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Global Media Journal – Indian Edition/ Summer Issue / June 2011
MASS MEDIA CAN EFFECT SOCIO-POLITICAL
CHANGES: AN ANALYSIS
Dr. Rajesh Kumar
Associate Professor
School of Communication, Doon University
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
Website: http://doonuniversity.ac.in
Email: [email protected]
Abstract: Mass communication is clearly in the middle of a massive transition. What shape will it take,
only time will tell? Each innovation adds something on the one hand and subtracts something on the
other. In any event, all such innovations have unforeseeable effects. A final point on which there can be
little doubt is that the mass media, whether molders or reflectors of change, are undoubtedly messengers
about change, or seen as such by their producers and their audiences, and it is around this observation
that the main perspectives on mass media can best be organized. This paper based on studies made so far
will relook at the phenomena where media is likely to effect changes socially and politically, particularly
in a democratic set up where they are supposed to function freely and speak fearlessly.
Introduction
The world is witnessing a revolution in communication technology leading to swift and
accurate transfer of messages. The new modes of communication and evolution are so rapid that
it is becoming difficult to keep pace with acquiring and maintaining the new media.
Technological advancement is also helping the evolution of new ideas and has certainly made the
world shrink together, not in the geographical but in the socio-cultural sense. Enormous changes
have taken place within the last decade in the political and economic scenario of the world.
The questions more insistently asked in social research on mass communication are how
mass media affects and influences society. The reasons for asking such questions are the amount
of time spent attending to mass media and the amount of resources invested in mass media,
especially on production and distribution. As each new medium has been adopted for widespread
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use, there has been and increasing level of concern about the influences of mass communication
process and the idea that members of the mass society could easily be controlled by powerful
media has troubled the critics. It was assumed that the isolated and alienated individual was at
the mercy of those who could control the media. The media were thought to have great power
because of the absence of other competing social and psychological influences on people.
Communication research is an extension of the methodology and theory building strategies of the
social and behaviour sciences.
As investigators made use of increasingly sophisticated techniques and procedures, they
began to come up with research findings that required them to modify earlier explanations of
how and to what extent, mass communication had effects on individuals and society. Research
within the framework of science on a large-scale began in the late 1920s. Subsequent research
increasingly called this idea into question. The mass society concept yielded a theory of mass
communication effects in which the media were seen as powerful, and their effects as uniform
and direct among the members called the magic bullet theory of media effects, as the effects of
mass communication were thought to be direct and uniform. Today, little remains of the theory
of uniform influences.1
A major problem of magic bullet theory was that its underlying assumptions about people
were inaccurate. It was soon discovered that people were active rather than passive receivers of
information. Psychologists had begun to emphasize individual differences in people’s needs,
attitudes, values, and other personality variables. Human nature was not uniform but
psychologically dissimilar from one another because of the selective influence of learning in
society. The influence of the environment in shaping human nature began to be emphasized far
more than the influence of our rather uniform biological endowment. This led to an emphasis on
the selective manner in which people attended to the mass media and to the great variations in
the way people could perceive and interpret the mass mediated massage. There are different
social categories in society: rich and poor, old and young, male and female, educated and
uneducated.
Their selection of mass communication exposure comes from their social
differentiation. As research progressed, it was discovered that audience of mass media were not
simply isolated individuals but they remained tied to friends, families, work associates,
community, etc. called the theory of selectivity based on social relationships.2
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Over the last few decades, different forms of linkages which connect media to their
source, i.e., society and other institutions have been brought to light: What do the media actually
do for society and their clients and audiences ? What makes people change their behavior,
attitude and ways of life? We usually speak of “knowledge” as the outcome of a communication
or learning process. But the direct product of the media is not knowledge itself but “massages”
with a potential for “knowledge-forming”. Mass media do not comprise the only institution with
knowledge production as a core activity. Others, such as education, religion or science can be
characterised in much the same way and other institutions, like politics and law, produce
knowledge as an important subsidiary activity. It is often difficult to separate media, in their
working, from these other institutions, since mass media often provide them with a channel for
reaching the public. However, the media are distinctive in several ways in respect of knowledge
production. They have a general ‘carrier function for knowledge’ of all kinds. They operate in
the public sphere, accessible to the whole society and for all members.3
Mass communication is found to contribute to change in various ways. In the survey of
villages in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and West Bengal, Paul Hartman4 observed that a portion of
literate people after reading newspapers, pass on ideas and information to others. People listen to
the radio mainly for entertainment, but some make a point of listening to programmes, such as
those for farmers and women, that are designed to encourage change. Media exposure emerged
in the survey analysis as a significant factor in influencing the adoption of better agricultural and
health practices and in promoting more positive attitudes towards women and create awareness
about social problems affecting respondents. There are other aspects whose significance is
difficult to pin down. These concern changes associated with films and popular music, though
this exchange is of no great importance in itself but indirectly is a source of learning. Specifically
it does appear to provide a reference source that may help people to make sense of the social
changes that they see around them.
The second observation, again from West Bengal, points to a parallel phenomenon
concerning the influence of films on the fashions of dress and appearance among young village
men. The fieldworkers reported how fashions were changing and that certain of the youth were
imitating the styles seen in the movies: growing their hair long and wearing flared trousers
instead of the more traditional village dress. This was a source of friction between the youth and
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their parents who saw it as a symptom of departure from traditional values, including sexual
mores and caste norms of purity and pollution. This observation might appear trivial in itself.
How does it matter what kind of trousers young people wear? What has this to do with
development? These questions are not easy to answer in a definitive manner but they prompt
some reflections, an example of the media’s ability to promote “empathy”, the capacity to
identify with new roles and a changed way of life, which Lerner (1958) saw as a prerequisite to
development in a wider sense. According to Lerner, new aspirations leading to change derived
from a person’s capacity to imagine him in new roles and better circumstances which, he said,
might include wearing “nice clothes”. Here we have a case of empathy in action: young people
influenced by film culture who not only aspired to “nice clothes” but were actually wearing
them. No doubt, the adoption of such dresses was not necessarily always a matter purely of
personal preference but also reflected by what was available in the shops, which in turn was
influenced by fashions popularised by films. This shows that the process should be understood as
a wider economic and cultural phenomenon, not just a psychological one. To some extent, it may
also represent a declaration of a desire for change, a means of asserting modernity as a value in
the face of the restrictive and conservative values and structures of traditional village society.
This line of speculation is strengthened by the observation that the “rebelliousness” of the youth,
represented by their attachment to these emblem of modernity, tended to go hand in hand with a
complex of “progressive” attitudes on a range of area: caste distinction, sex roles, economic
inequality and exploitation, family planning and democratic participation.
Video is certainly “the wonder child of communication”. It can provide development
messages tailored to individuals and in a way not possible by television and radio. It can
encourage popular participation. Knowledge- sharing facilitates self development efforts by
individuals, groups and communities. Besides providing entertainment, it may be an important
tool for education and training. Its potentiality has remained largely unrealized and untapped.
Vir Bala and V.S.Gupta5 have worked on three case studies where video technology has been
adopted and improvised for creating social awareness and also for creating climate for economic
and rural development.
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The SEWA(Self Employed Women’s Association) led by well known social activist, Ela
Bhatt has shown how video technology could be used for articulating grievances of women
construction workers, vegetable sellers and other such self employed women who had no forum
for collective social action. Protesting against the municipal action of removing the vegetable
sellers from their traditional work place on the Manekchowk of Ahmedabad , these women
videotaped their protest movement , their agitating mood and determination to resist the decision
of Municipal Committee to remove them by force. The videotaped meetings and agitations
convinced the municipal authorities about the apprehensions and grievances of the women
workers. The authorities decided to drop their plans of shifting them from their traditional work
place.
The SEWA has gone a long way in innovating several self-help programmes like opening
bank accounts for the illiterate women account holders and providing credit and marketing
facilities, apart from initiating them into social action. These women workers also learnt to
operate and handle video camera and record their protest programmes. When one such
programme – how to organise for collective social action- duly videotaped, was shown to their
counterparts in Lucknow, the later became so enthused – looking at the natural gestures and
expressions of demonstrating women, that they also straight away decided to embark upon a
similar programme at Lucknow. Such was the efficacy of an innovating and imaginatively
conceived programme using video technology as the major input.
The Kheda Communication Project (KCP), which has been extensively documented,
received the prestigious UNESCO prize for rural communication in 1984. The project is an ideal
illustration of local, decentralized television broadcasting, effective in ushering the social change
in rural area. The moving factors for success of this communication initiative largely were
audience participation, identification of specific issues of interest and relevance to the village
community, political autonomy from central government and support from state government.
The KCP symbolises the lessons learnt from SITE and is an effective illustration of what a
decentralised and participative communication programme can do as a catalytic agent for social
change and rural development.
Kittur , a village in Karnataka with a population of 12,5000 served as a pilot in which a
128-line rural automatic exchange (RAX), developed by C-DOT, was installed in mid-1986. The
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74 subscribers consisted of local farmers and small businessmen. They averaged an amazing
2,400 calls per telephone per year. An evaluation of the impact of the 74 telephones in Kittur
found 80 per cent increase in cash deposits at local banks, an increase of 20 to 30 per cent in
local business incomes, and easier, more rapid access to medical doctors for local residents
experiencing health emergencies. The evaluation survey found that Kittur villagers reported the
following benefits of rural telephone service:
1. Saving in time and money.
2. Higher prices for agricultural products.
3. Increased sales of farm products.
4. Quicker medical attention.
5. Increased social interaction with friends and relatives.
6. More law and order.
7. Faster information and news flows.
Telephone in Kittur was so popular that neighbouring villages demanded a similar
telephone service. The Kittur experience with the automatic rural telephone was hailed as a
success. The Kittur project, and C-DOT’s other researches, have facilitated the perception of
Indian telephones as being something of a business necessity rather than a luxury.The above
three illustrations of use of video technology, television and telephone for social change and
awareness, national development and economic uplift bring home the view point that modern
communication technologies can be used for socially relevant and purposive programmes. Their
application, however, for entertainment and commercial exploitation purposes primarily has
given rise to widespread and legitimate concern.
Prof. Selo Sumardjan6 has studied the cultural and social effects of satellite
communication on Indonesian Society. Indonesia is one of the less developed countries which
purchased the Palapa satellite in its drive for modernization. The spread and development of
radio, television, telephone, and the facsimile have been profoundly stimulated by the Palapa
which started its operation in mid – 1970’s. The Indonesian satellite, Palapa has been
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instrumental in the acceleration of Indonesia’s national development, particularly in the field of
instant communication and mass communication. Instant communication between persons was
time-and patience-consuming before Palapa. But with Palapa, telephone calls all over the country
and internationally could come through without delay and with a minimum of sound
disturbances. This ‘instant’ telephone communication, further enhanced by the telephone
connected facsimile, caused a great leap forward in the business world. Fast and accurate
information from person to person makes fast deals and rapid moves in business possible.
Indonesia, thanks among others to Palapa, has now become an increasingly active member of the
global economic community.
As a mass media instrument, Palapa, through the radio, and television, opened the
channels of communication to wide populations of the country. The positive effects showed the
spread of ‘Bahasa Indonesia’ as a lingua franca over and above local languages. It also helped,
through television, to make its viewers familiar with the cultures and art performances of other
ethnics groups, besides reinforcing the people’s sense of nationalism by directly listening to
important governmental broadcasts and their personal familiarity with the president as a result of
his frequent appearance on television. But, on the negative side, there seemed to be a tendency
towards social conflict arising between modern behavioural patterns of the youth in imitation of
that imparted through television programmes from foreign countries and the disapproval of the
conservative older generation who condemned such patterns as immoral and indecent.
Research evidence and more considered thought have led to the realization that facts of
social structure and of social institutions intervene powerfully in the process of imitation and
diffusion. Even so, we should beware of dismissing the process as a misconception or, where it
occurs, always as trivial. It is at least plausible that the movement for greater female
emancipation owes a good deal too widely disseminated publicity by way of mass media.7 All
over the world; the status of women has become a focus of national and international concern.
Media has played a vital role in highlighting the issues related to the status of women, about the
inequality, oppression, education or crimes against women. As result, a number of women
organizations have come up, who have been vocal on issues about prevention of crimes against
women and bring about a structural improvement in the economic, social, political and overall
position of women. As a result women have organised themselves in a number of co-operative
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organizations and Mahila Mandals working towards the goal of self-employment and self
reliance. As a result, women related policies have been implemented by the government laying
emphasis on women as equal partners and participants in the development and change process
leading to a shift in conceptual thinking from development to empowerment of women.
Media has positively highlighted the issues like child labour prevailing in most of the
third world countries whether engaged as domestic servant, or carpet weavers, helping in making
of glass bangles, doing any and every kind of activity. In our country itself, the government and
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOS) have been working towards the eradication of child
labour by creating awareness about its demerits and building public opinion against it. No doubt
a lot has still to be done in this field, but communication has certainly made a beginning towards
its social implications. Apart from these basic issues, media, from time to time, have created a
positive public opinion towards environment protection, pollution, conservation of natural
resources, health issues, blood donation, eye donation, diseases like AIDS, cancer, nuclear
weapons, use of nuclear science for peaceful purpose, disarmament, terrorism, war, oppression
and above all basic human rights to all. But the process of change should not be unduly rapid,
violent and earth shaking but should be normal, gradual and a slow one.
Role of Mass Media in Shaping Political Perceptions
In studying the political effects of mass media, we study the behaviour of certain
institutions – the media organisations. Media institution is essentially intermediate and
mediating, as the name implies. Such institutions are intermediate in several senses: often
interposing between us (as receivers) the world of experience which lies outside direct
perception and contact; sometimes standing between ourselves and the other institutions with
which we have to deal. They are mediating in the sense of being channels for others to contact us
(and even occasionally for us to contact other) and in the sense that our relationships with
persons, objects, organizations and events are shaped by the knowledge that we acquire from
mass media. We can know relatively little from direct experience even of our own society and
our contact with government and political leaders is largely based on media-derived knowledge.
Assumptions about the political impact of the mass media have played a formative part in
guiding the direction of mass communication research ever since its inception. In so far as the
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pioneer investigations accepted popular impressions of the media as omnipotent and capable of
being employed for manipulative purpose, it was natural that much attention should have been
paid to communication influences on people’s political opinions and attitudes. Dramatic
examples of use of mass media to propagate political beliefs and ideologies in world war I and
the 1930s, plus the growth of political science interest in empirical analysis led to the conviction
that prime target for research should be processes of opinion and attitude change among
individual receivers.
We have noted that contemporary cities are constantly exposed to constant flow of
information through various channels of mass communication. In the political realism,
especially, our dependence on news media is vertically complete. One rarely, if ever, witness
political events, decisions, or actions firsthand. Mass media by informing and educating the
public play an important role towards understanding of political behaviour in democratic system.
The distinguished political columnist Walter Lippmann8, writing in his classic, Public
Opinion (1922) discussed the discrepancy between the world and the realities, we perceive and
act upon. He pointed out that most of what we know of the environment we live in comes to us
indirectly; treat as if it were environment itself. Lippmann pointed out although “we find it hard
to apply to this notion to the beliefs upon which we are acting, it becomes easy to apply it to
other people and other ages and to the pictures of the world about which they were in dead
earnest.” Nearly every individual deals with events that are out of sight and hard to grasp.
Fictions and symbols, aside from their value to the existing social order, are important to human
communication. What is called the adjustment of man to his environment takes place through the
medium of fictions. Hence, Lippmann had proceeded to outline a theory of political thinking in
the new age of mass communication.
The complex of communication channels in modern society is analogous to the nervous
system of the body in that it serves as the means by which political direction is exercised. The
“nerves” – the communication channels – the mass media are indispensable for ascertaining
shifts in political direction: setting political goals, influencing national mood, consciousness and
will and making political decisions. Since communication is so pervasive one should expect
communications media to be a major determinant of the nature of the social system; and since
politics is a form of social activity we can expect the same to be true want to ask is, ‘How far and
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in what ways are the political relationships of groups and individuals affected by the
communication between them?’. Since communication pervades politics and anything may at
one time or another serve as a medium, the question is daunting. One method of answering it,
indeed, is to describe a model of the political system entirely using communication concepts as
done by Karl W Deutsch9 in the “Nerves of Government”. A key point in his political
cybernetics is his redefinition of the essence of politics much too away from Hobbes’s
conception of power centered politics, i.e., from ‘muscles’ to ‘nerves’. The theory that
government is more a problem of steering than of power provides the basis for the new analytical
framework for political study popularly known as communication and cybernetics approach to
politics. Several surveys are available of the main traditions in mass media research. The
argument that research has been unduly narrow rests on two assertions. Firstly, studies have
concentrated upon primary effects : that is, upon changes induced in individuals directly exposed
to the media. The secondary effects – their consequences for other individuals or groups
associated with the affected persons – have been emphasised less. Research has also stressed
upon one particular kind of political actor – those who comprise the mass audience (‘the voter’,
‘the electorate’, ‘the manual worker’, etc.).
Research projects in this tradition are short-run, based relatively on simple acts of
individual behaviour. In the study of political effects, an obvious question is the subject of
elections. Do mass media change votes? For it invites the easy and superficial conclusion that if
media exposure by the electorate studied over a few weeks or months, has changed few votes,
‘the effect of media on the election’ is insignificant. An alternative interpretation of the question
might be this: ‘What is the function of media in the electoral process.’ Media are communication
channels, carrying messages which may or may not ‘affect’ the audience. The alternative makes
no assumption that effect of the media is limited to the potency of their messages (and of the
media themselves). It leaves open the questions: ‘effect of what kind upon whom or what?’
When these are answered the function of mass media may be seen as far wider and more
significant in the electoral process.10 The general direction in which mass media research is
moving is towards a greater awareness of the social context in which communication takes place.
The ‘effects’ of mass media should no longer denote the limited meaning implicit in the older
tradition. The result of that tradition has been to leave us with a thoroughly incomplete and
misleading picture of how media effects operate and how politics works.
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Now the question which arises in our minds is- “what kinds of political relationships are
affected by mass media and with what results?” It has been postulated that every effect acts
initially upon an individual and consists in a modification of his relationship with at least one
other individual. The most limited political relationship that mass media may affect, therefore, is
a bilateral relationship between two particular individuals. At the other end of the scale lies the
political system considered as a whole – the totality of members of society in their interacting
political roles. The most extensive effect of mass media is thus, upon the political system.
Between those extremes lies a large number of a group or institutions. We can, therefore, classify
mass media effects according to three levels: individual, intermediary group or institution and
total system. Effects consist in changing relationships within one level or between one level and
another. Since there is only one ‘total system’ there cannot, of course, be changes within that
level. ‘Effects on the system’ turn out to be effects upon the relationship of individuals or
institutions to the system, i.e., to changes between levels. In practice, obviously, communications
may affect more than one of those pairs at the same time.11
Levels of relationships are easy to distinguish. But what about the terms of relationship?
Mass media effects comprise changes in knowledge, attitude or behaviour. Where they have a
political quality those changes alter the relative ‘weight’ of the respective parties to the
relationship in the balance of forces that govern the course of political events. For example, in
the U.S.A, changes in viewers, attitudes occurred as a result of the famous Kennedy – Nixon
television debates in the election campaign of 1960 which changed the relative weight of the two
candidates. In the specific sense of changing political ‘weight’, media can be said to have
objective effects. But those are not the only effects people are interested in. The question ‘effects
of what kind upon whom or what?’ tends to expect a secondary and subjective answers. That is
to say, people attach to the ‘weights’ affected by mass media varying weights (or significance) of
their own. The full significance of media effects depends ultimately on the kind of political
questions one is interested in. ‘What kind of political relationship do media affect?’ becomes a
question not about media at all but about the study of politics and the varieties of political theory.
What constitutes a significant effect to one person may seem trivial to another.12
The most general form in which an individual’s relationship to the political system may
be affected by mass media is his perception of politics. Who are political actors? Do they control
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events or are they controlled by them? Is politics an estimable activity? What is a political issue?
Awareness of and answers to such questions will partly be conditioned by qualities of the media
themselves, such as their tendency to define events in short-run terms and their need to reduce
subjects to convenient symbols for easy assimilation by audiences. One step beyond an
individual’s perception of politics is his acceptance or rejection of the legitimacy of the political
system he perceives. Even when we talk about the effect of mass media on institutions we are
still really talking of their effects on individuals: ‘the effect of mass media on Parliament’ means
some kind of change caused by media in the political relationship of members of Parliament to
each other or to non-members. Nonetheless it is possible to find situations where a receiver may
be affected not only by a sender, message and/or medium but also by his awareness of being a
receiver.
Socialization is a process during which people learn to expect from the world and what
the world expects from them. It has been defined as the process of learning to live in human
society or the process by which human behaviour is learned and maintained. Thus, a person who
is socialized has acquired a basic minimum of knowledge about the society he or she lives in
and, a number of its basic attitudes norms and values. People gradually form of its basic attitudes
that can help to govern their attention. People become socialized to family living, to politics, to
academic life and so on. They turn on the radio or television at certain times of the day; they may
read a newspaper at breakfast or they may like to read a book or magazine before falling asleep
at night. Socialization to the media also helps determine how we must trust information from
various sources.13
Press has played a positive role in countries by highlighting criticism against
governments and regimes. After independence, the country had to face different types of
problems, such as communal riots, migration and the refugee problem. In coping with these
problems mass media became closely involved in playing an important role in handling the news
of the riots, by stressing the need for communal harmony and a secular approach. After the
adoption of the constitution, the government of India prepared a plan of development of the
country. The Press played an important role by communicating them and bringing the people and
the government to a common understanding for achieving these objectives. People buy
newspapers to read new, to be abreast of the happenings in the national and international front
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apart for other reading materials related to their choice and taste, reading about, national
international happening, hearing about the media started functioning freely and normally.
Media are a must in a democratic country for protecting the rights and civil liberties of
the people. Mass media have played a crucial role in highlighting racial discrimination in the
South African apartheid regime by building public opinion against the South African
Government and forcing it to grant political freedom to the great nationalist leader, Nelson
Mandela. Thus, leading to the end of the apartheid and ushering in of a new democratic process
there. Recently, social media played a great role in popular movements against powers at the top
in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
Similarly, communication has also brought freedom to the exiled Myanmar’s president,
Nobel Laureate Aung Suei Kyie. Political freedom of the people in a country cannot be
subjugated for a long time. History too has shown and demonstrated over time that political
freedom and consciousness is most desired and the sought after among the people. People still
cannot forget the atrocities of Mussolini and Hitler. The scars of tears and pain still remain afresh
in the minds and hearts of mankind, Germany can never forget that phase of history. Similarly,
the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia, Sarajevo, Herzegovina, Pakistan and Cambodia have no longer
remained limited in the boundaries of those particular countries but the people world over have
heard, seen and read about them and even condemned them. Media let us know about the
political situation in international affairs. They help us formulate and mould public opinion on
various issues.
Mass Media have also played a decisive role by bringing the tribal’s in the national
mainstream. The tribal discontent in South Bihar which had been simmering with growing
political consciousness among them with the emergence of an educated tribal community and
more effective political organisation despite their factional divides. This mood of the tribal’s had
found its expression in the demand for and formation of a separate Jharkhand state. Similar has
been the case of Uttarakhand and Chhatisgarh.
Analysis of political events has long been a favourite topic for sociologists, mass media
content analysts and political scientists. They have evinced keen interest in the study of press
treatment of elections and the relationship between newspapers and public opinion. A study of
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Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi newspapers of Bombay was conducted to find out the nature of press
which revealed that a majority of the papers were politically biased and that their predictions
were wide off the mark (Rangaiya, 1953). Haque and Narang (1983) analyzed the content of
editorials and news items of three national dailies The Hindu, The Times of India, and The
Hindusthan Times, to identify trends in the coverage of the two Indian elections of 1962 and
1977. According to them the Congress, the then ruling party, dominated the coverage in both the
elections. In terms of space and frequency, there was a sharp increase in election-related items
from the former to the later elections.14
Mass communication is clearly in the middle of a massive transition, which only time
will tell. Each innovation adds something on the one hand and subtracts something on the other.
In any event, all such innovations have unforeseeable effects. A final point on which there can be
little doubt is that the media, whether moulders or reflectors of change, are undoubtedly
messengers about change, or seen as such by their producers and their audiences, and it is around
this observation that the main perspectives on mass media can best be organized.
In the coming generation, the life of each person in our society and in many other
societies will be affected by changes resulting from the development of the mass media. But the
direction of many of these changes is still to be determined. Will the proliferation of
communication bring us together or separate us? Will the media be open to diverse viewpoints
and a wider range of individuals, or will access to the press be more restricted? Will there be
broader participation in policy making, or will power increasingly be centralized? The answers to
such questions will depend on many factors, but one of them, will be the extent to which each of
us understands the media and the way to use them rather than to be used by them.
References
1. Shearon A. Lowery, Melvin L. DeFleur, Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effects,
Longman, New York 1983,pp. 20-21.
2.
Ibid p. 22.
3. Dennis McQuail, Sociology of Mass Communication, Harmonsworth (Middx), Penguin Books Limited,
1976, p. 51.
4. Paul Hartman, B.R. Patil, Anita Dighe, The Mass Media and Village Life, An Indian Study, 1989. Sage
Publications, New Delhi, pp. 261-262.
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5. Vir Bala, V.S. Gupta, Media Technologies and Socio-Economic Imperatives – An Indian Perspective –
(ed.) V.S. Gupta and Ranjit Singh, Communication Planning and Socio-Economic Development. Haranand
Publications, New Delhi, 1994, pp. 45-47.
6. Selo Sumardjan, The Social and Cultural Effects of Satellite Communication on Indonensian Society, Asian
Mass Communication Quarterly, Media Asia, Volume 18, No 1, 1991. Singapore.
7. Peter Holding – The Mass Media, London, Longman, 1974.
8. Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, New York Macmillan, (Original Publication 1922).
9. Karl W. Deutsch, Nerves of Government, New York, Free Press, 1966.
10. Colin Seymoure , The Political Impact of Mass Media, Sage Publication, p. 43.
11. Ibid pp. 44-45.
12. Ibid p. 46.
13. Dennis McQuail, The Influence and Effects of Mass Media (ed.) James Currain, Gurevitch and Edward
Arnold Woollacott, Mass Communication and Society, Sage Publication, 1977, P. 176.
14. B. Devi Prasad, R.D. Sampat Kumar, Opinion Moulding by the Press (Media Asia, Vol – 18-No-1-1991).
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