Media theory and philosophy
5.4 Media theory and philosophy
The transfer of meaning and the system of transmitting messages can be considered as the denoting elements of the process. The process by which the messages are sent and received and the assignation of meaning can be considered as the connotative element of the communication system. In all studies of communication, it is these two elements that occupy the prominent position. Defined in general terms, mass communication refers to the relatively simultaneous exposure of a large, scattered and heterogeneous audience to messages transmitted by impersonal means from an organised source for whom the audience members are anonymous. The media theorist’s interest penetrates into this phenomenon at several points. The chief concern is directed towards the social effects and functions of mass communications, which means examining consumers’ views and responses to mass media material. Sociological analysis can also illuminate prior considerations – for example, the social influences operating in the production and distribution of symbols in a mass system. At one end of a mass communication chain is the source of information, a complex organisation, itself a product as well as a potential moulder of social forces. At the other end are the receivers of information. Taken as a whole they constitute a mass, since these are large numbers of anonymous persons coming from all walks of life who are seen in terms of the ways they sense, interpret and act upon information. The audience members, although anonymous to the communicator, are embedded in a network of primary and secondary groupings highly relevant to the understanding of the mass communicative process. This interest in mass communication does not confine itself simply to asking what people do, or even why they do it; it is also concerned with the problem why people must do what they do. In other words, we are interested in exposing the underlying factors that impose limitations and constraints on mass communication, and their understanding will reveal how systems are constructed to communicate and how they are used by the consumers of communication. In the 1960s, George Gerbner identified six constraints that affect decision-making in
mass communication. 4 These he defined as: 䊉 client relationships
䊉 patron relationships 䊉 logistical relationships
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䊉 leverage 䊉 legal requirements 䊉 supervisory relationships.
He described client relationships as those with investors, advertisers and sponsors, or other groups and institutions that furnish major capital and operating costs in exchange for products and services rendered. He pointed out that communications industries such as the press, broadcasting and magazines are producing organisations much like other industries. However, unlike other industries they derive little or no revenue from the sale of their products to the consuming public, who therefore have no direct client relationship with these media. They are also service organisations, to sell a group of people. In the case of television, they are selling audience time and attention to a special type of client – the advertiser. The advertisers underwrite the bulk of the operating costs in return for the time and attention of consumers, concentrated in market areas providing a base for profitable operation. The quantity and quality of the audience is determined by the value and price of the media service to these clients.
Patron relationships are with those who directly patronise the media – that is, the audience. It is true to say that often this audience demand is neither explicit nor specific. However, it is frequently the necessity for gratifying and cultivating some of the expectations of this consumer group that is important in decision-making. It is often patron relationships that set the broad limits of acceptability, within which the media select the policies that are most responsive to their clients’ needs and pressures.
Logistical requirements are imposed by the availability and cost of resources. In the case of newspapers, these include paper, technology and manpower; in the case of film, they include technology, plastics, actors, manpower and the supply of creative ability. Distribution facilities are another major factor in the film industry. In television, logistical factors include production facilities, transmission facilities, infrastructure, franchise problems and manpower.
Leverage may be exploited by non-client groups and external bodies, through boycotts, blacklists, strikes, legislation, influence over clients and so forth.
As with other business organisations and licence carriers, the legal requirements that pertain to the media industry are normative expectations that include the general and often also legal obligation to serve some socially valued function (or at least avoid posing major threats to the prevailing moral political order).
Mass media theory
The last of Gerbner’s six identified constraints is supervisory relationships. This is the chain of command or administration internal to the organisation. This includes trade agreements and the organisation’s self-regulation codes, and all working calculated to maximise the value and minimise the risk inherent in all other institutional relationships and constraints.
There are three models for the mass media industry working within the western capitalist societies; the market model, the mass manipulative model and the interactionist model.
The market model is the model that conforms to the principles of a liberal democratic society with a market economy. In this system, the audience is seen as being made up of consumers, who thus influence the output of the media by providing profits for the owners. The owners are therefore controllers and producers seeking audiences – they compete to provide what is demanded, and there is no conspiracy between the owners and governmental agencies. A wide range of opinions is offered, and only the illegal and the unsellable are excluded. Events in the news are seen as having an objective reality, and are selected for broadcasting and publication by journalists and editors on a professional basis. Criticism of this model comes from Marxists, who raise the issue of oligarchic control (that is, government of the media by the privileged few), and Liberals, who claim state interference and control.
The second of the models is the mass manipulative model. This is seen as the opposite of the market model in that the audience, instead of being the major influence on the media, is considered as a passive and uncritical receiver of the media messages. It is the Christian Right, epitomised by Mary Whitehouse and the American moral majority, who still support the pre-war ‘hypodermic syringe’ view, and see a conspiracy to corrupt conventional standards through the portrayal of sex, violence and other challenges to traditional morality. The Marxist version of this model is much more common among sociologists. There is an internal Marxist debate between the instrumentalists, led by Ralph Milliband, who see fairly direct control over media production by the ruling class, and the structuralists, led by Louis Althusser and Herbert Marcuse, who see journalists and editors as being influenced by ruling class ideology and willingly conforming to the interests of capitalists. Criticisms of this model come from both Liberals and interactionists, who suggest that the evidence of concentration of ownership or even bias in input is insufficient to demonstrate particular effects on the audience.
The final model is the interactionist model, which combines some of the elements of the previous two theories. The media are seen as reflecting the
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existing attitudes of the audience, as well as helping to create and reinforce
a consensual view of the world. The prevailing consensus is divided by writers within this perspective as pro-capitalist, sexist and racist, and thus this model has become associated with the Left, at least in Britain. It is the selection and presentation of news being influenced by both technological and ideological factors. In this case, the news is seen as a socially constructive object rather than a neutral description of real events. The process is described as the manufacture of news, and the outcome as agenda setting.
Ethnomethodologists see the interpretation of news by academics as a similar process to the manufacture of news by journalists. Sociologists, like other viewers and readers, interpret media output according to their own common-sense assumptions. Meanings are read into stories and images according to the audience’s expectations. The central task of a mass communication organisation is to formulate the content that is transmitted to its patrons, the audience, and an event that is ultimately to reach the audience is shaped by a complex of social forces. The originating or sponsoring source of the content is frequently an organisation such as a government agency, a business association or a political organisation. Directly as clients, indirectly as patrons, as manipulators of leverage or guardians of the normative order, such groups are responsible for the bulk of the content that moves into media channels. The mass media industry has many special interest groups surrounding it, signifying that mass communica- tion is the form of communication typical of a society in which many secondary group associations thrive. In fact, in modern society, members of secondary groups are frequently bound together into a functioning whole through the ties created by various forms of mass communication. Thus, on
a national level, the media provide a nation with many of its shared experiences. A key role in the processing of information is that of the trained professional who makes the initial contact, direct or indirect, with the originating source. Journalistic tradition in many western societies gives this role the mandate to exercise independent judgement in defining what is news and how to gather information. The media personality is enmeshed in critical social relations with his or her sources, employers and public. Whatever the balance of these forces, it is highly unlikely that his or her role can ever be simply that of a sponge, soaking up the environment, or of an open gatekeeper, passing unmodified and unselected information into channels of mass communication. As messages move from the originating source through the media personality into the media organisation and out over the channels to the audience, they are influenced by various
Mass media theory
supervisory relationships and policies. The general effect of this process is to funnel down the content. It is a selective processing of material in a social context. Another interest to the media theorist is the extent to which patron relationships enter into the decision-making process as to what content the media will offer in the first instance. Is communication a one- way flow of information, or is it, like interpersonal communication, a process of interaction? Certain elements of the general definition of mass communication underscore contrasts between mass and interpersonal communicative processes. In the interpersonal case, more sensory channels are usually involved than in each communicative act. Participants can see, hear, and even touch and smell each other. The result is that direct information and auxiliary cues move rapidly back and forth between persons, each of whom is serving both as a sender and as a receiver in the communicative act. In mass communication, the flow of information is on the surface and traditionally largely unidirectional; technology has made it possible for the few to speak directly (and almost incessantly) to the many. There is also a technology to reverse the flow. The Internet and multimedia technology are opening up a world of interaction; in the third millennium this will be the main motivator of mass communication theory. However, the mass communicator at present is not cut off from audience feedback entirely. The few, the communicators, do make decisions according to some image of the many, the audience.