COMM3372 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Behaviorism, Roger Scruton, Disinformation
3 Feb 2014
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Assumptions of mass society theory: elites saw mass media as everything wrong with society, assumption 1, media subvert essential norms and values and threaten the social order, elite control is necessary. This argument won during the 1920s in europe: hitler germany, assumption 2, direct-effects assumption, assumption 3 their daily lives. Media can act independently of all other things that influence people in: once media transform people"s thinking, all sorts of bad long-term consequences. Ruin individual lives and create societal problems on a vast scale result: assumption 4, average people are vulnerable to media because they are cut off and isolated from traditional social institutions that previously protected them from manipulation. Mass communication theory: when put in big cities from rural communities, media can suddenly replace communication that replaces messages from social institutions, assumption 5, social chaos created by media will be resolved by the establishment of a totalitarian social order.
