mass-communication-theory

50 Section 2 The Era of Mass Society and Mass Culture
newer media. Most corporations controlling network television have already diversified
their holdings and purchased companies that operate the new media. For
example, whereas there was once NBC Television, there is now NBC Universal
Television Studios, NBC Universal Television Distribution, the NBC Television
Network, 27 local television stations, NBC Digital Media, cable channels MSNBC
(produced in conjunction with Microsoft), Bravo, Mun2TV, Trio, USA, and SyFy,
all-news cable channel CNBC, Spanish-language television network Telemundo
and its 14 stations, World Wide Web sites for each of these holdings, partial ownership
of Internet video site Hulu, cable and satellite companies in Europe and
Asia, and theme parks used to promote NBC television programs. In 2010, these
entities became part of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company and biggest
provider of broadband Internet into American homes. CBS, through its parent
company, Viacom, and ABC, through its parent, Disney, are also linked to a long
list of other media enterprises.
The success of new media often brings a strong critical reaction—especially
when media adopt questionable competitive strategies to produce content or attract
consumers. During the era of the penny press, mass newspapers quickly displaced
small-circulation, specialized papers, and many did so using highly suspect formulas
for creating content. These strategies became even more questionable as competition
increased for the attention of readers. Compared to yellow journalism,
current-day “trash TV” programs like Cops, Real Housewives of New Jersey, and
Jersey Shore are as tame as fluffy puppies. But yellow journalists justified their
practices by arguing that “everyone else is doing it” and “the public likes it or else
they wouldn’t buy it—we’re only giving the people what they want.”
New media industries often do specialize in giving people what they want—
even if the long-term consequences might be negative. We see this in the current controversies
over online indecency and hate speech. Unlike the “established” older
media, new media lack the ties to other traditional social institutions that encourage
or compel social responsibility. As each of the new media technologies developed,
and as industries grew up around them to ensure stable supplies of attractive (if
questionable) content, these technologies and industries necessarily displaced earlier
industries and forms of communication. Often social roles and relationships were
seriously disrupted as people adjusted to new media and their content. Most of these
problems were seemingly impossible to anticipate. For example, during the 1950s,
one of the first serious sociological studies of television’s impact on American life
found little evidence of disruption. The study noted that one of the most important
changes brought about by television was that people spent less time playing cards
with extended family members or friends. On the other hand, nuclear families actually
spent more time together—mesmerized in front of the ghostly shadows on tiny
television screens. They spent less time talking with neighbors and friends. Research
by Wilbur Schramm, Jack Lyle, and Edwin Parker (1961) reported optimistically
that towns with television actually had higher levels of library use and lower comic
book sales than those with only radio. Given widespread public distrust of comic
books in the 1950s, these findings implied that television could be a positive force.
We see this pattern mirrored today—those who argue that the Internet will eventually
produce a return to greater participatory democracy counter critics of controversial
online content. Some critics of the Internet worry that it will encourage social
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