mass-communication-theory

54 Section 2 The Era of Mass Society and Mass Culture
THINKING
about
THEORY
it ought not to do what the teacher can do better.
However radio may develop, I cannot conceive
of the time when a good teacher will not
continue to be the most important object in any
classroom.
Source: Education, December, 1936, p. 217.
Is radio to become a chief arm of education? Will
the classroom be abolished, and the child of the
future stuffed with facts as he sits at home or
even as he walks about the streets with his portable
receiving set in his pocket?
Source: Century, June, 1924, p. 149.
Television
Seeing constant brutality, viciousness and unsocial
acts results in hardness, intense selfishness,
even in mercilessness, proportionate to the
amount of exposure and its play on the native
temperament of the child. Some cease to show
resentment to insults, to indignities, and even
FEARFUL REACTIONS TO NEW MEDIA (CONTINUED)
cruelty toward helpless old people, to women and
other children.
Source: New Republic, November 1, 1954, p. 12.
Here, in concept at least, was the most magnificent
of all forms of communication. Here was the
supreme triumph of invention, the dream of the
ages—something that could bring directly into the
home a moving image fused with soundreproducing
action, language, and thought without
the loss of measurable time. Here was the
magic eye that could bring the wonders of entertainment,
information and education into the living
room. Here was a tool for the making of a more
enlightened democracy than the world had ever
seen. Yet out of the wizardry of the television tube
has come such an assault against the human
mind, such a mobilized attack on the imagination,
such an invasion against good taste as no other
communications medium has known, not excepting
the motion picture or radio itself.
Source: Saturday Review, December 24, 1949, p. 20.
Changes in media industries typically increase the pressure on other social institutions
to change. Instability in the way we routinely communicate has unsettling
consequences for all other institutions. Typically, the leaders of these institutions
resent external pressures and are reluctant to change their way of doing things. In
our society, critics have interpreted the rise of the media industries as threatening
every other social institution, including political, religious, business, military, and
educational institutions. The constant calls for overhauling political campaign
financing are only one example. Social critics even accuse media of profoundly
altering families—the most basic social institution of all.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that leaders of these social institutions, and the
special interest groups they sponsor, have raised a constant stream of concern
about the power and harmful impact of media. As new media develop, critics
fight to prevent their growth or to control their structure. For example, the development
of television and later cable television were frozen for several years while
the Federal Communications Commission listened to the arguments of industry
critics. Although it is unfair to place all this criticism into a single category,
many of the views expressed are consistent with mass society theory. This venerable
theory has a long and checkered history. Mass society theory is actually many
different theories sharing some common assumptions about the role of media and
society.
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