The social function of mass media

Ing. Jiří Šnajdar 2012

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Four theories of the press

The American Commission for press liberty from the year 1947 initiated the work of Siebert, Schramm a Peterson, who in the book Four theories of press described 4 classes of media theory:

1.theory of social responsibility of press - role of watchdog of democracy;

2. liberal theory – based on respecting of free will. It comes out from the basic principle of classical liberalism, free market of ideas, where the best would be acknowledged and the worst would be banished.

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3. authoritarian theory – can justify the censorship potentiation and punishment dispensation for rules-breaking, which made political elite. Dictatorships, military regimes, foreign occupations. Clear assignments for press liberty and protection of established social order;

4. soviet theory – assigned to media the role of collective agitator, propagandist and cultivator at communism increase. (Marx, Engels and Lenin). The main principle is media subordination to one party.

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In practice was never the enforce of press liberty straightforward. For libertarian theory is difficult to deal with extreme situations as are war and revolution.

The press liberty was in many contexts Identified with proprietary rights. Naturally arises conflict between negative and positive (confirming) conception of press liberty. The first sees the press liberty as absence of any reduction, the other adds some targets and utilities, that fall to owners of the press. (Conflict owner - versus journalist)

Critics of 4 theories theories as a product of its time and idelogy, but influenced education of whole generations of journalists and media specialists.

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Toronto school and Herbert Marshall McLuhan

The Toronto “mediological” school, established by Canadian historian Herold M. Innis, searches the connection between progress of human civilisation and means of interpersonal communication. Innis comes out from the conception, that each king of communication moves the humanity to certain society organisation. (Communication progress according to predominant media).

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The Canadian philosopher, literary scholar and the most important representative on Toronto school Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) went in for consideration how using of different media changes the human´s life (as a media he considers everything what somehow intensifies, enlarges the humans´ possibilities to grasp the world, and this by movement and also sensual cognition).

The book is opened with the chapter called media is a message, where the author presents the idea, that each media, each technology brings into humans´ matters new criterion and this is the message that gives an account of a person and of a society.

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McLuhan used for the first time the expression „global village“ as a metaphor for the society, which using of different media brings closer together. Marking „global village“ started to use most in the ninetieth with using of computer networks and interactive interconnection of users in the whole world. At present claim to this tradition some social scientists.

The Toronto school is the example of interpretation of society development on the base of medial determinism. Changes in society are interpreted on the base of changes of communication methods. McLuhan divides media in :

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Hot media: Low participation of recipient, bigger effects on audience – radio, film, lecture, book. They are marked out for high data completing and so they do not require an intensive participation from the side of recipient. The hot media pull the person fast and suggestive into itself, i.e. into its world of media activities.

Cold media: High participation of recipient, less effects on audience – telephone, television, speech, seminar, discussion.

Media can be appointed as hot or cold only relatively, in comparison with one media and other on the base of their data completing and rate of recipient´s participation.

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Birmingham school

In the sixtieth years of the 20th century was at the University in British Birmingham established postgraduate and research centre for current cultural studies.

From the original interest in “live” culture of different society groups and classes gradually came to – mainly in the time period 1968-1979, when the in the head was Stuart Hall – that the big part of its interest is concentrated on mass media and on the fields which are connected with behaviour and influence of mass media.

The special attention give his protagonists to behaviour of young people, formation of subcultures, education, racial and ethnic questions and gender.

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Further progress in the eightieth years meant especially movement from analysis of media announcement to cultivation of so called history of everyday.

The Birmingham school in the mind of critical social science characterised media especially as ideological and hegemony institutions and dedicates to relations among media and “popular culture”, which they understand as a space, where can be enforced demands of marginalised and omitted groups in the society.

 

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Frankfurt school

A group of theoreticians connected with  Institut für Sozialforschung from Frankfurt am Main, which worked out from neo-Marxist positions number of accesses to mass media, re-defined the meaning of the term culture (culture in the Frankfurter meaning is understood as an integral part of capitalist system (status quo), which helps to maintain and reproduce by continual multiplying of its pictures, creating and consequential satisfying of false needs, technological rationality and homogeneity on one side, displacing so called value rationality and possibility of opinioned choice and weakening of critical distance on the other side) and its spiritual bequest belongs to critical theory of society and media.

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At the beginning there was an effort to analyse reasons of failure of expectations for revolution social changeover, which affects first the developed industrial societies and which the Marx preached as unavoidable.

Members of the group associated most the critical approach to current society and operating of its institutions, alike as merciless criticism of reproduction conditions of prevailing society.

Founders of Frankfurter school were Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, presented are also Walter Benjamin and from after war generation J. Habermas.

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Formation and progress of mass culture connected the representatives of this school with the phenomenon of cultural industry – mass industrial production of goods appointed to consumption in the free time, using for enforcing in the market and profit cumulation also displays originally issuing from the artistic sphere.

  

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 Denis McQuail

McQuail sorted the typology of interpersonal communication into so called pyramid of communication and showed two facts :

from view of complexity of communication processes is the whole-society (and then also medial) communication the most complex.

from view of frequency of communication processes has the human the most experiences with intra personnel communication, while the cases of whole-society communication is less.

  

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 McQuail Pyramid of communication :

Whole-society (medial)

Institutional/organisation

Between groups (communication between organised groups/sport teams)

Group communication (cell/family)

Inter personnel communication (inner-2 to 3 persons/dyadic or triadic)

Intra personnel communication (with myself)

  

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McQuail formulated also seven basic attributes of mass communication:

a) it is an activity, which usually requires existence of complex organisation with formalised inner connections of competencies and responsibilities and legally supported existence;

b) activity of these organisations is aimed to very large groups of recipients;

c) results of this activity are openly accessible – i.e. products are openly accessible to everybody and distribution is (except original offer) altogether non-structured and informal;

  

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d) set-up of audience is heterogeneous;

e) mass media can concurrently enter into contact with large number of people, being in large distance from the source and mutually divided;

f) relationship between communicator and audience secures a professional, who is known to the audience only in his public role of communicator;

g) audience is an aggregate of individuals connected together with mutual interest.

  

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Umberto Eco and levels of mass culture :

•Eco divides together with other theoreticians (Arendt, Macdonald) the culture in :

•High cult: high culture (elite)

•Mid cult: middle (mass, according to Eco the worst) – Uses means of low culture, but makes look like high culture. (Eco considers Mid cult for anti-culture).

•Low cult: low culture. (Comics, tabloids – do not play anything, are ingenuous and represent itself as they are – they stand up for its “lowly” what mid cult does not do).

  

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He comes from assumption that the mass culture is a product of media and asserts, that the cultural industry started to develop already from Gutenberg. Eco idealistically believes in the change, in an active interference of cultural solidarity, in mass media reform via cultural workers. A part of such reform should be also regulation of contents. Arguments are among others publishers, that in addition to mass production propagate a quality literary culture.

  

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Neil Postman: To entertain to death; public communication in the age of entertainment .

Postman differentiates the epoch of press and television. He considers “The age of television” for an absurd age of entertainment, in which all culture changed in trivial entertainment.

“This book deals with the possibility, that Orwell was not right, but Huxley”, writes in the introduction of his book Neil Postman. “Our politics, religion, reporting, sport, education and business” writes the author, “changed into homogenous supplement of entertainment, without any public protests or any reactions.

  

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Consequently we slowly fall into a danger that we will entertain to death. What entertains us so much and together “gets down” is television. In television communication namely predominates visual imagery, which means that the television accosts us through pictures, not words.

Put stress on quickness and briefness, the own content of information is deformed. To keep the viewers must the television present the information in such way that the viewer would be amused. The result is the most amused person who spends a lot time watching TV but gets the less knowledge.

  

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This trend was in America obvious already from the time, when Kennedy won the vote thank to television discussion, where he knocked the rival candidate Richard Nixon with his own image and charm, also not with arguments. Globalisation of culture is then mainly invasion of American iconography, doing through new media.