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Assumptions of Mass Society Theory

Mass Society Theory

Mass Media Theory

Strengths and Weaknesses

Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

Strengths

  • Speculates about important effects
  • Highlights important structural changes and conflicts in modern cultures
  • Draws attention to issues of media ownership and ethics

Weaknesses

  • unscientific and unsystematic
  • promulgated by elites interest in preserving power
  • underestimates intelligence and competence of "average people"
  • underestimates personal, societal, and cultural barriers to direct media influence

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

  • Emile Durkheim, French sociologist

  • Mechanical solidarity: folk cultures bound by consensus and traditional social roles

  • Organic solidarity: modern social orders bound by culturally negotiated social ties

Behaviorism and Freudianism

1. The media can subvert essential norms and values and thus undermine social order. Therefore media must be brought under elite control

2. Media directly influences the minds of average people, transforming their views of the social world

3. Bad-long term consequences stem from the transformation of the mind by the media

  • Mass society theorist believed emerging mass media disrupted kinship and direct fact-to-face contact

  • Media was accused of breaking down folk communities (gemeinschaft) and encouraging the development of amoral, weak social institutions (gesellschaft)
  • a perspective on Western industrial society that attributes an influential but largely negative role to media
  • emerged at the end of the nineteenth century
  • media has the power to shape our perception of the social world and manipulate our actions
  • argues that media influence must be controlled

Behaviorism: The notion that all human action is a conditioned response to external environmental stimuli

  • acting to gain rewards or to avoid punishment

Freudianism: The notion that human behavior is the product of the conflict between an individuals Id, Ego, and Superego

  • propaganda theorist developed pessimistic interpretations of media influence which appealed directly to the Id and bypass the Ego

References

Overview

  • Brantingler, P. (1983). Bred and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

  • Beniger. J. R. (1987). "Toward and Old New Paradigm: The Half- Century Flirtation with Mass Society." Public Opinion Quarterly, 51: S46-S66

  • Davis, R. E. (1976). Response to Innovation: A Study of Popular Argument about New Mass Media. New York: Arno

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

"The Father of Propaganda"

Harold Lasswell's Propaganda Theory

  • Ferdinand Tonnies, German sociologist

  • Gemeinschaft: traditional folk cultures where people were bond together by strong ties of family, tradition, and rigid social roles

  • Gesellschaft: a modern industrial society based heavily on kinship and the direct, face-to-face contact that occurs in a small village

  • Combined ideas of behaviorism and Freudianism
  • The power of propaganda stemmed from the result of the vulnerable state of mind of average people
  • controlling forms of political government that lead to conflict was necessary in order to prevent chaos amongst society

What is Propaganda Theory

Strengths and Weaknesses

  • What is Mass Society Theory
  • Assumptions of Mass Society
  • Examples of Mass Society Theory

- Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

- Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

  • Strengths and Weaknesses
  • What is Propaganda Theory

- Behaviorism and Freudianism

  • Harold Lasswell's Propaganda Theory
  • Strengths and Weaknesses

  • The justification of the use of disinformation to convince people to abandon ideas that are "wrong" and to adopt those favored by the propagandist

  • The belief that people are so irrational, so illiterate, or so inattentive that it is necessary to coerce, seduce, or trick them into learning bits of misinformation

Strengths

  • first systematic theory of mass communication
  • focuses attention on why media might have powerful effects
  • identifies personal, social, and cultural factors that can enhance media power
  • focuses attention on the use of campaigns to cultivate symbols

Weaknesses

  • underestimates abilities of average people to evaluate messages
  • ignores personal, social, and cultural factors
  • overestimates the speed and range of media effects

Critical Analysis

Does our mass media act as propaganda?

What are examples that you can think of?

What needs to be changed?

Assumptions of Mass Society Theory

4. Average people in a mass society are cut off and isolated from traditional social institutions that once protected them from manipulation, thus making them vulnerable to media

5. Social chaos by media will likely be resolved by establisment of totalitarian social order

6. Mass media debase higher forms of culture bringing about a general decline in civilization

Mass Society and Propaganda Theories

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