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Social Theory and the Mass Media

Author(s): Thelma McCormackSource: The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienned'Economique et de Science politique, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Nov., 1961), pp. 479-489Published by: Canadian Economics AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/139434Accessed: 17-11-2015 13:18 UTC

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SOCIAL

THEORY AND THE MASS

MEDIA*

THELMA McCORMACK

Toronto

THIs paper is an attempt to offer

a

functional

theory

of the

mass

media,

and

to

suggest

criteria for

evaluating

the media

which

emerge

from it-criteria

which are not taken from

other

disciplines

or

from the

technology

of the

media. First, the

present stage

of

communications research

is considered;

second, the contributions of

Marx and

Freud;

and

third,

an

alternative

hypo-

thesis

is suggested.

Urban sociologists ought to be parties to

any discussion

of

the mass

media,

for

it

is

diffcult to imagine anything

more

symbolically

urban

than

the

mass

circulation daily newspaper, the car

radio,

or the

TV

antenna. Yet

judging

from books on

urban sociology interest

in

this aspect

of urban

life

has,

in

recent years,

dwindled to almost nothing.

Neglect here is matched by the

peculiar evasion in


of

the

urban

context.

Compari-

sons are

routinely made between

rural and

urban

populations with

respect

to

readership,

audiences and programme

preferences, but these tabulations are

not weighted any differently from comparisons along such dimensions as

marital

status, sex, education, and others in our

standard repertoire. The

two

bodies of

knowledge, then,

have

developed independently

of each other

despite the common-sense observation that

they are inextricably

related.

Stranger fissions of reality have taken place in the

history

of social

science,

and

many

of them

have survived their critics.

But

I

want to

suggest

here

that

the major

challenge to social theory in

the field of communications lies in

he;aling the breach.

Until

data from each of

these disciplines

are

juxtaposed

and the

empirical contingencies examined, until their

particular concepts

and

generalizations are consolidated under the same propositional roof, both are

likely- to suffer

from a diminution of

intellectual force. Some such awareness

of this

fate

accounts,

I

suspect,

for the

pessimism

of Berelson

when

he

remarked, as

for communication research,

the state is withering away. '

As all

good

revolutionaries know, the state does not belong to the sacred

order of

things, but

rather to the

profane.

And

it

is

in

the

profane

accumula-

tion

of contradictory findings that a

compelling reason may be

found

for

bringing these two lines of inquiry

together. The illustration

which

comes

to

mind

concerns the process of persuasion.

No generalization is more firmly established or more familiar these days in

communications research than that the

mass

media do not

convert

people from

one

opinion

to another.

They reaffirm, help

to

crystallize,

and

intensify

the

'Presented

to the Conference of Learned Societies on June 10, 1961

in

Montreal.

lBemard Berelson, The State of Communication

Research,

Public

Opinion Quarterly,

XXIII,

no.

1, spring, 1959, 1-9.

479

Vol.

XXVII,

no.

4,

Nov.,

1961

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480

Canadian

Journal of

Economics

and Politial Science

convictions of the

believer. Often a

predisposition

towards one

point

of

view

is only latent or incipient, and the mass media are given some of the credit

for driving this weak

or

unacknowledged

bias

towards a

more

conscious

and

more explicit expression.

But the mass media

cannot be said

to

persuade those

who are genuinely

neutral or those for whom

non-partisanship is a form of

apathy. Indeed,

the

message

does not even reach the latter.

Nor

can the

media

persuade those whom

life has

taught differently. Republicans

who vote for

Democrats are more apt to

have made

this

decision

between campaigns

when

the mass

media

were

silent

than

during campaigns

when

persuasion through

the mass

media is at its

peak.2 Under certain conditions, when, either by

acci-

dent

or

design,

an audience

is exposed

to

conflicting opinions-when,

for

example, members

of

a

trade union are

deluged

with

pamphlets

from

the

Communists and the Catholic church arguing different sides-there may be a

lowering of interest, a withdrawal of concern.3

In

the decade which has

fol-

lowed Lazarsfeld's The People's Choice, the image of the mass media has

shifted

from the

evangelical preacher,

from

the powerful political demagogue,

from the Great Humanist Mediator of All Social Conflict, to just another

humble member of the cast who often aehieves

an

effect by saying nothing.

Had we

stopped here, there might have been no difficulty. It was

what

followed these findings that created the paradox.

For

when the investigators

turned to broader forms of persuasion, they discovered that the real hidden

persuader was the informal opinion leader. The key situations in which he

operates are the job environment, the

neighbourhood,

the family, and other

primary face-to-face groups. To read these studies is to relive those early

years in American Sociology of Mead4 and Cooley,5 when the focus of inquiry

was on interpersonal relationships, when communication was seen as role-

playing or empathy between persons who confronted each other directly; the

days, incidentally, when an anthropologist was invited to write the article on

communication for the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences.6 That sense of

dad'

vu

reached a climax in a recent publication entitled Politicoa Socialization in

which we rediscover the family, the importance of childhood and the years

which

precede voting age.7

Discussions

of

-urban life present a picture

of

interpersonal relations in

marked contrast. Here the focus is on the secular and bureaucratic develop-

ment of modern life. Attention is drawn to the gradual disappearance of the

face-to-face relationship, the decline of those situations where people could

communicate on a non-rational and non-verbal level. So inexperienced are we

in

traditional patterns of communication that they are now thought of as an

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Social Theory

and the

Mass

Media

481

purposive, specific,

contractual,

delimited in

time

and

space,

and

restricted

in

common associational

reference. As

for

those

strategic environments,

the

work

environment has

become

progressively

more

formal;

the

neighbourhood,

more

and

more a cluster

of

temporary

residents

who

interact with each other

as

little as possible. Even

the

family is

no

longer recognizable-so many

of its

conventional

functions

have

been

transferred to other social

institutions.

And

these,

in

turn,

have

moved

in

the direction

of

greater professionalization, more

exclusive definitions

of

role

and function.

Mass

urban

society,

then,

is secular

society;

and it

reveals itself

most

typically

in

the

erosion and

deterioration

of

the

informal

face-to-face

relationship.

How

can

we reconcile the

two?

Communications studies with their

current

emphasis

on the

primary group

and urban

studies

which

have left this model

of the primary group behind-a survival, perhaps, a very important one in

terms

of

certain

of our

values,

but

greatly

transformed and

in

danger always

of

becoming that disingenuous phenomenon

which

Merton calls the

'pseudo-

Gemeimschaft

relationship.

Social

theory

has

nothing

to

lose,

then,

and

much

to

gain by being

concerned

with

that stretch

of

countryside that lies

between

Chicago

and

Sandusky,

between our

concepts

of

urban

life

and

those

of

mass

communication.

II

In this paper, I want to suggest a hypothesis concerming the function of the

mass

media in modem

societies

which

is consistent

with our

theories

of

secu-

larization

and which draws empirical

support

from

our

studies of the mass

media. First, however,

I want to

consider some antecedent hypotheses; in

particular, those which

come to us from

Marx

and Freud.

Marx set the

stage

for

a social

theory

of

the

mass

media. It was from Marx

and

later through

Mannheim that ideas

were examined as reflections of social

systems. Knowledge,

according to this view, is not

autonomous, outside of

culture, but socially

determined.

To

be fully understood it

must be examined

not in terms of logic, not in terms of linguistic conventions, but as a mirror of

the

aspirations and anxieties of

people

living

in

a given social

structure.,

Later

Durkheim was to set

forth the same general proposition for

primitive

religions.,

They, too, could be

read

as a

record of the particular social

organization of

the

primitive group.

If

this

was true

for formal

systems of

ideas, philosophies

and

science,

if it

was

true

for

systems like religion which have a

historical

continuity, it would be

even more true for informal systems

of belief which

are spontaneous,

transient, pragmatic, and

close to the vagaries

of experience.

The

difference, however, between the Marxist line

of descent

and

the anthro-

pological line Lies n the kinds of communities studied. Generally speaking, the

social

unit for an

anthropologist

is a

static culture, a

homogeneous population

which

shares its

traditions, configurations

of

values,

and

patterns

of

anxiety.

For

Marx, however,

society is stratified by economic classes

whose styles of

life are different,

whose traditions are

dissimilar, whose modes of thought

vary, whose economic and

political

destinies are at cross-purposes.

Thus,

the

8Karl

Mannheim, Ideology and

Utopia (New

York,

1940).

9Emile

Durkheim, The

Elementary Forms of the Religious

Life (Glencoe,

Ill., 1947).


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482

Canadian

Journal

of

Economics

and Political

Science

modem historical

situation

is not

static,

and

the ideational

universe is inher-

ently

pluralistic.

It is from this

interpretation

of social

history

that we

derive

our

modern

three

levels of culture:

an

elite

culture, popular

culture,

and folk

culture.

An

elite culture represents

a

class

which

predates

the

Industrial Revolution

that

brought

the middle class into

power.

(Nowadays,

its

stronghold is

not so

much the

landed

aristocracy, but, as Veblen

suggested, the institutions

of

higher learning.10) Folk

culture is the

product

of

a

peasant class

with its

roots

in agricultural life.

Hoggart's book, The

Uses of Literacy, describes

how

an

urban working class,

only one

generation removed from the

land, adapted its

folk

tradition to

the

new conditions

of

life,

an

adaptation

that had

now

reached

its limit. Popular

culture, for all its

claims to universality, is

the

distinctive

artifact of the bourgeoisie. In style, content, method of production, and trans-

mission,

it carries the

stamp of

capitalism and modern technology.

Marx

never doubted that

the

bourgeoisie

would

attempt

to

impose

its

orien-

tation and

Weltamchwuung

on all

the

rest of

society,

but he did

not expect

it to

succeed. The

expectation was that a folk

culture would

become

trans-

formed

into a genuine

working-class culture.

This, perhaps,

explains

in

part

the

sentimentalism of

middle-class liberals

for

folk music and folklore much of

which

patently fails to meet their own

aesthetic

criteria. During

the 1930's

and

'40's

there was an

energetic drive on the

part

of

Communists (in the United

States, at least) to collect and revive folk materials-literature, art, and music:

a

reactionary strategy,

one would have thought, in

terms of a

Marxist inter-

pretation

of history, but

one which had at the time a

virtue

in

terms of grass

roots

political strategy.

Just

what went on

in

the

Cumberland

Mountains when the folk and the

Third International met

face to face,

we shall,

alas, never know. But it is

certain from

the number of jukeboxes

in these

remote districts that the enthu-

siasm

to

carry

on

the

folk tradition was not mutual. The

current

chapter

in

this historical picture is

the voluntary

dissociation of the rural

proletariat from

its agrarian past and its participation in urban popular culture through the

mass

media. The Negro

spirituals,

along with other forms of folk

wisdom and

folk

handicraft, have

become products for

commercial and political

exploita-

tion.

As

Andre'

Malraux

observed, Folk

art no longer

exists because the 'folk'

no longer

exists. '12

Marx

anticipated that the proletariat

might succumb

to the mythology of the

bourgeoisie.

The

term he used was

false

consciousness, a denial

of

reality in

which

the

ideology

of

a

group runs

counter

to

its economic

and social interests.

An

exception was made

for the apostate intellectual

who saw the

handwriting

on the wall, and, having understood it, defected from his own doomed middle

class to

throw in his lot with the

nascent

revolutionary proletarian movement.

False

consciousness

in

the

proletariat

was

not

due to

irrationality. In part it

was due to

ignorance;

in part, to the systematic

efforts of the

ruling class to

'0L?Thorsteineblen,

The

Higher

Learning in

America

(New

York,

1918).

llRichard

Hoggart, The Uses

of

Literacy

(London,

1957).

l2Andr6

Malraux,

Art,

Popular Art,

and

the

Illusion

of

the

Folk,

Partisan

Review,

XVIII,

no. 5,

487-95.


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Social Theory

and

the

Mass Media 483

maintain itself

in

power.

By continuing

to define

all

problems

in

terms of

individual enterprise,

the

bourgeoisie

could divide

and subdue the

working

class. Here is the source, then,

of our

present-day

fear that

the

mass

media

tranquillize their

audiences,

and the derision

implied

in the term

escapist

entertainment.

Marx

and the Protestant ethic

(the latter,

with its

premium

on

action and distrust

of idle

speculation

or

fantasy)

combine

to

create

some

of

the strange

anomalies of

modern

thought.

No one is

alarmed,

for

example,

if a student finds relaxation

in

slapstick comedy.

It

is

understood if a

mathema-

tician

cannot fall

asleep

at

night

without

a

paperback mystery;

it is natural

for a

self-made

business

man to

spend evenings

entranced

by

the

Horatio

Alger

myth on TV. But it is

a social problem when the working classes do this.

For in

their case it is interpreted

as a

symptom

of

despair, frustration,

and

monotony of economic life. And the consequences are looked upon as far more

serious:

a

displacement

of anger

from the

system

to the

self;

a

waste of

time

that could be used in social

action;

a

damaging misconception

that salvation

lies in individual rather

than collective effort.

To

an

orthodox

Marxist,

the

good society

will

need no

opiates.

A

world

where workers receive their just reward, where work satisfies the instinct of

workmanship, where leisure

time

is

spent

in

recreation for

the

good

of

the

community is a world

in which the

mass

media have no place. The Fabians

in

our field, however, are not as rigid

in their

rejection

of

the mass media.

They are prepared to use the mass media for education. Yet they belong to

the Marxian rather than the Freudian tradition

to

the extent that they bring

to

the

mass

media

a

rational criterion.

The Freudian and

Marxian

hypotheses have

much in

common. Both start

with the assumption that ideational systems, whether dreams, national idealo-

gies, literature, religion,

or

opinions

are

derivative, secondary systems,

described

by Marx as superstructures, by Freud as projections. Other factors precede

them in

time and

importance:

for

Marx, the ownership

of the

means

of

produc-

tion; for Freud, the asocial

instinctual desires

which must be

renounced

as

a

condition for living in organized society. Both differentiate between truth and

error:

between

class

consciousness and

false

consciousness

in

Marx;

between

illusion and delusion in

Freud. Further, they

both

assume

that the function

of

ideational

systems

is

conservative,

to maintain

the

status

quo.

The

working

class, according

to

Marx,

is

deliberately kept quiescent

in

order to avert

insurgent political

action. Freud emphasizes the extent to which ideational

systems reconcile the

individual to the denial of anti-social drives although

these continue to exist

in

the unconscious.

In

discussing religion, for example,

Freud says, The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger

of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared

the

task of

forming

a

personal neurosis. '3 Finally,

both

Marx

and

Freud see

the

dynamic factor,

whether in

history

or

individual

motivation,

as

conflict.

For Marx, it was the

conflict

of

class interests; for Freud, it was a conflict

between the internalized norms of

society-the superego-and

the

wishes

and

infantile instincts of human nature, the

id. The

leadership or executive function

Marx

assigned

to the

intellectuals

was

assigned by

Freud

to

the

ego.

'3Sigmund Freud, The Futture

of an

Illusion

(New

York, 1949),

77.


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484

Canadian

Journal of

Economics

and

Political Science

Here the similarity ends.

But

the two

hypotheses

overlap

to the extent

that

the mechanisms Freud describes, quite apart

from

his

specific theory

of

moti-

vation, provide

the

psychological concepts

missing

in Marx.

Whether

or

not

one accepts the importance

Freud

placed

on

the

Oedipal

conflict is irrelevant.

The

concept

of

projection explains

how raw

experience

is transformed

by

an

individual into a set of symbols, images,

or ideas. The

model

here

is

dream

interpretation where, with the help

of the

analyst,

the

dreamer sees the

con-

nection between unconscious motivation,

a

forgotten reality,

and the

dream

symbol.

Erich

Fromm

in The

Forgotten

Language provides

illustrations

of

how

this

model can be used

for

interpreting

a

fairy

tale

like Red

Ridinghood

or

a

novel like Kafka's

The Trial,14

just as Jones did

for

Hamlet

and

Oedipus,'5

and

Lasswell did for political propaganda.'6

Freud provides the key to false consciouness in his concept of identifica-

tion. According to this view, the child

models himself on those

in

his environ-

ment on whom he is dependent. They become his ego-ideals. They need not

be admired or loved; they need not be the

source of pleasure or reward. They

may be hated and the agents of punishment and

rejection. But the helplessness

of

the individual is a self-propelling force behind the identification. In adult

life, the identifications we make repeat the

patterns of childhood so that often

the underdog identifies with his oppressor,

the prisoner

with his

guards,

the

non-com with his officers, just as they once

did with their fathers.

In Freud's concept of ego-involvement we find a partial explanation of the

failure

of

the mass media to convert. The attitudes an individual has on public

issues have less to do with the issues

themselves than they do with the indi-

vidual's own personality needs. Attitudes

are only terminal extensions of a

deeper personality organization which seeks to preserve itself. Our approach

to

experience,

then, is selective: we take from

it only those parts which nourish

and

protect

the

self, resisting anything that evokes guilt, rationalizing in

favour of one's self anything that suggests

conflict. Hence we have learned that

propaganda or informational materials

which threaten an individual's self-

image are ineffective,17 regardless of how logically persuasive they are or how

consistent with class interest. And similarly

we have become wary of a boom-

erang effect, when a

pamphlet,

for

example, urging enemy troops to surren-

der leads to an improvement in their morale.

By examining here the similarities and

dovetailing of these two hypotheses,

we can

understand why

both

influences,

Marx and

Freud, have converged

in

our

approach to the mass media. For most purposes, they are not mutually

exclusive. For

example,

in an

analysis

of the

novels

of

Mickey Spillane, the

hero, Mike Hammer, is seen as Senator

McCarthy. Both are above and outside

the law; both creatures of the contemporary Zeitgeist.18 In another analysis,

Mike Hammer

is seen as the

alter-ego

of

Inspector Maigret, but either or

both

14New

York, 1951.

15ErnestJones, Hamlet and Oedipus

(New York,

1954).

'6Harold

D.

Lasswell,

Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago,

1930)

17Eunice

Cooper and Marie Jahoda,

The Evasion

of

Propaganda, Journal of

Psychology,

XXIII,

Jan., 1947, 15-25.

18ChristopherLa

Farge, Mickey Spillane and His

Bloody

Hammer, Saturday Review,

Nov. 6, 1954.


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Social Theory

and the

Mass Media

485

constitute

a

saviour

figure

in modem

man's Passion

Play. '9

What differen-

tiates these

two

analyses

is

the level of abstraction

and

the referent.

But

they

are not inconsistent.

Multiple

levels of abstraction and referent

are used

in

Merton's

study

of

the Kate

Smith

marathon

broadcast

where

Kate

Smith's

appeal

to the audience is

alternately explained

in

terms

of

a

universal mother

image

and

a

particular

image-the

embodiment

of

sincerity-created

by

a

society

where

manipulation

has

become

a

constant

anxiety.20

Freudians, like

Marxists,

are

not

in

agreement about the

mass

media

as

such. Some see

in

the

addiction

to

comic

books and

television

a

symptom

of

individual

maladjustment

which is not

improved

and

is

sometimes worsened

by the

content

of

programmes

and the

habit

of

withdrawing

from

reality.2'

Others

are

satisfied

that

what

we

do

when

we are

exposed

to

the

mass

media

is no different from spontaneous fantasy or dream activity: the media neither

further nor

obstruct

an

introspective

process

that

leads to self-awareness.

In

summary, the Marxian

and

Freudian

hypotheses

have had enormous

direct

and

indirect influence

on

research

in

this field of

mass

communications.

Our

studies

of

the

institutional

development

of

the

media

begin

in

Marx as do

many of our

studies

of the

social

effects

of

the media.

Our

studies of audiences

and their motivation

have

drawn heavily

on Freud.

Content

analysis is the

direct outcome of these two

orientations.

Even

our

methods

of

research-the

projective question, the

depth

interview, scale

analysis-come from the

Freudian tradition. And our criticism of each other's work bears the stamp of

Marx

or Freud or both.

A

much more subtle

influence has to do

with

the

criteria

for

judging the

media.

From

Marx,

we

acquire

our

concept

of

the mass

media

in

the service

of

knowledge

about

the social

environment;

from

Freud, our

concept of the

mass

media providing

self-insight. From

Marx, we

inherit

our emphasis on

documentary

information and editorial

interpretation; from

Freud, our

empha-

sis on

illusion or art.

Developments in

sociology and

psychology since Marx

and

Freud

have

revised our

concept

of human

nature

and

of social change.

Few, if any, today accept the dichotomy between the rational and irrational

definitions

of

man. Yet we continue in our

thinking

about

the mass media to

regard art and

rational or

scientific

knowledge as the

goals.

III

Different

systems of media

control have a

great deal to

do with

how often

and

how

sincerely the effort is

made to

reach the objectives

of

knowledge and

art and

with

which

of

these

objectives is

emphasized.

Comparisons between

British and American television make this abundantly clear. But even under

the

most

favourable

circumstances,

the

achievement of these

standards is rare.

19CharlesJ.

Rolo, Simenon and

Spillane:

The

Metaphysics of

Murder

for the

Miflions,

in

Bernard

Rosenberg

and

David

Manning White,

eds.,

Mass

Culture

(Glencoe,

Ill.,

1960),

165-75.

20RobertK.

Merton,

Mass

Persuasion (New

York,

1946).

21Eugene

David

Glynn,

Television and

the

American

Character-A

PsyclhiatristLooks

at

Television, in

William Y.

Elliott,

Television's

Impact

On American

Culture

(East

Lansing,

Mich., ed.,

1956).


7/24/2019 139434

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486

Canadian

Journal

of

Econoomics

and Political

Science

And

there

is a

chronic sense of

disappointment,

of

dissatisfaction,

of

disillu-

sionment

among

those

connected with the mass media

as well

as

among

their

sympathetic but

discerning

audiences.

Oddly

enough,

the

media

have

been

compared

to folk

art.

Sometimes

with

approval;

sometimes,

not. The comic

books,

Fiedler

writes,

.

.

are

seen

as

inheritors

.

.

.

of the

inner

impulses

of traditional folk

art

...

Beneath

their

journalistic

commentary

.

.

.

they

touch

archetypal

material: those

shared

figures of

our lower

minds

more like the

patterns

of dream than

fact

.

.

.

They

are our

not quite machine-subdued

Grimm,

though

the Black

Forest

has

become,

as

it

must,

the

City;

the

Wizard,

the

Scientist;

and

Simple

Hans,

Captain

Marvel. 22

On

a

more superficial

level, the content of

the mass media

belongs

to

tlle

folk tradition in that it projects a Gemeinschaft universe. The soap opera ' s

the

classic

example: a small town

which

never

changes, isolated

from

events

in the

larger world;

characters whose

motivation is

over-simplified-they

are

moral or

immoral, strong or

weak, good or

bad;

conflicts

that

are

resolved

by

accident,

sudden

unexplained

character

conversions, or

by

the

intervention

of

supernatural

forces;

in

short,

a

closed

domestic

stereotyped

world

ruled more

by fate

and

by

faith

than

by

cause and

effect.23

Intriguing

as this

comparison is

between folk

art and

popular culture

it

is

deceptive. If,

instead of

looking

at

thematic

similarities, we look

at

function,

the difference becomes apparent. Folk art in a primitive society is not

regressive. It

provides

closure; it

provides

security; it

provides

continuity and

consensus. But it

does

not

interfere

with the

daily

requirements

of

reality. As

Malinowski

pointed out,

magic

and

mythology

are not

alternatives to

the

scientific

knowledge which

experience has

taught

the native

about

controlling

nature.24

If our

popular

culture

functions

chiefly to

evade

reality, then,

despite

the

textual

similarities

with

folk art,

the

two are quite

different. The

parallel

drawn

between

them

then is a

highly

literate

plea

for a more

sensitive and

imaginative

interpretation of

popular

culture, and

an

ideological

tour

de force

against the snobbery which often vitiates serious discussions of the mass media.

Folk

art

and

popular

culture

have one

thing

in common

with

each

other

that

they

do

not

share with

other

art forms.

Both

are

essentially

social.

Their

audiences

are

never a

minority, their

appeals never

sectarian, their

insights

never

exclusive. It

is this

public

or

social

character of

the mass

media

which

distinguishes

it

from what

artists

call

art. And

although

in

practice it is

some-

times a

difference in

degree

rather

than

kind, it

provides a

clue

to the

appro-

priate

criterion

to

apply to

the

mass media.

The

difference

along this

dimension has

long

been

recognized.

Malraux, for

example, draws a distinction between the arts and the appeasing arts ;the

latter

include

popular

culture.

Although he

insists that the

appeasing arts

are in

no sense

inferior

arts, 25 hey

are

generally

regarded as

second

class.

22Leslie

A.

Fiedler,

The

Middle

Against

Both

Ends, in

Bernard

Rosenberg

and

David

Manning

White,

eds.,

Mass

Culture

(Glencoe,

Ill.,

1960),

537-47.

23Rudolf

Arnheim,

The

World of

the

Daytime

Serial, in

Paul F.

Lazarsfeld,

and

Frank

N.

Stanton,

eds.,

Radio

Research,

1942-1943

(New

York,

1944).

24Bronislaw

Malinowski,

Magic,

Science

and

Religion

(New

York,

1954).

25Malraux,

Art,

Popular

Art,

and

the

Illusion

of the

Folk.


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Social

Theory

and the Mass Media

487

And,

given

the biases

of our

society,

it

is difficult

to

see

how this

value

judg-

ment can be avoided

or

what

purpose

is served

by

this

patronizing

air. In

any

case, such a

distinction offers no standard

for

evaluating

popular

culture,

except

a

quantitative

one.

So

long

as the mass

media

are seen

as

the

charming

other-directed

younger son,

they

will be judged

by

measures

of

popularity

and

success. Not

by what

they are,

not

by

what

they

do,

but

by

how

many

friends

they

make.

If,

instead, we

look upon the

mass

media as a

social institution in

its

own

right,

we

come

closer to

understanding what

differentiates the media from

either art

or

scholarship.

The

parallel

that can be drawn

is between the

mass

media and other

institutions like the

family

and

school.

Empirically,

there is no

doubt

that the media meet

the

minimum

require-

ments of any definition of a social institution. First, some form of media con-

sumption

is

almost universal

in

modern

societies.

Second,

the

media outlive

their

audiences.

Third,

the

primary

functions of the mass media are

socializa-

tion

and

social control.

The fact

that

some people never read a

newspaper, never

see

a

movie,

never

watch

television, does not

disprove the point

any

more

than

the

existence

of

orphans

casts

doubt on

our

concept

of

the

family

as

an

institution.

In

other

words,

an

expected

deviation

is part

of

any

definition

of a social

institution.

Deviation

here would

include

not

only

under-conformity,

but

over-conformity

-media addiction, for example-as well.

In

suggesting that the

functions of the mass

media

are

socialization and

social

control, we

do

not

preclude the

possibility

that

the media may

also be

dysfunctional.

The cases

which

Wertham and

others have cited

of

the mass

media

contributing to

delinquency or mental

illness,20

the

suggestion by

Klapper that

the

media

introduce

children too

early to

complexities in adult

life which

they are

not prepared

to

comprehend,27 the

view of

Maccoby that

the

media

set up

expectations of

excitement that

real

life can never

satisfy,28

of

Himmelweit that TV

creates

an image of an

affluent middle-class

society

which most of its audience have no hope of ever realizing29-these, and others,

are

examples

of

dysfunction.

The second part

of our

hypothesis

concerns the

specific

function of

the mass

media.

What is the

connection between

the mass

media and

other

institutions?

One

view

is that

other

institutions have

failed

and that the

mass

media fill a

vacuum

created

by

default. For

some,

this is the early

stages of

totalitarianism

from which

there is no

return.

But for others,

it is just

not a very

desirable

solution to a

lamentable

situation; a

surrogate

parent is better

than no

parent,

but

one

looks

forward to

the

day when the

absentee

parent will

return to

resume responsibility. This is the assumption behind various proposed reforms

like

group

dynamics to

reactivate and

reinstate that comfy

old

fashioned

26Frederic

C.

Wertham,

Seduction of

the Innocent (New

York,

1954).

27Joseph

T.

Klapper,

Children

and

Television: A

Review

of

Socially Prevalent

Concerns

(New

York,

1948).

28Eleanor

E.

Maccoby,

Television: Its

Impact on

School

Children, Public

Opinion

Quarterly,

XV,

no.

3,

421-44.

29Hilde T.

Himmelweit,

A.

N.

Oppenheim, and

Pamela

Vince,

Television

and

the Child

(London

and

New

York,

1958).


7/24/2019 139434

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488

Canadian

Journalof Economicsand Political

Science

face-to-face

relationship.

It

is

behind

our

concern

about

feed-back

and

the

passivity of audiences.

It is at the

root, too,

of the

view that

artists,

intellectu-

als,

and

educators

can use the

mass media to raise

the level of

public

taste

and

curiosity so

that the

public

will

eventually

liberate

itself

from the clutch

of

the mass

media,

a

day

when audience

ratings

will

drop

because the

audience

want authentic art

and authentic

education. These and

similar views

are

derived

from

the

assumption

that the mass media are a

temporary

substitute

for other

institutions-institutions

which

have,

for one reason or

another,

declined

but

can

be made

once

again

to

function

properly.

The

hypothesis

I

want to

suggest here

is that

this view

is

not

incorrect, but,

like the

examples

I

have given of deviation

and

dysfunction, it

is

a

special

anld

limiting

case.

Seen in

proper perspective,

the function

the

mass

media

fulfil

in

modern societies is not the result of the failure of other social institutions, but

of

their success. Here

I am

assuming

that

we live

in

a

society

which

has

become secularized

and

that

the trend

in

that

direction will continue.

A

high

division of

labour,

a

high degree

of

role

differentiation,

a

high

rate

of social

mobility

and social

change,

a

scientific

ethos,

and formal

organization are

among the

distinguishing

characteristics of this

social structure.

Experience

in

such a

society

is

segmented,

and

the major stress

on

personality

is a

pressure

towards

fragmentation.

Given

this context, the

unique

function of the

mass

media

is

to

provide

both

to the individual and to society a coherence, a synthesis of experience, an

awareness

of the whole which

does not

undermine the

specialization

which

reality

requires. The supreme

test

of

the mass

media, then,

is not

whether it

meets the criteria

of

art

or

the criteria

of

knowledge,

but how well it

provides

an

integration of

experience.

Neither art nor

knowledge is

excluded as a stand-

ard, but

they are secondary.

The mass

media

cannot

sacrifice

cultural

insight

to

archetypal insight;

they cannot sacrifice

social

urgency to sustained

systema-

tic

intellectual

inquiry; they cannot

sacrifice the

present for the past.

Nor

can

they sacrifice

revelation

for

production or

distribution finesse.

To expect

them

to satisfy all of these criteria equally well is unrealistic and places a greater

schizophrenic strain on

people responsible for the

mass media than is

placed

on

any other sector

of the

population.

But different systems

of media

control

and

the

changing

technology of

the

mass

media offer varying

degrees of

oppor-

tunity

to

realize the

order suggested.

To conclude

this discussion I

want to

come back to the

original

problem:

the relation

between


and our

theories of urban

society. What

I

have

tried to

indicate here is that

our

present trend in com-

munications research

assumes a

model of society

that is

traditional in contrast

with the secular model of urban sociology. The hypothesis I have suggested

here is that

the mass

media are a social

institution

created by the

demands,

social and

psychological, in a

secular

society, demands for an

awareness

of the

connections

in modem

experience and

our own

involvement in them.

The

greater

the

specialization, the

greater the

segmentalization of

experience, the

greater the

stresses toward

fragmentation

of personality, the

greater

will be

the

need for

experiences which

organize

and provide a

Gestalt. The

relation

we have with

the

media as members of an

audience

is a mediated

impersonal


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Social Theoryand the Mass

Media

489

one.

Ordinarily

what

is

implied

in these

terms

is a

quantum

of

psychological

and social

distance that effects communication.

But

whether

in

a

secular

society these distances

are

any greater

than

those

of

interpersonal

relationships

is open to

question. They

may

even be

less.

But

the real

problem for

both

theory

and research

is not

impersonalized

but

depersonalized

relationships.

It

is

my hope that

from the frame of reference outlined

here

attention will

shift

from

comparisons

between

face-to-face and

impersonal

communication

to

the

various types of

communication

in

secular

society.

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