Society and media

1. Society and media Grand theory/mega-speculation

2. Grand questions • What is the nature of society? • How do societies come into existence? • How do they evolve? • What brings about change, expansion/success and/or contraction/failure? • How does social structure/culture maintain or undermine society? • How do the phenomena above affect human experience?

3. Consensus v. conflict • Scholars debate over whether society is held together by consensual values, self-interest or exploitation • Significant examples include structural-functionalism, exchange theory and Marxism

4. Structural-functionalism • Conceives of society as a system that exhibits many of the same features as either an organism or a machine • Lasswell’s presentation likens society to an organism • Structures are repetitive behaviors that characterize the system • Functions are contributions to the maintenance and survival of the system

5. Equilibrium • S-F theorists tend to portray systems as existing in a state of equilibrium, with a number of forces maintaining the system at a satisfactory state • When the system is not performing in a satisfactory manner, internal sensors identify the unacceptable performance and changes in the level/intensity of outputs from structures are brought to bear

6. If we use the analogy of the human body, then our organs/systems maintain the body in a satisfactory state • Should the body become sick or an organ fail, internal systems will adjust as feedback systems indicate that the ‘desired’ equilibrium is not being maintained • White blood cells • Increased blood flow • Interferon • Lymph system

7. How is change accounted for? • Change occurs as a result of external shock—invasion or attack from outside the system • Later versions of the approach also looked at conflicts between systems operating at different levels • What may be functional for a subsystem may be ‘dysfunctional’ at a higher level, etc.

8. What is the role of culture? • New members of the society (young, immigrants) are taught to adjust their behavior to fit within the larger social system. They are ‘socialized’ to accept the norms and mores of the society, which are crucial to the non-violent maintenance of society.

9. What is the role of culture? • The beliefs, values and attitudes shared by members of society act as a form of cement that binds together the individual members of society • Socialization • Habits • Role assignment/role expectations • Institutional maintenance • Property distribution

10. What is the role of culture? • Provide knowledge/information useful to more effectively produce needed goods/services • Lasswell’s functions: • Surveillance of the environment • Correlation of the components of society in making a response to the environment • Transmission of the social inheritance

11. Sources of solidarity • Affective bonds • Family • Common culture/belief systems • Religion • Acceptance of authority • Economic and political self-interest • Specialization of function (efficiency) • Merit-based advancement/power

12. Sources of solidarity • Power/force • Police force • Military • Legal/prison system • Authority • Inherited • Institutional • Acquired

13. Structural functionalism today • While the more formal theory of structural functionalism, and use of its terms, no longer dominate social theory, some of its ideas and concepts are retained in a range of current social thought • Systems theory without the assumption of equilibrium is more common • Symbolic interactionism and reality construction are both competitive and complementary to S-F

14. Reflection in democratic theory • Liberal-pluralist democratic theory shares much of the structural-functionalist approach to society • When society goes off course, change is initiated through the electoral structure • News media provide information necessary for self-corrective processes to work (functions of communication) • Analysis of media as structures and the quality of their performance (based on supposed functions they are expected to perform)

15. Conflict theory • Argues that society is not a projection of the true interests of all (or nearly) of its members but is structured in dominance and exploitation • All societies generate a relatively small and privileged group of people who are able to exploit the larger population

16. Visions of society and media

17. Which of the three visions has dominated media/comm studies? • Self-interest society • Note: • Individualist bias • Focus on ‘transmission’ • Information rather than ‘stories’ • Individual reception/behavior rather than community impact, etc. • Politics (with individual self-interest as the defining characteristic) rather than cultural or religious identification

18. Crucial issues within cultural approaches • Identity • What is the nature of our ‘self’—our ‘ego’ • Often determined by our ‘identification’ with groups • May not be up to us to decide • Myths, beliefs, worldview • What is the popular ontology? • What is our view of the nature of humankind?

19. Social epistemology • How do we make sense of our world? • Intellectual and social authority • How are beliefs passed on to children, etc.? • The role of kinship, friendship, etc. • The social structure/culture relationship • Social control • In the interest of the many or the few?

20. The sources and forms of culture • High culture (elite culture) • Folk culture • Mass culture (popular culture)

21. Chicago School • Loose conglomeration of significant social thinkers with some relation to the University of Chicago • Concerned with the disintegration of traditional small town communities • Saw mid-nineteenth century American small town as a sort of ideal community • Democracy itself was only meaningful, workable within such a context

22. Chicago School • Massive social changes of the late nineteenth century had undermined the basic cornerstone of American democracy and society—the small town community • No habit of intercommunication (separation into ethnic communities/no shared language), no shared ideals or religious faith

23. Social change: • Industrialization • Urbanization • Immigration • Class/economic differentiation • Leads to breakdown of community: • Anomie • Self-interest • Multiple, separate ethnic, class groups • Social problems • Breakdown of democracy

24. Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) • Received a PhD (1894) in economics from the University of Michigan, where he taught beginning in 1892. • Cooley used the term the "looking glass self" to convey the idea that the self concept reflects the evaluations of other people. In other words, we see ourselves as others see us. • Works • Human Nature and Social Order (1902) • Social Organization (1909) • Social Process (1918)

25. “It is not too much to say that these changes (development of modern communication technologies) are the basis, from a mechanical standpoint, of nearly everything that is characteristic in the psychology of modern life. • They make it possible for society to be organized more and more on the higher faculties of man, on intelligence and sympathy, rather than on authority, caste, and routine. They mean freedom, outlook, indefinite possibility. The public consciousness, instead of being confined as regards its more active phases to local groups, extends by even steps with that give-and-take of suggestions that the new intercourse makes possible, until wide nations, and finally the world itself, may be included in one lively mental whole.”

26. Newspapers • “The essential function of the newspaper is, of course, to serve as a bulleting of important news and a medium for the interchange of ideas” • “The bulk of its matter, however, is . . . organized gossip. This sort of intercourse that people formerly carried on at cross-road stores or over the back fence, has now attained the dignity of print and an imposing system.”

27. Impacts of “enlargement of gossip” • Promotes a widespread sociability and sense of community • People across the country are laughing at the same jokes, thrilling to the same football games and “absorb(ing) a conviction that they are good fellows much like ourselves”

28. Public opinion • “In politics communication makes possible public opinion, which, when organized, is democracy. The whole growth of this, and of the popular education and enlightenment that go with it, is immediately dependent upon the telegraph, the newspaper and the fast mail, for there can be no popular mind upon questions of the day, over wide areas, except as the people are promptly informed of such questions and are enabled to exchange their views regarding them.”

29. “The enlargement affects not only thought but feeling, favoring the growth of a sense of common humanity, of moral unity, between nations, races and classes. Among members of a communicating whole feeling may not always be friendly, but it must be, in a sense, sympathetic, involving some consciousness of the other’s point of view.”

30. The social system is ‘sick’ • Social change has acted as a disease • How to make the system well again? • Reconstruct the small town on a grand scale—build the “Great Community” (Dewey).

32. John Dewey • One of the greatest intellectuals in American history • Philosopher • Educational psychologist • Political theorist • Social commentator

33. Dewey and communication study • Though Dewey placed communication at the very heart of his philosophical and social concerns, his actual theoretical work on communication is fragmented and, at times, frustratingly difficult if not obscure • “Of all things, communication is most wonderful” • ‘Society can be said not only to live by transmission, by communication, but in transmission, in communication.’

34. Dewey’s idea of the role of communication in society • Societies are based on shared sentiments, meanings, beliefs, norms, etc. • For a society to exist, the members must have a feeling of communion with other members • Shared self-interest, knowledge of the law, even agreement to rules of democracy are not enough • Difference between the “Great Society” and the “Great Community”

35. Community • In any true community, individuals have a feeling of fellowship with all the other members • Concern over the fate of all members, but especially those in greatest need, is a natural part of the community • All members share equally in the feeling of fellowship even if material wealth, etc. is unequally distributed

36. The machinery of democracy is created to help carry out the natural policy of a true community • It cannot create a community • It cannot substitute for a community • In the absence of a true community, the machinery of elections, universal suffrage, and on and on is simply an empty husk which will only forward the interests of the most powerful or the most adept at its manipulation • Community can only be created through communication • Of all things communication is the most wonderful

37. One is socialized into humanity through communication • “To learn to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values. But this translation is never finished.”

38. Communities small and large • The ideal of community is the small town • Like Dewey’s native Burlington, Vermont • People know each other and come to share powerful bonds of affection and understanding through their face-to-face communication, shared religious experience (communication), gossip, shared culture and all the other myriad ways they communicate • People internalize the goal of promoting the good of the community

39. Effects of lost community • Political chicanery, social disintegration, immorality and economic abuse were largely due to a loss of the communitarian spirit that was part of true democracy—the community

40. How to recapture community? • Must construct a mass community—the “Great community” that would replace the “Great Society” • Because of the society’s grand scale, communication would need to be on an equally grand scale—harness the mass media to provide communication widely and relatively uniformly to the differing groups that make up the nation (or the city) • “Thought News” project (enlightened social intelligence)

41. Robert Park

42. Park • Social control is “the central fact and the central problem of society” • “Society is everywhere a control organization. Its function is to organize, integrate, and direct the energies resident in the individuals of which it is composed.”

43. Ecological (biotic) community • An aggregate of individuals characterized by symbiosis, the division of labor and competitive cooperation • Society • A community of persons organized through communication, socialization and collective behavior

44. Park • “What does communication do and how does it function in the cultural process? It seems to do several different things. Communication creates, or makes possible at least, that consensus and understanding among the individual components of a social group which eventually gives it and them the character not merely of society but of a cultural unit.

45. “It spins a web of custom and mutual expectation which binds together social entities as diverse as the family group, a labor organization, or the haggling participants in a village market. Communication maintains the concert necessary for them to function, each in its several ways.”

46. Transmits tradition of any group over time and from generation to generation • “The function of communication seems to be to maintain the unity and integrity of the social group in two dimensions—space and time”

47. The economic • Competition, inevitable in human society brings about a distribution of occupations and, following, a division of labor. • “As a matter of fact, competition and communication operate everywhere within the same local habitat and within the same community, but in relative independence of each other.” • The area of competition is inevitably larger than the area of communication

48. The area of competition is inevitably wider than that of communication

49. Division of labor is limited by custom, and “custom is a product of communication” • “But the main point is that communication, where it exists, invariably modifies and qualifies competition, and the cultural order imposes limitations on the symbiotic.”

50. Louis Wirth