‘Mass society’ and the belief in powerful media

Development of mass media

• The first major mass medium was the printing pressHelped to usher in the Renaissance– First texts were religious, including a large

number of Bibles– Moved on to classic books– Then came pamphlets, including propaganda– Censorship

Effects of the printing press

• Increased literacy

• Broadened worldview

• Challenge to religious authority

• Protestant Reformation

• Loss of memory

Photography

Industrial revolution

• The most rapid and wrenching social revolution in history

• Began in England in the latter part of the 18th century and spread to the Continent and the United States

Development of manufacturing

• Manufacturing went from a secondary economic practice to dominance of the economy– The scale of production rose till vast factories

employed huge numbers of workers• Child labor

– New social classes developed• Proletariat and bourgeoisie

• Industrial conflict and violence

Printing technology advances

– New presses eventually led to vastly reduced prices for newspapers, periodicals, etc.

• Huge circulations

• ‘lower classes’ could afford printed materials– Production of materials appealing to less refined tastes and

concerns

Print media• Books• Newsletters• Newspapers

– Penny press

• Magazines/journals– Many religious journals in mid-1800s

– Mass market magazines • Ladies’ Home Journal tops 1 million circulation

Urbanization

• America went from being a rural nation to a highly concentrated urban nation– Concentration of the population within a short distance

of factories• Factories in cities

– Immigrants to US concentrated in cities in the North and Midwest

• Ghettos

– Social problems endemic to cities• Drugs, prostitution, crime, alcoholism, gambling

1854 pop. 55,000

1898 pop. 1,698,575

1820Pop. 15

Chicago’s growth

Social class

• Emergence of an entrepreneurial (bourgeois) class– Attainment of massive wealth– Nouveau riche– Conflict with aristocracy (especially in Europe)

Immigration

• Growing tide in latter 19th century to peak in early 20th

• Immigration flow to the eastern U.S. gradually changed from Britain to northern Europe to eastern and southern

• West coast Chinese immigrants, then Japanese

Transportation

– Steamships

– Railroads• Promontory Point• End of the “frontier”

– Development of automobiles

– Airplanes

Development of the nation state

Large-scale and regular warfare

Germany, Italy

Early formulation of social theory

• Development of political economy and sociology in the 18th &19th centuries– Adam Smith– Karl Marx– August Comte– Gustave LeBon– Emile Durkheim– Charles Peirce– William Graham Sumner

Various social theories called upon to explain problems and to provide solutions

Nature versus nurture a crucial determinant

Adam Smith Karl Marx

August Comte: Society as organism

Darwin’s theory of evolution was a powerful influence over social theory at the time

Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton:“Social Darwinism”

John Locke—Tabula rasa

Community:Ferdinand Tonnies and Emile Durkheim

Ferdinand Tonnies

• Gemeinschaft (translated “community”) and Gesellschaft (translated “society”)

• Gemeinschaft is a form of association where affective relations rule, where consensus and shared belief are the norm and where life is ordered, a person’s place is largely given, and the person knows and accepts the rules. (family, community, friendship)

Ferdinand Tonnies

• Gesellschaft is a form of association where rational self-interest rules, where the individual has multiple and conflicting roles and where affect is limited. (business, political relations, instrumental associations)

• Modern society had seen a shift from gemeinschaft toward gesellschaft

Emile Durkheim

• Mechanical v. Organic solidarity

• Mechanical solidarity a feature of traditional community--overarching consensus on norms, mores, ideology bind individuals to there place in society and generate conformity that makes society workable

Emile Durkheim

• Organic solidarity--society held together by interactions among individuals and groups that act according to their own interests, rationally– bonds are weak and conflict part of the

expected set of consequences, but society adaptable and individual experiences greater freedom

Mass society theory

• The combination of these factors led to the development of ‘mass society’ – Breakdown of traditional communal life and

movement into cities where people of vastly different backgrounds are thrown together

Gustave LeBon: The Crowd

LeBon’s description of the implications of the development of mass society

• Social differentiation rises from:– The division of labor– Bureaucratization– Mixing of diverse population groups– Differential consumption patterns

• Erosion of informal social control– Decline of traditional norms and values– Increase in deviant behavior

• Formal social control– Contracts, laws, criminal justice systems– Response to impersonal society

• Social conflict arises– Juxtaposition of people with different values, goals and

lifestyles

• Communication faces a more difficult task, but must play a more important role because of:– Social differentiation– Anomie, alienation, and distrust

– Breakdown in strength and depth of social ties

So, three major concerns:

1. Social dissolution and the breakdown of consensus

2. Moral degeneration3. Intervention into the natural processes

of social evolution

The development of telecommunications

• Telegraph • Phonograph

– Edison

• Telephones– Bell

• Movies– Lumiere brothers, Edison, others

• Radio– Commercial radio during 1920s and

after

Generally speaking,

• Each new communication technology brings a new set of concerns

• Also has a set of overly optimistic proponents

• Actual use of technologies is largely dependent upon audience acceptance and innovative imagination

Edison Kinetoscope ca.1894

Projecting Kinetoscope

The nickelodeon

The Great Train Robbery, 1903

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Propaganda

• Widespread use in World War 1

• Unprecedented access through mass media

• Apparent effectiveness– Self-promotional statements of PR practitioners

• Fear of mass democracy, demagoguery

The Committee for Public Information

• Unprecedented effort to sell the World War to Americans– Woodrow Wilson re-elected on the platform “He

kept us out of war”– Wanted to mobilize Americans to enter war—did

enter war shortly after election• A great deal of resistance to U.S. involvement

– Hired George Creel to head up CPI and generate support for U.S. entrance into the war

Committee for Public Information

• Massive mobilization of thousands of men and women

• Drew heavily upon the expertise of new professions of advertising and public relations

• Stunningly successful—war fever to the point of persecution of Americans of German descent, crushing of domestic opposition

After the war

• Members of the Committee boasted about their success and the power of the media and of promotional techniques to move the masses

• Edward L. Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, wrote a couple of especially famous (and scary) books about the CPI and about opinion control in a democracy

Propaganda (1928)

• Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy:

– The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Walter Lippmann

• Journalist and editorialist that wrote about the role of the newspaper in public affairs. He reviewed the coverage of the First World War and concluded that it was biased and inaccurate. He felt that newspaper coverage was insufficient to educate the public on political affairs.

Chicago School concerns

• Fear over loss of “community”– consensual forms of social control no longer

working– rise of vice, demagoguery, mass movements– crowd-like, mindless behavior

• Concern over viability of democracy in industrialized, mass society

• How to reinvent the social conditions of the small town within an industrialized society?– no going back to an earlier age

Harold Lasswell

Propaganda in the World War

Lasswell’s propaganda studies

• Lasswell studied the techniques of propaganda during the First World War. He based his views of its effectiveness on the use of techniques that he thought applied Freudian principles– Didn’t really review audience reactions

Payne Fund Studies: The effects of movies on children

• Conducted in the late 1920's and early 30's– this series of studies occurred in two

categories: • 1. assess content of films and audience

size and composition (Dale)

Father Charles Coughlin

Kate Smith raised over $100 million in a single bond drive

Payne Fund Studies: The effects of movies on children

Conducted in the late 20's and early 30's– this series of studies occurred in two categories:

• 1. assess content of films and audience size and composition (Dale)

• 2. audience effects of themes and messages – a. acquisition of information (Holaday and Stoddard) – b. attitude change (R.C. Peterson and Thurstone) – c. stimulating emotions (Dysinger and Ruckmick)– d. harming health (Renshaw, Miller and Marquis)– e. eroding moral standards (C.C. Peters)– f. influencing conduct (Shuttleworth and May, Blumer and

Hauser)

– theory-media have both harmful and prosocial effects – advanced quantitative methodology

War of the Worlds

• An accidental occurrence seemed to validate some of the worst fears about mass society and the power of the newest mass medium, the radio

• Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater of the Air’s broadcast of an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds on Halloween eve, 1938

Research on the broadcast

• The invasion from Mars: A study in the psychology of panic (1940: Princeton University) – Cantril, Gaudet, Herzog

Two questions (p. 67)

• Why did this broadcast frighten some people when other fantastic broadcasts do not?

• Why did this broadcast frighten some people but not others?

• Note: “Even this broadcast did not affect more than a small minority of listeners.”

Why were people frightened?

• Realism of the program– “sheer dramatic excellence” of the program– early parts of the broadcast “fell within the

existing standards of judgment of the listeners”– “If a stimulus fits into the area of interpretation

covered by a standard of judgment and does not contradict it, then it is likely to be believed.”

Standards

• “Radio as accepted vehicle for important announcements.”

• “Prestige of speakers.”– astronomers– military men– Secretary of the Interior

• “Specific incidents understood.”– colloquial English/bureaucratese– real places, buildings, highways

Standards

• “Everybody baffled.”– on-air personalities claim bewilderment

• “The total experience.”– projected environment– “experienced as a unit”

• individual features of broadcast not adequate to explain reaction

Tuning in late

• CBS survey found that 42% of audience tuned in late– after intro– strong relationship to belief that broadcast was

news report rather than play

• “Contagion the excitement created”– Someone suggested respondent tune in after

show had begun [21% in AIPO survey; 19% in CBS survey]

Effect of late tune-in

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

From the beginning(n=269)

After beginning (n=191)

NewsPlay

Not paying attention to first announcements

• “widespread habit”– station IDs and advertising

• accounted for about 10% of those who misinterpreted the broadcast – actual n quite small (10% of 54 people who

thought it was news reports)

Not paying attention to first announcements

• most were casually scanning for something to listen to--not looking for Mercury Theater

• Competing with Charlie McCarthy– vastly more popular than Mercury Theater

• (34.7 to 3.6)

– 18% of McCarthy listeners said they heard WOW, of which 62% said they changed after the first act (“Eddie Cantor effect”)

Classifying listeners• Researchers developed the following

classification scheme for ‘suggestibility’:1. Those who analyzed the internal evidence of the program and knew it could not be true.

2. Those who checked up successfully to learn that it was a play.

3. Those who checked up unsuccessfully and continued to believe it was a news broadcast.

4. Those who made no attempt to check the authenticity of the broadcast.

Checked internal evidence

• Did not remain frightened• Listeners relied on “specific information they

possessed and were able to project into the situation”– knew it was Mercury Theater

– recognized Orson Welles

– knew that time changes were too fast

– knew that there weren’t three regiments of infantry in the area

– just recognized the events as too fantastic

Successfully checked the broadcast against other information

• Checked other stations (most common)– “I turned to WOR to see if they had the same thing on and they

didn’t so I knew it must be a fake.”

• Looked up program in newspaper– “I tuned in and heard that the meteor had fallen. Then when they

talked about monsters, I thought something was the matter. So I looked in the newspaper to see what program was supposed to be on and discovered it was only a play.

• Asked friend, looked out window – (1 respondent each)

Unsuccessfully checked broadcast against other information

• “Difficult to determine from interviews why these people wanted to check anyway”– seemed to be checking whether they were in

personal danger yet rather than whether reports were authentic

• Type of checking behavior was “singularly ineffective and unreliable”

Unsuccessful checks

• Methods– Look out window or go outdoors (employed by

2/3 of this group)– Called friends or ran to consult neighbors– Telephoned police or newspapers– “Only one turned his radio dial. Only one

consulted a newspaper.”

Reasons checks were unsuccessful

• New information only verified their interpretation– “I looked out of the window and everything

looked the same as usual so I thought it hadn’t reached our section yet.”

– “I went outside to look at the stars. I saw a clear sky but somehow was not reassured.”

Reasons checks were unsuccessful

• Observed data were interpreted as additional evidence that the broadcast was true– “We looked out of the window and Wyoming

Avenue was black with cars. People were rushing away, I figured.”

– “We tuned in to another station and heard some church music. I was sure a lot of people were worshiping God while waiting for their death.”

• “I looked out of my window and saw a greenish-eerie light which I was sure came from a monster. Later on it proved to be the lights in the maid’s car.”

• Others felt unable to trust their own observation, believing others knew more about the situation than they did.– Trusted the announcer on the radio as a source– “My son came home during the excitement and

I sent him out to find one of the elders in the church to see what it was all about.”

Made no attempt to check the broadcast

• “Over half of the people in this group were so frightened that they either stopped listening, ran around in a frenzy or exhibited behavior that can only be described as paralyzed.”

Reasons for not checking

• So frightened they never thought of checking– “We didn’t try to do anything to see if it were

really true. I guess we were too frightened.”

• Adopted an attitude of complete resignation– “I didn’t do anything. I just kept listening. I

thought if this is the real thing you only die once--why get excited?”

Reasons for not checking• Some felt they needed to take action. They

prepared immediately for escape or death.– “My husband said we were here for God’s glory

and honor and it was for Him to decide when we should die. We should prepare ourselves.”

– “I couldn’t stand it so I turned it off. I don’t remember when, but everything was coming closer. My husband wanted to put it back on but I told him we’d better do something instead of just listen, so we started to pack.

Some remained constantly tuned in to see how to escape