.
This perspective of media power and influence consists of several interrelated generalizations, and has numerous limitations, which we have already discussed. Media plays an important, if somewhat minor, role in supporting this system by reinforcing the status quo. We have discussed many of the limitations of the limited effects perspective in this chapter, but here they are briefly listed, accompanied by some new concerns.
The limited impact perspective effectively supplanted mass society theory and propaganda theories as the dominant perspective on media. On the one hand, the limited-effect perspective reduced unwarranted fears of massive uncontrollable media effects. Gerry Miller and Michael Burgoon acknowledged the powerful initial influence of this research when they commented on the Hovland work, “The classic volumes of .
For its time, it was thorough, sophisticated and groundbreaking – but it did not provide a definitive explanation of the media's role or power. Therefore, its contribution to our overall understanding of the role of the mass media in society as a whole was somewhat misleading. With other research from the time, this helped develop the contours of the limited-effect perspective: media rarely have direct effects; media.
Klapper's phenomenist, or reinforcement, theory provided a powerful argument for media as reinforcers of the status quo, which cannot have powerful effects. At the time, it was proven that media had limited effects—it was limited to.
F UNCTIONALISM AND C HILDREN
