6-1

Richard T. Schaefer

SOCIOLOGY:
A Brief Introduction
Seventh Edition

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 chapter
6
The Mass Media
CHAPTER OUTLINE

•Sociological Perspectives on the Media

•The Audience
•The Media Industry
•Social Policy and the Mass Media: Media
Violence

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-3

A Look Ahead
█ Why are the media so influential?
█ Who benefits from media influence and
why?
█ How do we maintain cultural and ethical
standards in the face of negative media
images?

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-4

Sociological Perspectives
on the Media
█ New forms of mass media have changed
people’s viewing and listening habits
– Viewers have moved from broadcast TV to
cable outlets
– Americans now spend less time listening to
recorded music
– Americans spend more time on the Internet

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-5

Functionalist View
█ The media:
– Socialize us
– Enforce social norms
– Confer status
– Promote consumption
– Keep us informed about our environment
– May act as a narcotic

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 6-6

Functionalist View
█ Agent of Socialization
– Media increases social cohesion by
presenting common view of culture
• Socializing effects can promote religious as well
as patriotic exchanges, uniting believers around
the world
• Socializing effect of media means programming
can become controversial

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 6-7

Functionalist View
█ Enforcer of Social Norms
– Media reaffirm proper behavior by showing
what happens to people who violate societal
expectations
█ Conferral of Status
– Singles out one from thousands of other
similarly placed issues or people to become
significant

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 6-8

Functionalist View
█ Promotion of Consumption
– Media advertising
• Supports economy
• Provides information
• Underwrites cost of media

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 6-9

Functionalist View
█ Dysfunction: The Narcotizing Effect
– Narcotizing dysfunction:
phenomenon in which the media
provide such massive amounts of
information that audience becomes
numb and fails to act on the information

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 6-10

Conflict View
█ Conflict theorists emphasize that the
media reflect and even exacerbate many
of the divisions of our society and world
– Gender
– Race
█ Gatekeeping: how material must travel
through a series of checkpoints before
reaching the public

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-11

Conflict View
█ Media monitoring
– Used to refer to interest groups’ monitoring
of media content
– Expanded to include monitoring
individuals’ media usage and choices
without their knowledge

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-12

Conflict View
█ Dominant Ideology: Constructing Reality
– Dominant ideology: set of cultural beliefs
and practices that help to maintain powerful
social, economic, and political interests
• Mass media serve to maintain the privileges of
certain groups
– Stereotypes: unreliable generalization about
all members of a group that do not recognize
individual differences within the group

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-13

Conflict View
█ Dominant Ideology: Whose Culture?
– Globalization projects the dominating reach
of the U.S. media into the rest of the world
– Media cultural exports undermine the
distinctive traditions and art forms of other
societies and encourage economic
dependence on the U.S.

Nations that feel a loss of identity may try to

defend against the cultural invasion

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 6-14

Feminist View
█ Feminists share conflict theorists’ view
that mass media stereotype and
misrepresent social reality
– Women underrepresented
– Perpetuate stereotypical views of gender
– Emphasize traditional sex roles and
normalize violence against women

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-15

Interactionist View
█ Interactionists especially interested
in shared understandings of
everyday behavior
█ Examine media on micro level to
see how they shape day-to-day
social behavior
█ Scholars increasingly point to mass

media as source of major daily activity

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 6-16

Table 6-1: Status Conferred

by Magazines

Source: Author’s content analysis of primary cover subject for full run of the periodicals beginning with Time, March 3,
1923; People, March 4, 1974; Ebony , November 1945; and Rolling Stone, September 1967 through April 30, 2006. In case of
ties, the most recent cover person is listed first.

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-17

Figure 6-1: The Internet Explosion

Source: National Geographic 2005:21.

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-18

Figure 6-2: Who’s on the Internet?

Source: Pew Internet Project 2005.

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-19

Who Is In the Audience?

█ Mass media distinguished from other

social institutions by necessary presence
of audience
– Identifiable, finite group or a much larger,
undefined group

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 6-20

The Segmented Audience

█ Increasingly, media market themselves to

a particular audience
– Livingstone (2004) wrote that the media
have become so segmented, they have
taken on the appearance almost of
individualization

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 6-21

Audience Behavior

█ Opinion leader: someone who, through

day-to-day personal contacts and
communication, influences opinions and
decisions of others
– Members of an audience do not all
interpret media in the same way
– Hunt (1997) found that race caused
different reactions to media more than
gender and class
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 6-22
Table 6-2: Sociological
Perspectives on the Mass Media

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-23

Media Concentration

█ Handful of multi-national corporations

dominate publishing, broadcasting, and
film industries
█ The Media’s Global Reach
– Mass media have begun to create global
village in terms of communication
– Internet key to creating truly global
network

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 6-24

Figure 6-4: Media Penetration in

Selected Countries

Source: Bureau of the Census 2005a:891.

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-25

Media Violence

█ The Issue
– What effect does movie and TV violence
have on audiences?
– Does violence in the media lead people,
especially youth, to become more
violent?

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 6-26

Media Violence

█ The Setting
– Does watching hours of mass media with
violent images cause one to behave
differently?
– Some studies linked exposure to media
violence to subsequent aggressive
behavior
• It is important to recognize that other
factors besides media also relate to
aggressive behavior
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 6-27

Media Violence

█ Sociological Insights
– If function of media is to entertain,
socialize, and enforce social norms, can
violence be part of that message?
– Even if viewer does not necessarily
become more violent from watching
violent images, there could be
desensitization

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-28

Media Violence

█ Sociological Insights
– Conflict and feminist theorists are troubled
that victims depicted in violent imagery
are often:
• Women
• Children
• Poor
• Racial minorities
• Citizens of foreign countries
• Physically disabled
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 6-29

Media Violence

█ Sociological Insights
– Interactionists especially interested in
finding out if violence in media may then
become script for real-life behavior

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 6-30

Media Violence

█ Policy Initiatives
– Policymakers responded to links between
violence depicted in media and real life
aggression
– Public statements of support for family-
oriented, less-violent media content

There is a reluctance to pass laws

regarded as censorship

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 6-31

Table 6-3: The Best and Worst

of TV: Do you agree?
Shows from the 2005-2006 prime-time schedule, ranked
according to violence, foul language, and sexual content

Source: Parents Television Council 2005.

© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.