- Media help to correlate or co-ordinate various parts of the social system by gathering and disseminating valuable information

- Media acts as powerful agents of socialization by transmitting society’s cultural heritage and its basic system of norms and values; media msgs are primarily about reinforcing shared ideals such as justice, individualism, democracy and respect for the law; also provide advice – tele-advising

- Media function as social control agents; by gathering information, the media engage in surveillance of the social environment

- Media provide pleasure and entertainment – tension management process

To sociologists what is of interest are what are the manifest and latent functions of mass media (Robert Merton)

- Selling a product

- Making a profit

- Maintain demand for goods and services essential to the continued growth of the capitalist economy

- Something for everyone

- Serve as collective memory of nation, selectively remembering, forgetting and reconstructing the past

- How do mass communication support the status quo?

- What ideology, values and behaviours are reinforced – reinforces those associated with materialism & consumerism

- What groups are coopted and which are excluded – homogenized the culture, muting differences between regions and social classes

- How does mass media enhance or inhibit creativity?

- How do conditions under which information and entertainment are produced affect the product

- Gatekeeping function or agenda setting – the topics that come to the forefront of public attention: media executives decide what to cover, for how long, and in what context, appreciates an active role of the consumer

Innis

Time-biased media:

- Modes of communication that endure over time but that are no very mobile across space, i.e. writing on stone or clay;

- Conducive to strong sense of tradition and custom, promoting religious forms of power and belief

Space-biased media:

- Modes of communication that can cover greater areas of space but are less durable over time, e.g. writing on paper or sounds transmitted over airwaves

- Lead to territorial expansion, empire building, more secular forms of power and culture as manifested in the dominance of military institutions and the growth of the state

Both forms of power in turn create different types of social division and conflict. Elites control means of communication and use to preserve their power, those excluded struggle to gain it and in process stimulate development of new alternative forms of communication. Historically, such a struggle over the means of communication resulted in shift from time to space-biased media.

McLuhan (technological determinist since he viewed media technologies as something of an autonomous force outside of social control and direction)

Effect of communication on institutions and culture and how this effect changes over time; argued relationship was mediated by the way that forms of communicate change our sense perceptions and cognitive processes.

Function and impact of invention of print

Invention of printing press undermined oral communication, ushering in a more visually oriented culture; print consists of words together in a linear sequence, encourages us to see world in linear way composed of separate objects, removes face to face interaction and thus info becomes more abstract which in turn fosters individualism, privacy, rationality and social differentiation – coincides with rise of nationalism and weakening of social ties, standardized national language becoming principal mechanism of social identity (Quebec nationalism)

Relationship between media and inequality (orthodox Marxism interpretation) (Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno)

Role of media defined in terms of how media serve the economic interests and political power of the dominant class, those who own and control the means of material production.

Dominant class exercises control over means of cultural and moral production – production of ideas, beliefs, values and norms which constitute the dominant ideology.

The media by disseminating this dominant ideology create acceptance and legitimization of the status quo.

Media are part of a cultural industry that functions to create a mass deception about the exploitative and oppressive character of capitalist society. Role of media is to distract and pacify people by feeding them standardized images and messages which stifle capacity for independent and critical thought.

Cultural imperialism exists where one society’s media exert an overwhelming and unilateral influence over another society’s culture, e.g. the US exports their programs but import little programming from elsewhere

E.g. propaganda model of Chomsky & Herman

Idea of hegemony key in this interpretation – the use of the media and other cultural institutions to represent the interests, values, and understandings of the capitalist class and other powerful groups as natural and universal. But dominant ideology is not the only ideology, struggles provide for different interpretations of the dominant ideology. There results alternative ( and oppositional viewpoints, latter being experiences of subordinated groups against those of the powerful, former being compromise or negotiated understandings which blend dominant and oppositional viewpoints.