COMMON THREADS

One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is about the commercial nature of the mass media. In controversies about media content, how much of what society finds troubling in the mass media is due more to the commercial nature of the media than to any intrinsic quality of the media themselves?

For some media critics, such as former advertising executive Jerry Mander in his popular book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), the problems of the mass media (in his case, television) are inherent in the technology of the medium (e.g., the hypnotic lure of a light-emitting screen) and can’t be fixed or reformed. Other researchers focus primarily on the effects of media on individual behavior.

But how much of what critics dislike about television and other mass media—including violence, indecency, immorality, inadequate journalism, and unfair representations of people and issues—derives from the way in which the mass media are organized in our culture rather than from anything about the technologies themselves or their effects on behavior? In other words, are many criticisms of television and other mass media merely masking what should be broader criticisms of capitalism?

One of the keys to accurately analyzing television and the other mass media is to tease apart the effects of a capitalist economy (which organizes media industries and relies on advertising, corporate underwriting, and other forms of sponsorship to profit from them) from the effects of the actual medium (television, movies, the Internet, radio, newspapers, etc.). If our media system wasn’t commercial in nature—wasn’t controlled by large corporations—would the same “effects” exist? Would the content change? Would different kinds of movies fill theaters? Would radio play the same music? What would the news be about? Would search engines generate other results?

Basically, would society be learning other things if the mass media were organized in a noncommercial way? Would noncommercial mass media set the same kind of political agenda, or would they cultivate a different kind of reality? What would the spiral of silence theory look like in a noncommercial media system?

Perhaps noncommercial mass media would have their own problems. Indeed, there may be effects that can’t be unhitched from the technology of a mass medium, no matter what the economy is. But it’s worth considering whether any effects are due to the economic system that brings the content to us. If we determine that the commercial nature of the media is a source of negative effects, then we should also reconsider our policy solutions for trying to deal with those effects.

KEY TERMS

The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book. The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.

media effects research, 521

cultural studies, 521

propaganda analysis, 522

pseudo-polls, 523

hypodermic-needle model, 526

minimal-effects model, 527

selective exposure, 527

selective retention, 527

uses and gratifications model, 528

scientific method, 528

hypotheses, 529

experiments, 529

random assignment, 529

survey research, 529

longitudinal studies, 530

correlations, 530

content analysis, 530

social learning theory, 532

agenda-setting, 532

cultivation effect, 533

spiral of silence, 533

third-person effect, 534

textual analysis, 536

audience studies, 536

political economy studies, 538

public sphere, 538

REVIEW QUESTIONS

Early Media Research Methods

Research on Media Effects

Cultural Approaches to Media Research

Media Research and Democracy

QUESTIONING THE MEDIA

ADDITIONAL VIDEOS

Visit the VideoCentral: Mass Communication section at bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture for additional exclusive videos related to Chapter 15.