SOC100H1 Chapter SP: CH 14, RS: CH 49,52,67: Belief systems and Media
SP Chapter 14: Media and Mass Communication
●The Sociology of Media
○Mass media: the main means of mass communication, including newspapers, radio, TV,
the internet, etc.
○Scott and Marshall (C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite)
■Very few people can communicate to a great number
■The audience has no effective way of answering back
○Cross-ownership: one corporation owns media businesses of different types
●Media and mass communication
○Mass communication: who says what to whom in which channel and with what effect
■With all media products, there is a speaker, a subject of discussion, a listener, a
medium, and a consequence
○Katz and Lazarsfeld’s Two-step flow of communication: posited a movement of
information and ideas from the media to “opinion leaders,” and from them to other people
in their social network
■For the media to affect public opinion, it has to pass the evaluation of opinion
leaders--unless those opinion leaders can be circumvented
●Functionalism
○Interested in the way the mass media are organized and how this organization
contributes to social control and stability
■Interested in the role of the media as a mechanism for informing, socializing, and
educating the public
○Modernization: the promotion, in less-developed countries, of non-traditional, mainly
Wester knowledge, attitudes, and practices with regard to a variety of topics
■As people consume more media, they become more knowledgeable about
cultural variety
●The higher they set their own sights and those of their children, the more
likely they are to demand an open, democratic society
●Conflict theory
○Critics of the media adopt conflict theory to study the ways that powerful groups in society
use the media they own or control to further their organizational and class interests
○Gerbner and Gross: Cultivation theory
■People who watch TV for 4+ hours a day are exposed to a great deal of violent
imagery and storytelling
●“Mean World Syndrome”: a heightened state of insecurity, an
exaggerated perception of risk and danger, and a fearful propensity for
hard-line political solutions to social problems
■The media creates an ever-increasing demand for violent programming and an
ever-increasing anxiety about violence and desire for more police control
■Views audiences as passive, bringing little or no skepticism to the ideas they
receive from the media
■The theory denies people agency, ignoring the intelligence of audiences and their
willingness to evaluate what they see and hear
●Ignores evidence provided in the two-step theory of communication,
which suggests that the process of influence and opinion formation is far
more complicated
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■This theory is most applicable where media products engage the emotions and
irrational fears, and least likely where it engages reason
●Herbert Gans’s Deciding What’s News
○Draws heavily on the conflict theory approach; examines the way the news world works
○Findings:
■Because news-reporting organizations are concerned with gaining and keeping a
large number of viewers/readers, there is usually an inclination to include at least
some stories likely to appeal to a mass audience
■The national news is shaped by, and works in the interests of, people in high
positions
●The stories chosen will improve the reputations of powerful groups and
individuals
○In all four organizations he studied, he found similar views about which ideas and values
to communicate
■Include the value of individualism, a belief in responsible capitalism, and a desire
for social order and strong national leadership
■Conventional political views--conventional in the sense that any American of
either national party would endorse them--are congruent with other news choices
the networks made
●Ex: portraying news in ways that promoted patriotism
○Edward Herman: Manufacturing Consent and Noam Chomsky: both authors note that
media organizations are huge, privately owned companies run for profit
●Symbolic Interactionism
○Claims-making: social construction of reality, which often involves the work of moral
entrepreneurs: individuals or groups bent on swaying opinion and driving political action
on a social issue the individual or group has defined
○Social-constructionist approach argues that the way society interprets or “constructs:
certain social realities shapes the way humans react to the world
■Reality is known only through social interaction
■Our understanding of reality is largely influenced by language
■Our understanding emerges from social interaction at a particular time and in a
particular place--in other words, it is situational
○All social problems are socially constructed -- even the most shocking and atrocious
events are made real only in the media’s reporting of them
○Media distortion is a systematic effect of commodification
■Urban bias: a systematic cdiscounting of anything rural except as an occasion for
nostalgia
●Feminism
○Focus on the way the media represent disadvantaged groups, especially women
○Male gaze: a sexist, objectifying way of viewing and portraying women; images present in
movies, in TV, in print, etc. are taken from a male, heteronormative perspective that
objectifies women
○Cultural studies perspective: an interdisciplinary field that draws on insights from
sociology, political economy, communication and literary theory, media theory, and other
fields in the study of cultural themes across different societies
■Goal is to understand the socio-political context in which culture develops, and
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the ways in which cultural products uphold and reinforce dominant, mainstream
ideals
○Suzanne Walters highlighted the extent to which the media’s depiction of women is
influenced by the male gaze
■The concept of male gaze helps to account for why scenes of male nudity are
infrequent compared with scenes of female nudity in movies
■Media images are presented with the pleasure (Scopophilia) of the male viewer
in mind
○Women, much more than men, are subject to appearance and beauty norms
■People with disabilities or disadvantages are rarely depicted in the mass media;
even people who look ordinary
○Appearance norms promoted in the media contribute to appearance pathologies
■Ex: eating disorders
●Postmodernism
○The “reality” of media content is debatable: postmodernists question the materiality of
information content and advocate for a different approach to media analysis
○In contrast to Marxist theories, who see the depiction of life as something real and subject
to manipulation by society's most powerful classes, postmodernist critics argue that every
depiction of life is imaginary--deeply unreal--and that the media depict something that is
“beyond real”--hyperreality
■Hyperreality: the simulation or representation of something that does not in fact
exist; it’s a dream of reality, not reality itself
●Results when the line between the representation of a thing and the
“real-life” thing being copied becomes blurred
■Ex: Reality TV, movies that evoke the past
○Torikian: reality must be derived from the world we perceive around us through our
physical senses, however, the postmodern concept of hyperreality suggests there’s no
way to guarantee that our sense perceptions will capture a given object’s inherent
characteristics
○Martellie argues that current TV favors postmodern religious expression, which has a
mystical, collective flavor, in contrast to modernism’s ascetic, individualistic faith
■The new media portrayals of religion promote a new, retrogressive and
spectacular concept of religion into present-day social life and work against the
centuries-long trend of secularization in modern societies
●Commodification
○Western media have long played a role in commodification by creating deep desires for
wealth and purchasing power
○These purchases are fuelled by an increasing knowledge of high-class values and habits
and a desire to adopt the cultural capital of the rich
○Pierre Bourdieu: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste --argued that
differences in taste reflect and reinforce the social class structure; notions of good and
bad taste are socially determined
○The media also teach particular tastes and patterns of behavior that are not upper class,
and in this way the media help to limit social mobility
●Media Ownership and Media Concentration
○Publicly owned media: receive funding from the federal government
■Ex: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
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SOC100H1 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
Mass media: the main means of mass communication, including newspapers, radio, tv, the internet, etc. Scott and marshall (c. wright mills, the power elite) Very few people can communicate to a great number. The audience has no effective way of answering back. Cross-ownership: one corporation owns media businesses of different types. Mass communication: who says what to whom in which channel and with what effect. With all media products, there is a speaker, a subject of discussion, a listener, a medium, and a consequence. Katz and lazarsfeld"s two-step flow of communication: posited a movement of information and ideas from the media to opinion leaders, and from them to other people in their social network. For the media to affect public opinion, it has to pass the evaluation of opinion leaders--unless those opinion leaders can be circumvented. Interested in the way the mass media are organized and how this organization contributes to social control and stability.
