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The social function of mass
media
L9
Ing. Jiří Šnajdar
2013
Four theories of the press
The American Commission for press liberty from the
year 1947 initiated the work of Siebert, Schramm a
Peterson, who in the book Four theories of press
described 4 classes of media theory:
1.theory of social responsibility of press - role of
watchdog of democracy;
2. liberal theory – based on respecting of free will. It
comes out from the basic principle of classical
liberalism, free market of ideas, where the best would
be acknowledged and the worst would be banished.
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3. authoritarian theory – can justify the censorship
potentiation and punishment dispensation for rulesbreaking, which made political elite. Dictatorships,
military regimes, foreign occupations. Clear
assignments for press liberty and protection of
established social order;
4. soviet theory – assigned to media the role of
collective agitator, propagandist and cultivator at
communism increase. (Marx, Engels and Lenin).
The main principle is media subordination to one
party.
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In practice was never the enforce of press liberty
straightforward. For libertarian theory is difficult to
deal with extreme situations as are war and revolution.
The press liberty was in many contexts Identified with
proprietary rights. Naturally arises conflict between
negative and positive (confirming) conception of press
liberty. The first sees the press liberty as absence of
any reduction, the other adds some targets and
utilities, that fall to owners of the press.
(Conflict owner - versus journalist)
Critics of 4 theories theories as a product of its time
and idelogy, but influenced education of whole
generations of journalists and media specialists.
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The newest theory of 3 models: of the first, second
and third world. But also this is empirically refuted,
see events in Northern Africa.
Mass media
to mass media ascribed the main guilt for
“massification “ of society decay of old
well-established merits
media influence inner (intimate) world of an individual
assumption, that mass media create society
incompetent to resist the manipulators.
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Toronto school and Herbert Marshall McLuhan
The Toronto “mediological” school, established by
Canadian historian Herold M. Innis, searches the
connection between progress of human civilisation
and means of interpersonal communication. Innis
comes out from the conception, that each king of
communication moves the humanity to certain society
organisation.
(Communication progress according to predominant
media).
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The Canadian philosopher, literary scholar and the
most important representative on Toronto school
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) went in for
consideration how using of different media changes
the human´s life (as a media he considers everything
what somehow intensifies, enlarges the humans´
possibilities to grasp the world, and this by movement
and also sensual cognition).
The book is opened with the chapter called media is a
message, where the author presents the idea, that
each media, each technology brings into humans´
matters new criterion and this is the message that
gives an account of a person and of a society.
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McLuhan used for the first time the expression
„global village“ as a metaphor for the society, which
using of different media brings closer together.
Marking „global village“ started to use most in the
ninetieth with using of computer networks and
interactive interconnection of users in the whole world.
At present claim to this tradition some social scientists.
The Toronto school is the example of interpretation of
society development on the base of medial
determinism. Changes in society are interpreted on
the base of changes of communication methods.
McLuhan divides media in :
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Hot media: Low participation of recipient, bigger
effects on audience – radio, film, lecture, book. They
are marked out for high data completing and so they
do not require an intensive participation from the side
of recipient. The hot media pull the person fast and
suggestive into itself, i.e. into its world of media
activities.
Cold media: High participation of recipient, less
effects on audience – telephone, television, speech,
seminar, discussion.
Media can be appointed as hot or cold only relatively,
in comparison with one media and other on the base
of their data completing and rate of recipient´s
participation.
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Birmingham school
In the sixtieth years of the 20th century was at the
University in British Birmingham established postgraduate
and research centre for current cultural studies.
From the original interest in “live” culture of different
society groups and classes gradually came to – mainly in
the time period 1968-1979, when the in the head was
Stuart Hall – that the big part of its interest is
concentrated on mass media and on the fields which are
connected with behaviour and influence of mass media.
The special attention give his protagonists to behaviour of
young people, formation of subcultures, education, racial
and ethnic questions and gender.
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Further progress in the eightieth years meant
especially movement from analysis of media
announcement to cultivation of so called history of
everyday.
The Birmingham school in the mind of critical social
science characterised media especially as ideological
and hegemony institutions and dedicates to relations
among media and “popular culture”, which they
understand as a space, where can be enforced
demands of marginalised and omitted groups in the
society.
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Frankfurt school
A group of theoreticians connected with Institut für
Sozialforschung from Frankfurt am Main, which worked
out from neo-Marxist positions number of accesses to
mass media, re-defined the meaning of the term culture
(culture in the Frankfurter meaning is understood as an
integral part of capitalist system (status quo), which
helps to maintain and reproduce by continual multiplying
of its pictures, creating and consequential satisfying of
false needs, technological rationality and homogeneity
on one side, displacing so called value rationality and
possibility of opinioned choice and weakening of critical
distance on the other side) and its spiritual bequest
belongs to critical theory of society and media.
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At the beginning there was an effort to analyse reasons
of failure of expectations for revolution social
changeover, which affects first the developed industrial
societies and which the Marx preached as unavoidable.
Members of the group associated most the critical
approach to current society and operating of its
institutions, alike as merciless criticism of reproduction
conditions of prevailing society.
Founders of Frankfurter school were Max Horkheimer
and Theodor W. Adorno, presented are also Walter
Benjamin and from after war generation J. Habermas.
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Formation and progress of mass culture connected
the representatives of this school with the
phenomenon of cultural industry – mass industrial
production of goods appointed to consumption in the
free time, using for enforcing in the market and profit
cumulation also displays originally issuing from the
artistic sphere.
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Denis McQuail
McQuail sorted the typology of interpersonal
communication into so called pyramid of
communication and showed two facts :
from view of complexity of communication processes
is the whole-society (and then also medial)
communication the most complex
from view of frequency of communication processes
has the human the most experiences with intra
personnel communication, while the cases of wholesociety communication is less
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McQuail Pyramid of communication :
Whole-society (medial)
Institutional/organisation
Between groups (communication between organised
groups/sport teams)
Group communication (cell/family)
Inter personnel communication
(inner-2 to 3 persons/dyadic or triadic)
Intra personnel communication (with myself)
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McQuail formulated also seven basic attributes of
mass communication:
a) it is an activity, which usually requires existence of
complex organisation with formalised inner
connections of competencies and responsibilities and
legally supported existence;
b) activity of these organisations is aimed to very large
groups of recipients;
c) results of this activity are openly accessible – i.e.
products are openly accessible to everybody and
distribution is (except original offer) altogether nonstructured and informal;
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d) set-up of audience is heterogeneous;
e) mass media can concurrently enter into contact
with large number of people, being in large distance
from the source and mutually divided;
f) relationship between communicator and audience
secures a professional, who is known to the audience
only in his public role of communicator;
g) audience is an aggregate of individuals connected
together with mutual interest.
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Umberto Eco and levels of mass culture :
Eco divides together with other theoreticians (Arendt,
Macdonald) the culture in :
• High cult: high culture (elite)
• Mid cult: middle (mass, according to Eco the worst)
– Uses means of low culture, but makes look like
high culture. (Eco considers Mid cult for anticulture).
• Low cult: low culture. (Comics, tabloids – do not
play anything, are ingenuous and represent itself
as they are – they stand up for its “lowly” what mid
cult does not do).
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He comes from assumption that the mass culture is a
product of media and asserts, that the cultural
industry started to develop already from Gutenberg.
Eco idealistically believes in the change, in an active
interference of cultural solidarity, in mass media
reform via cultural workers. A part of such reform
should be also regulation of contents. Arguments are
among others publishers, that in addition to mass
production propagate a quality literary culture.
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Neil Postman: To entertain to death; public
communication in the age of entertainment .
Postman differentiates the epoch of press and
television. He considers “The age of television” for an
absurd age of entertainment, in which all culture
changed in trivial entertainment.
“This book deals with the possibility, that Orwell was
not right, but Huxley”, writes in the introduction of his
book Neil Postman. “Our politics, religion, reporting,
sport, education and business” writes the author,
“changed into homogenous supplement of
entertainment, without any public protests or any
reactions.
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Consequently we slowly fall into a danger that we will
entertain to death. What entertains us so much and
together “gets down” is television. In television
communication namely predominates visual imagery,
which means that the television accosts us through
pictures, not words.
Put stress on quickness and briefness, the own
content of information is deformed. To keep the
viewers must the television present the information in
such way that the viewer would be amused. The result
is the most amused person who spends a lot time
watching TV but gets the less knowledge.
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This trend was in America obvious already from the
time, when Kennedy won the vote thank to television
discussion, where he knocked the rival candidate
Richard Nixon with his own image and charm, also not
with arguments.
Globalisation of culture is then mainly invasion of
American iconography, doing through new media.
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The mass media are diversified media technologies
that are intended to reach a large audience by mass
communication. The technologies through which this
communication takes place varies.
Broadcast media such as radio, recorded music, film
and television transmit their information electronically.
Print media use a physical object such as a
newspaper, book, pamphlet or comics, to distribute
their information.
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Outdoor media is a form of mass media that
comprises billboards, signs or placards placed inside
and outside of commercial buildings, sports stadiums,
shops and buses.
Other outdoor media include flying billboards (signs in
tow of airplanes), blimps, and skywriting.
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The digital media comprises both Internet and mobile
mass communication.
Internet media provides many mass media services,
such as email, websites, blogs, and internet based
radio and television. Many other mass media outlets
have a presence on the web, by such things as having
TV ads that link to a website, or distributing a QR
Code in print or outdoor media to direct a mobile user
to a website.
The organizations that control these technologies,
such as television stations or publishing companies,
are also known as the mass media.
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In the late 20th Century, mass media could be
classified by whom? into eight mass media industries:
books, newspapers, magazines, recordings, radio,
movies, television and the internet.
With the explosion of digital communication
technology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries,
the question of what forms of media should be
classified as "mass media" has become more
prominent. For example, it is controversial whether to
include cell phones, video games and computer
games (such as MMORPGs) in the definition.
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Each mass media has its own content types, its own
creative artists and technicians, and its own business
models. For example, the Internet includes web sites,
blogs, podcasts, and various other technologies built
on top of the general distribution network. The sixth
and seventh media, internet and mobile, are often
called collectively as digital media; and the fourth and
fifth, radio and TV, as broadcast media. Some argue
that video games have developed into a distinct mass
form of media.
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Characteristics
Five characteristics of mass communication have been
identified by Cambridge University's John Thompson:
• "Comprises both technical and institutional methods
of production and distribution" This is evident
throughout the history of the media, from print to the
Internet, each suitable for commercial utility.
• Involves the "commodification of symbolic forms", as
the production of materials relies on its ability to
manufacture and sell large quantities of the work. Just
as radio stations rely on its time sold to
advertisements, newspapers rely for the same
reasons on its space.
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Characteristics
•
•
•
"Separate contexts between the production and
reception of information"
Its "reach to those 'far removed' in time and space, in
comparison to the producers".
"Information distribution" - a "one to many" form of
communication, whereby products are massproduced and disseminated to a great quantity of
audiences.
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