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36 Section 1 Introduction to Mass Communication Theory THINKING about THEORY failures in their efforts to make meaning using media, and on intended and unintended consequences. These consequences should be considered both from the point of view of individuals and from the point of view of society. You can read about one view of meaning-making theory in the box entitled “Semiotic Democracy.” SEMIOTIC DEMOCRACY Interviewed just before the April 2007 broadcast of his documentary on the media’s performance in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, journalist and social critic Bill Moyers was asked what gave him hope that the American media system might better operate in the service of democracy and its people. His reply was simple: “What encourages me is the Internet. Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself” (“Bill Moyers,” 2007). Twenty years earlier, British media theorist John Fiske suggested that mass communication theorists take a more culturally centered view of a different medium, television. He wrote: The pleasures of television are best understood not in terms of a homogeneous psychological model, but rather in those of a heterogeneous, sociocultural one. In many ways play is a more productive concept than pleasure because it asserts its activity, its creativity. Play is active pleasure: it pushes rules to the limits and explores the consequences of breaking them; centralized pleasure is more conformist. Television may well produce both sorts of pleasure, but its typical one is the playful pleasure that derives from, and enacts, that source of all power for the subordinate, the power to be different. Television’s playfulness is a sign of its semiotic democracy, bywhichI mean its delegation of production of meanings and pleasures to its viewers. (1987, pp. 235–236) The freedom to make one’s own meaning (Fiske’s semiotic democracy) and the availability of technology to investigate, recreate, and disseminate that meaning (Moyers’ writing one’s own story) are powerful pieces of evidence that we now reside firmly in the era of the meaning-making perspective of mass communication theory. Even Time acknowledged this reality when it named “YOU” (meaning “US”) person of the year for 2007. “If the Web’s first coming was all about grafting old businesses onto a new medium (pet food! On the Internet!), Web 2.0 is all about empowering individual consumers. It’s not enough just to find that obscure old movie; now you can make your own film, distribute it worldwide, and find out what people think almost instantly,” wrote the magazine’s Jeff Howe. In today’s mass communication environment, “You make it…. You name it…. You work on it…. You find it” (Howe, 2007, p. 60). Contemporary mass communication theorists now confront a mass media system that operates in a social world where individuals and audiences can create and disseminate their own content and relish making their own meaning. This means researchers and theorists must explain, understand, or control a mass communication process in which individuals and audiences can produce their own effects—big or small, immediate or long-term, sometimes wanted, sometimes unintended. There’ll be much more to say about this in Chapter 11, but for now you should consider these questions. Can you see a link between media literacy and semiotic democracy (freedom to make personally relevant meaning)? Do either Fiske or Moyers give too much credit to people? That is, do we really enjoy making our own meaning from media content? Will we really use the Internet to write our own stories? Do you find any significance in the fact that Howe used the phrase “empowering individual consumers” rather than “empowering individual citizens”? What is it? Can you find hints of neo-Marxist theory in Fiske’s comments? (Hint: Who constitutes his “subordinate”?) If so, can you explain how he and Moyers are making an essentially similar point about modern mass media and their audiences? semiotic democracy Individuals’ freedom to make their own meaning from media content Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
levels of analysis The focus of a researcher’s attention, ranging from individuals to social systems macroscopic theory Attempts to explain effects at the cultural or societal level microscopic theory Attempts to explain effects at the personal or individual level Chapter 2 Four Eras of Mass Communication Theory 37 The limited-effects perspective was unable to understand or make predictions about media’s role in cultural change. By flatly rejecting the possibility that media can play an important role in such change, theorists were unable to make sense of striking instances when the power of media appeared to be obvious. For example, limited-effects theorists were forced to deny that media could have played a significant role in the civil rights, anti–Vietnam War, women’s, and 1960s counterculture movements. More recently, they cannot account for the media’s role in such highprofile public debates as the rush to war in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the Obama administration’s campaign to reform the American healthcare system. These theorists are equally at a loss to explain the social transformations that are linked to the rise of the Internet. One possible cause of the limited-effects perspective’s failure to account for these obvious examples of large-scale media influence rests in the idea of levels of analysis. Social research problems can be studied at a number of levels, from the macroscopic “down” to the microscopic. Researchers, for example, can study media impact on cultures, societies, or nations; organizations or groups; small groups; and individuals. It should be possible to approach the issue of media effects at any of these levels and discover comparable results. But the limited-effects researchers tend to focus their attention on the microscopic level, especially on individuals, from whom they can easily and efficiently collect data. When they have difficulty consistently demonstrating effects at the micro level, they tend to dismiss the possibility of effects at the cultural, or macroscopic, level. For example, the limited-effects perspective denies that advertising imagery can lead to significant cultural changes. Instead, it argues that advertising merely reinforces existing social trends. At best (or worst), advertisers or politicians merely take advantage of these trends to serve their purposes. Thus, political candidates might be successful in seizing on patriotism and racial backlash to promote their campaigns in much the same way that product advertisers exploit what they think are attitude trends among the baby boom generation or soccer moms. But who would deny the significant cultural changes of running political campaigns in this manner? Surely political leaders’ appeals to our baser tendencies must have some effect on our democracy and our culture? Can you speak kindly of the quality of discourse exhibited in today’s politics? The limited-effects/reinforcement arguments might have been valid, but in their early forms they were unnecessarily limited in scope. Today’s meaning-making theorists have developed reinforcement notions into a broader theory that identifies important new categories of media influence. These argue that at any point in time there are many conflicting or opposing social trends. Some will be easier to reinforce using the marketing techniques available to advertisers. Potentially useful trends can be undermined as public attention is drawn toward opposing ones. From among the trends that can be easily reinforced by existing marketing techniques, advertisers and political consultants are free to base their promotional communication on those that are likely to best serve their short-term self-interests rather than the long-term public good. Thus, many potentially constructive social trends may fail to develop because existing techniques can’t easily reinforce them or because opposing trends are reinforced by advertisers seeking immediate profits (or candidates seeking immediate Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
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1959 C. Wright Mills’s The Sociol
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From the Wadsworth Series in Mass C
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To Sidney Kraus His words and actio
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CHAPTER 5 96 NORMATIVE THEORIES OF
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100 Section 2 The Era of Mass Socie
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SECTION 3 132 FROM LIMITED-EFFECTS
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CHAPTER 7 OVERVIEW 174 MOVING BEYON
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SECTION 4 238 CONTEMPORARY MASS COM
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CHAPTER 10 278 MEDIA AND SOCIETY: T
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REFERENCES Adbusters. (2002). “Th
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366 References Century, April 17. (
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368 References Argument about New M
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370 References Gerbner, G., L. Gros
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372 References 1942-1943. New York:
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374 References Lasswell, H. D. (192
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376 References Miller, K. (2005). C
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378 References Preiss, R. W. (2007)
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380 References Smillie, D. (2009).
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382 References query Human capacity
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384 Index children, focus on functi
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386 Index I ice-age analogy, 342 Id
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388 Index media and culture theorie
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390 Index sensemaking, decoding and
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392 Index theory, understanding and
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