(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
At the same time, if we look at the hidden impacts of mass media on masses at macro or
societal level, these are ‘much more important’ (Baran, 2004, p.17). Taking example of
violence on television, Baran argues that it ‘contributes to the cultural climate’ instead
forcing the audience to ‘shot people’ (Ibid). An aggregate of people may not have one
and the same opinions towards a particular issue, but they would most probably behave in
the way what they feel ‘the climate’ favours. Thus, mass media might have limited
effects on individuals and might not have been able to achieve ‘conversion’ at large scale,
but their impact on the development of a ‘trend’, making an issue salient, or introducing
or reinforcing a ’culture’ can hardly be over-emphasized.
Transmissional versus Ritual Perspective
Transmissional perspective refers to the control effects of information on the audience.
Of course, the information are disseminated through mass media. This perspective, as
Carey notes, argues that mass media don not send ‘messages in the space’ but these are
the ‘representation of shared beliefs’ (Carey, 1975, p.6). It is an individual centered
perspective which notes the effects of communication on the audience, not necessarily on
culture or society as a whole.
Contrarily, the ritual perspective helps us understand the cultural significance of mass
communication. For instance, an advertisement which is supposed to sell a product may
or may not push an individual to go for a purchase decision, but it would have notable
impact on our cultural preferences of traits and rituals. While watching a mobile phone
advertisement, one may not need to make a buying decision, however, ‘why a mobile is
important for us’, ‘how and when it may be used’ and ‘what benefits it could have for its
users’ are some of the cues which may effect the audience at large. In short, ritual
perspective talks about the media-induced effects on the audience lifestyle at societal
level.
Elitist vs Populist Values
As Vivian (2007, p.390) differentiates, high art requires relatively ‘sophisticated and
cultivated tastes to appreciate’ an artistic material, while low art requires little
sophistication to enjoy it. Elitist view argues that mass media do little to make people
enjoy high art rather give more coverage to the low art, which results in over-portrayal of
‘trashy’ and ‘crapy’ material in the media contents. On the basis of media coverage of
artistic material, Herbert Gans categorized the audience into: high-culture audience,
middle-culture audience and low-culture audience (Ibid). This classification places the
audience on a continuum where they enjoy ‘complexities and subtleties’ of art and
entertainment.
Contrarily, the ‘populist’ advocates that mass media should focus the choices of largest
possible audience in a society. In this regard, media contents are categorized into:
highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow. This categorization refers to abstraction of the
contents from high to low. Elitists usually prefer to watch highbrow media contents
whereas in the populist view lowbrow contents are the most preferred.
‘Populists’ has relatively bigger share in the media contents due to their size in a society.
Probably, that is why we witness more pop or popular art than the artefacts requiring
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