SOC 507 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Stress Management, Racialization, Mass Media

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 507
• Professor: Alireza Asgharzadeh

Document Summary

The mass media as an agent of socialization. Mass media: mass media can spread negative ideas such as racism. Theoretical perspectives on mass media: structural functional - systemic approach; focuses on issues around integration. Newspapers, magazines, television, radio, the internet can be considered an institution. Mass media socializes us, provides pleasure and entertainment as stress management: conflict - ideology (bourgeois false consciousness) Media are capitalist tools & instruments of the bourgeoise. Wealthy and powerful utilize media to maintain their hegemonic status in social order. Ideology: ideas legitimated by the ruling class. Media outlets owned by the ruling class (mostly private sectors) Media as mass deception that legitimates the status quo. The media distracts people from the exploitive characteristics of capitalism. Influences our attitudes, social issues, self- concept: symbolic interactionist - formal rationality. Use of language, visual images, symbolic tools. Makes decisions on what to highlight and what to leave out: post modernism - fragmented discourses.