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REVISION:Microscopic Theories, Mediation of Social Relations

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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
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LESSON 45
REVISION
Challenge to limited effects paradigm came from ideas other than social cognitive learning and systems
theories. Instead of focusing on specific effects on individuals we can focus instead on changes in
culture, on how shared understandings and social norms change.
Instead of trying to locate hundreds of small effects and add them all up. We can ask whether the
development of mass media has profound implications for the way we create, share, learn and apply
culture.
Now we will trace the emergence of theories that directly address questions about the way media might
produce profound changes in social life .These new perspectives argued that media might have the
power to intrude into and alter how we make sense of ourselves and our social world.
These theories are quite diverse and offer very different answers to questions about the role of media in
social life. But in all these theories, the concept of culture is central.
Cultural theories offer a broad range on interesting ideas about how media can affect culture and also
provide many different views concerning the long-term consequences of the cultural changes affected
by media.
Two Ways Used By Cultural Theorists
Now we will discuss the two widely used ways used by cultural theorists to differentiate the various
theories of media.
Microscopic Theories
There are microscopic, interpretive theories that focus on how individuals and social groups use media
to create and foster forms of culture that structure everyday life.
Macroscopic, Structural Theories
And there are macroscopic, structural theories that focus on how social elites use their economic power
to gain control over and exploit to propagate hegemonic culture as a means of maintaining their
dominant position in social order; they are called political economy theories because they place priority
on understanding how economic power provides a basis for ideological and political power.
Differences between Microscopic and Macroscopic Theories
Microscopic cultural studies researchers prefer to understand what is going on in the world immediately
around them.
They are intrigued by the mundane, the seemingly trivial, and the routine.
Macroscopic Researcher
Whereas macroscopic researcher are troubled by the narrow focus of microscopic theory. These
researchers demand answers to larger questions.
How do media affect the way politics is conducted, the way that a national economy operates or the
delivery of vital social services?
Critical Theories
Some cultural theories and political economy theories are also referred to as critical theories because
they openly espouse certain values and use these values to evaluate and criticize the status quo.
However political economy theories are inherently critical but some cultural studies theories are not.
Those who develop critical theories seek to initiate social change that will implement their values. A
critical theory raises questions and provides alternate ways of interpreting the social role mass media.
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E.g., some critical theorists argue that media in general sustain the status quo. Then some critical
theorists identify constraints on media practitioners that limit their ability to challenge established
authority.
Mass media are criticized for aggravating or preventing problems from being identified or addressed
and solved.
A common theme in critical of media is that content production is so constrained that it inevitably
reinforces the status quo and undermines useful efforts for constructive social change
Mediation of Social Relations
Before we proceed we needed to discuss the role mass communication in a society -the mediation of
social relations.
Mediation involves several different processes. It refers to the Relying of second ­ hand or third party
version of events and conditions which we cannot directly observe for ourselves.
The media have been variously perceived as:
1. A window on events and experience, which extends our vision, enabling us to see for ourselves
what is going on, without interference from others.
2. A mirror of events in society and the world, implying a faithful reflection, although the angle
and direction of the mirror are decided by others, and we are less free to see what we want.
3. A filter or gatekeeper, acting to select parts of experience for special attention and closing off
other views voices, whether deliberately or not.
4. A signpost, guide or interpreter, pointing the way and making sense of what is otherwise
puzzling or fragmentary.
5. A forum or platform for the presentation of information and ideas to an audience, often with
possibilities for response and feedback.
6. A screen or barrier, indicating the possibility that media might cut us off from reality by
providing a false view of the world, thorough either escapist fantasy or propaganda.
These propositions give rise to following sub-questions:
1. Who controls the media and in whose interest?
2. Whose version of the world (social reality) is presented?
3. How effective are the media in achieving chosen ends?
4. Do mass media promote more or less equality in society?
In discussions of media power, two models are usually opposed to each other-
Dominant media
Pluralist media
Model of Dominant Media
This model see media subservient to other institutions, which are themselves interrelated.
Media organizations, in view are likely to be owned or controlled by a small of powerful interests and to
be similar in type and purpose. The 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, with little critical
response.
Pluralist Model
The pluralist model is, in nearly every respect, the opposite. It holds that there is no dominant elite, and
change and democratic control are both possible.
Differentiated audiences are seen to initiate demand and are able to resist persuasion and react to what
media offer.
The pluralist view is an idealized version of what liberalism and the free market will lead to.
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Centrifugal tendencies
It includes the notions of change, freedom, diversity and fragmentation.
Centripetal tendencies
It includes the notion of order, control, unity and cohesion.
Four different theoretical positions relating to social integration
Centripetal Effect
The positive version of the centripetal effect stresses the media as integrative and unifying (essentially
the functionalist view).
The negative version represents this effect as one of homogenization and manipulative control (critical
theory)
Centrifugal Effect
The positive version of centrifugalism stresses modernization, freedom and mobility as the effects to be
expected from media (individualism)
While the negative version centrifugalism points to isolation, Alienation loss of values and vulnerability
(dysfunctional view of change as social disorder).
Marxism
Karl Marx developed his theory in the latter part of the 19th century. For Marx social change was
explained by the struggle between competing and antagonistic forces in society that he called-following
the work of another German philosopher, George Hegel, on the historical development of ideas- the
dialectic process.
This struggle was between the `haves' and `have nots' who Marx differentiated in terms of their
possession of economic power.
He argued that the hierarchal class system was at the root of all social problems. The power of the
bourgeoisie is exercised according to the material exploitation of the working classes through extracting
their surplus value and making excess profit. He blamed ruthless, robber baron capitalists for
exacerbating social problems because they maximized personal profits by exploiting workers. The
workers would rise against capitalists and demand an end to exploitation.
Important principles used in Marxism
Materialism
So For Marxists, materialism refers to a conception of history and the way society organizes itself. He
suggests that beneath the superficial randomness of things there is a kind of inner logic at work.
Everything is shaped, ultimately, by the economic system of a society, which in subtle ways affects the
ideas that individuals have, ideas that are instrumental in determining the kinds of arrangements people
will make with one another, the institutions they well establish and so on.
Economic Determination
Everything in life is determined by capital. The flow of money affects our relations with other persons,
with nature and with the world.
Our thoughts and goals are the products of property structures. Every cultural activity (culture in its
widest sense) is reduced to a direct or indirect expression of some preceding and controlling economic
content
Men find themselves born in a process independent of their will, they cannot control it, they can seek
only to understand it and guide their actions accordingly.
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The base and the superstructure
Marx's deterministic economic conception divides the society in two layers or levels: base and
superstructure.
Base
The first, upon which everything grows, is composed by the material production, money, objects, the
relations of production and the stage of development of productive forces.
Superstructure
The overt and tangible world, plus the economic relations that capital generates.
What Marx has described as the `base' represents the economic system found in a given society. This
economic system, or mode of production, influences, in profound and complicated ways, the
superstructure, or institutions and values, of a given society.
It means that how ideas are transmitted to human beings- through the institutions, philosophical system,
religious organizations and arts found in a given society at a given time- that is, through the
superstructure.
So superstructures are the institutions like
Legal system
Philosophy
Religion
Ideas (educational)
Arts (media)
Culture
False Consciousness and Ideology
The ruling class according to this theory propagates an ideology that justifies its status and makes it
difficult for ordinary people to recognize. This notion that the masses of people are being manipulated
and exploited by the ruling class is one of the central arguments of modern Marxist cultural analysis.
According to Marxist approach the mass media and popular culture are centrally important in the spread
of false consciousness, in leading people to believe that `whatever is, is right'.
Alienation
The term alienation suggests separation and distance; it contains within it the word alien, a stranger in a
society who has no connections with other, no ties, or liens of any sort.
According to Marx, capitalism may be able to produce goods and materialist abundance for large
numbers of people but it necessarily generates alienation, and all classes suffer from this, whether they
recognize it or not
There is a link between alienation and consciousness. People who live in a state of alienation suffer
from `false consciousness that takes the form of the ideology that dominates their thinking.'
Besides this, alienation may be said to unconscious, in that people do not recognize that they are in fact
alienated. One reason for this is that alienation is so all ­pervasive that it is invisible and hard to take
hold of.
Thus people become separated or estranged from their work, from friends, from themselves and from
life. A person's work, which is central to identity and sense of self, becomes separated from him or her
and ends up actually as a destructive force.
Role of mass media in alienation
Mass media plays a crucial role. They provide momentary gratifications for the alienated spirit, they
distract the alienated individual from his or her misery and with the institution of advertising, and they
stimulate desire, leading people to work harder and harder.
Advertising acts as the chief means of motivation people to work hard.
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Consumer Society
As we have discussed advertising is an essential institution in advanced capitalist societies because it is
necessary to motivate people to work hard so they can accumulate money, which they can use to buy
things.
But in addition people must be driven to consume, must be made crazy to consume, for it is
consumption that maintains the economic system.
One thing that advertising does is divert people's attention from social and political concerns and steer
that attention toward selfish and private concerns.
The power of the advertising industry to use the appearance of products as a means of stimulating desire
for them is now a worldwide phenomenon and have intervened in the imaginations of people through
their cultures.
And so people have the illusion that they make their own decisions about what to purchase and what to
do, but according to Haug, these decisions are made for them to a remarkable degree.
Neo Marxism
Contemporary incarnation of Marxist theory focusing attention on superstructure. Most British cultural
studies theories can be labeled neo Marxist. They deviate from classic Marxist theory in at least one
important respect- they focus concern on the super-structure issues of ideology and culture rather than
other base.
Hegemony
So Hegemony refers to a loosely interrelated set of ruling ideas permeating a society but in such a way
as to make the established order of power and values appear natural, taken ­for-granted and common-
sensical.
A ruling ideology is not imposed but appears to exist by virtue of an unquestioned consensus.
Hegemony tends to define unacceptable opposition to the status quo as dissident and deviant.
What exactly is the meaning of "hegemony"?
"...Dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain
their dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working
class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates
both dominant and dominated groups." (Strinati, 1995: 165)
Gramscianism on Communications Matters
From a "Gramscian" perspective, the mass media have to be interpreted as an instrument to spread and
reinforce the dominant hegemony... although they could be used by those who want to spread counter-
hegemonic ideas too.
If these assumptions are correct, we can conclude that the media are the instruments to express the
dominant ideology as an integral part of the cultural environment
The works carried out by the mass media can be seen, then not merely as carriers of ideology that
manipulate and indoctrinate people with certain views. The media, as unwitting, instruments of
hegemonic domination, have a much broader and deeper influence- they shape people's very ideas of
themselves and the world, they shape peoples world views.
Frankfurt School and Critical Theory
The term critical theory serves to this long and diverse tradition which owes its origin to the work of
group of post 1933 scholars from the Marxist school of Applied social research in Frankfurt.
The most important members of the group were Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno but other
including Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin played an important role.
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The school was engaged in a critique of the enlightenment.
It thought that the promise of the enlightenment, the belief in the scientific and rational progress and the
extension of human freedom, had turned into a progress and the extension of human freedom, had
turned into a nightmare the use of science and rationality to stamp out human freedom.
The school had been established originally to examine the apparent failure of revolutionary social
change as predicted by Marx, and in explanation of the failure they looked to the capacity of the
superstructure (especially ideas and ideology represented in the mass media) to subvert historical forces
of economic changes also the promise of the historical forces of economic change (and also the promise
of the enlightenment).
The universal and commercialized mass culture was seen as one important means by which this success
for monopoly capital had been achieved.
The affluence and consumerism generated by the economies of capitalist societies, and the levels of
ideological control possessed by their culture industries, have ensured that the working class has been
thoroughly incorporated into the system.
False Needs
The concept of false needs is identified particularly with the work of Marcuse. It is based upon the
assumption that people have true or real needs to be creative, independent and autonomous, in control of
their won destinies, fully participating members of meaningful and democratic collectivities for
themselves.
The cultivation of the false needs is bound up with the role of culture industry. It is so effective that the
working class is no longer likely to pose a threat to the stability and continuity of capitalism.
The media and culture industry as a whole were deeply implicated in this critique. The school contained
a sharp and pessimistic attack on mass culture, for its uniformity, worship of technique, Monotony,
uniformity and repetitiveness escapism and production of false needs, its reduction of individuals to
customers and the removal of all ideological choice.
Political Economy Theory
It directs research attention to the empirical analysis of the structure of ownership and control of media
and to the way media market forces operate.
Three economic processes that have increased the reach of media corporations
Three economic processes that have increased the reach of media corporations are:
·  Internationalization
·  Integration
·  Diversification
Internationalization
Corporations are ceasing to be simply national in their operations and are becoming global. This trend
of internationalization was noted by Murdock and Golding who consider it another aspect of how
concentration contributes to consolidation the necessary commercial constraints on cultural production
In every part of the global media industries the dominance of a few corporations is document.
Integration
Contemporary statistics show that fewer and fewer large companies increasingly own what we see, hear
and read.
Integration takes two forms:
Vertical and horizontal
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Vertical integration
Vertical integration refers to the process by which one owner acquires all aspects of production and
distribution of a single type of media product.
Horizontal integration
Horizontal integration is the process by which one company buys different kinds of media,
concentrating ownership across different kinds of media.
Diversification
However, cross-media ownership control by non-media companies, the integration of media companies
and the internationalization of ownership have widened and deepened media concentration to an
unprecedented degree.
Two approaches analyzing the relationship between ownership and control
Murdock in 1980 identifies two approaches in Marxist thought to analyzing the relationship between
ownership and control ­ what he labels as
Instrumental: direct intervention
Structural: economic structures shape the activities of media owners
Instrumental: direct intervention
Sometimes the impact of the views and prejudices of those who own and control the capitalist media is
immediate and is direct by the constant and every day interventions.
Structural: economic structures shape the activities of media owners
Analysis is not centered on the activities and interests of individual owners but on the constraints and
limitations placed on owners, managers and workers by nature of the capitalist economy.
Economic structures shape the activities of media owners, controllers and workers and pressures under
which they work.
Agenda Setting Theory
Agenda setting as laid out by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw is `agenda-setting is the process
whereby the news media lead the public in assigning relative importance to various public issues'
Spiral of Silence
Its originator is Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. She argued that her perspective involves a return to the
concept of powerful mass media.
Because of people's fear of isolation or separation from those around them, they end to keep their
attitudes to themselves when they think they are in the minority.
So she identified three characteristics of the news media that produce this scarcity of perspective:
Ubiquity:
The media are virtually everywhere as sources of information
Cumulation:
The various news media tend to repeat stories and perspectives across their different individual
programs or edition, across the different media themselves and across time.
Consonance:
The congruence or similarity of values held by news people influences the content they produce.
Marshall McLuhan: the medium is the message and massage
Because he argued that technology inevitably causes specific changes in how people think, in how
society is structured, and the forms of culture that are created.
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He coined several phrases and terms that have become part of the common vocabulary we use to talk
about media and society.
He suggested the term Global village to refer to the new form of social organization that would
inevitably emerge as instantaneous, electronic media tied the entire world into one great social,
political and cultural system.
He proclaimed media to be the extensions of man and argued that media quite literally extend sight,
hearing, and touch through time and space.
Electronic media would open up new vistas for average people and enable us to be everywhere,
instantaneously.
Among the most popular of McLuhan's ideas was his conception of hot and cool media.
He argued that during the 1960s the United States was emerging from an era dominated by hot print
media, in the future, the new, cool medium of television would prevail.
According to him, the television is cool because it presents us with vague, shadowy images
To make sense of these electronic images, people must work hard to fill in missing sensory information;
they must literally participate in creating fully formed images for themselves,
Print on the other hand, is hot. It supplies us with all the information we need to make sense of things. It
does the work for us, offering predigested descriptions of the social world.
Knowledge Gap Theory
The team began by empirically establishing that news media systematically inform some segments of
the population, specifically persons in higher socioeconomic groups, better than the media inform others
theory.
Overtime, the differences between the better informed and the less informed segments tend to grow ­
the knowledge gap between them gets larger and larger
Uses and Gratifications Theory
The uses and gratification perspectives takes the view of the media consumer. It examines how people
use the media and the gratification (satisfaction, pleasure) they seek and receive from their media
behaviors.
Uses and gratification researchers assume that audience members are aware of and can articulate their
reasons for consuming various media content.
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Table of Contents:
  1. COMMUNICATION:Nature of communication, Transactional approach, Communication is symbolic:
  2. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (I):Positivistic Perspective, Critical Perspective
  3. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (II):Empirical problems, Conceptual problems
  4. FROM COMMUNICATION TO MASS COMMUNICATION MODELS:Channel
  5. NORMATIVE THEORIES:Authoritarian Theory, Libertarian Theory, Limitations
  6. HUTCHINS COMMISSION ON FREEDOM, CHICAGO SCHOOL & BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THEORY
  7. CIVIC JOURNALISM, DEVELOPMENT MEDIA THEORY & DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPANT THEORY
  8. LIMITATIONS OF THE PRESS THEORY:Concentration and monopoly, Commercialism
  9. MCQUAIL’S FOUR KINDS OF THEORIES:Social scientific theory, Critical theory
  10. PROPAGANDA THEORIES:Origin of Propaganda, Engineering of Consent, Behaviorism
  11. PARADIGM SHIFT & TWO STEP FLOW OF INFORMATION
  12. MIDDLE RANGE THEORIES:Background, Functional Analysis Approach, Elite Pluralism
  13. KLAPPER’S PHENOMENSITIC THEORY:Klapper’s Generalizations, Criticism
  14. DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THEORY:Innovators, Early adopters
  15. CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM:Catharsis Social learning Social cognitive theory
  16. SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEROY:Symbolizing Capacity, MODELLING
  17. MODELING FROM MASS MEDIA:Recent research, Summary, PRIMING EFFECTS
  18. PRIMING EFFECT:Conceptual Roots, Perceived meaning, Percieved justifiability
  19. CULTIVATION OF PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY:History
  20. SYSTEMS THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION PROCESSES:System
  21. EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL & CULTURAL THEORIES OF MASS COMMUNICATION
  22. REVISION:Positivistic perspective, Interpretive Perspective, Inductive approach
  23. CRITICAL THEORIES & ROLE OF MASS COMMUNICATION IN A SOCIETY -THE MEDIATION OF SOCIAL RELATIONS
  24. ROLE OF MASS MEDIA IN SOCIAL ORDER & MARXIST THEORY:Positive View
  25. KEY PRINCIPLES USED IN MARXISM:Materialism, Class Struggle, Superstructure
  26. CONSUMER SOCIETY:Role of mass media in alienation, Summary of Marxism
  27. COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE:Neo Marxism, Characteristics of Culture
  28. HEGEMONY:What exactly is the meaning of "hegemony"?
  29. CULTURE INDUSTRY:Gramscianism on Communications Matters
  30. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY I:Internationalization, Vertical Integration
  31. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY II:Diversification, Instrumental
  32. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY III:Criticism, Power of Advertising
  33. AGENDA SETTING THEORY:A change in thinking, First empirical test
  34. FRAMING & SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Spiral of Silence, Assessing public opinion
  35. SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Fear of isolation, Assessing public opinion, Micro-level
  36. MARSHALL MCLUHAN: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE AND MASSAGE
  37. KNOWLEDGE GAP THEORY:Criticism on Marshal McLuhan
  38. MEDIA SYSTEM DEPENDENCY THEORY:Media System Dependency Theory
  39. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY:Methods
  40. RECEPTION THEORY
  41. FRAMING AND FRAME ANALYSIS:Information Processing Theory, Summing up
  42. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION I:Communication Science, Direct channels
  43. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION II:Communication Maxims, Emotions
  44. GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA:Mediated Communication, Post Modernism
  45. REVISION:Microscopic Theories, Mediation of Social Relations