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Mass Communication: Dilemmas for Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Rolf Meyersohn
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Extract

The relationship between social science and television has been an uncomfortable one. So “conspicuously vulgar,” so “manifestly tempting,” so “clearly a waste of time,” television's “evil effects” have been pondered by social scientists ever since the first antennas were raised on the rooftops of America and Western Europe.

Sheer quantity provides perhaps the leading cause for the concern. Much as uncontrolled births, “the problem of overpopulation,” serves as fulcrum for concern with “underdeveloped” countries and as epitome for the difficulties associated with raising levels of living, so uncontrolled television viewing, the problem of over-viewing, serves as fulcrum for concern with modern societies and as epitome for the difficulties associated with improving styles of life.

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Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Diogenes , Volume 17 , Issue 68 , December 1969, pp. 138 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 How Does a Poem Mean? (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 666.

2 "Because of their specific function in industrial society, namely as instru ments of social standardization, the mass communication media contain a poten tial for change of the processes of adjustment in society, and thereby of changes in the structure of the socio-cultural person. [This is a problem] which has not been sufficiently emphasised in the literature of mass communications research." Fernsehen und Familie (Freiburg, Verlag Rombach, 1965), p. 45.

3 The distinction between level of living and style of life derives from Jean Fourastié, Machinisme et bien-être (Paris, Editions de Minuit), 1961; trans. Theodore Caplow, The Causes of Wealth (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1960). The first refers to the structure of consumer expenditures, whether for necessities or luxuries, the second to the ways in which life is lived. Standard of living can be measured by studying patterns of monetary expenditures, style of life by studying patterns of time expenditures.

4 Joseph T. Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1961), p. 257.

5 Otto N. Larsen, "Social Effects of Mass Communication," Handbook of Modern Sociology, ed. by Robert E. L. Faris (Chicago, Rand McNally, 1964), pp. 368-369.

6 The most recent summaries include Percy Tannenbaum and Bradley Greenberg, "Mass Communication," Annual Review of Psychology, 19 (1968), pp. 351- 386; Walter Weiss, "Effects of the Mass Media of Communication," The Hand book of Social Psychology, 2nd ed., edited by Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley), vol. 5 [in press]; and Larsen, op. cit., pp. 348-381.

7 For a recent discussion of this development, see Melvin De Fleur, Theories of Mass Communication (New York, McKay, 1966) esp. pp. 119-140.

8 Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1954).

9 Two efforts to consider the mass media in the context of entertainment are Harold Mendelsohn, Mass Entertainment (New Haven, College and University Press, 1966) and William Stephenson, The Play Theory of Mass Communication (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1967).

10 The Social Construction of Reality (London, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1967), p. 88.

11 Ibid., p. 88.

12 Ibid., p. 88.

13 This process has been studied in the context of shifting opinion leaders. See W. N. McPhee and R. Meyersohn, "New Opinion Leaders in Rural Le banon," in Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1958), pp. 185-196, for an early effort to trace shifts; see Everett M. Rogers Modernization Among Peasants (New York, Holt, Rinhart & Winston, 1969) for the most recent and thorough examination.

14 This discussion is based on Fritz Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (Princeton, N. J., Princeton Univ. Press, 1962).

15 Ibid., p. 21.

16 Ibid., pp. 21-22.

17 Because of the vast number of hours during which television programs are transmitted, television, despite its large emphasis on pastime knowledge, consti tutes a very important medium for the transmission of intellectual knowledge. Using somewhat different criteria, Bernard Berelson [in "In the Presence of Cul ture," Public Opinion Quarterly, 28:1 (Spring, 1964), pp. 1-12] estimates that Americans spend almost one hundred million hours per month watching cultural programs on commercial television; according to him, this constitutes 22% of their cultural intake.

18 Such a framework has not yet been developed by sociologists. An effort has been made by Bennett Berger ["The Sociology of Leisure: Some Suggestions," Industrial Relations, I:2 (February, 1962), pp. 31-45] to consider leisure (includ ing the mass media) in terms of its moral content and to find out the extent to which these activities are more important than work, are desired for their own sake, are endowed with ethical obligations.

19 Fiction and the Unconscious (New York, Vintage Books, 1962), p. 5.

20 See note 17 above.

21 Larsen, "Social Effects," p. 358.

22 "Social Structure and Anomie," Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1957), pp. 121-160.

23 "Popular Culture in America," Social Problems edited by Howard S. Becker (New York, Wiley, 1966), p. 552.

24 One-Dimensional Man (Boston, Mass., Beacon Press, 1966), p. 10.

25 Eros and Civilization (Boston, Mass., Beacon Press, 1955), p. 97.

26 "The mass-media created world is a public one merely in appearance; but the integrity of the private sphere as well… is illusionary…" Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Neuwied, Luchterhand, 1962), p. 189.

27 Gesammelte Werke, XIV Band (London, Imago, 1940), pp. 326-331. Trans. W. D. Robson-Scott, The Future of an Illusion (London, Hogarth, 1953), pp. 8-16.

28 "Because collective wish-fulfilment phantasies are not private but lead a disembodied existence, removed from criticism, on the level of public communi cation, they are developed into interpretations of the world and are employed as rationalizations of the power structure. Freud calls this the ‘psychical sphere of culture': religious world-images and rites, ideals and value systems, styles and art products, the world of projective representations and of objective appearances; in short, of ‘illusions.'" Erkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1968), p. 339.

29 The Human Perspective in Sociology (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 186-191.

30 By Arthur Vidich and Joseph Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society (Gar den City, N. Y., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958).

31 Ibid., pp. 319-320.

32 Bruyn, Human Perspective, p. 190.

33 Peter McHugh, Defining the Situation (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), p. 132.

34 Harold Garfinkel, "Common Sense of Social Structures," Studies in Ethno methodology (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 76-115.

35 Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, "Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction," Psychiatry, 19 (1956) 215-224.

36 Ex., person who are downward in social mobility have been found to watch more ‘escapist' programs on television. See Leonard Pearlin, " Social and Personal Stress and Escape Television Viewing," Public Opinion Quarterly, 23:2 (Summer, 1959), pp. 225-259.

37 Saxon Graham, "Cultural Compatibility in the Adoption of Television," Social Forces, 33:2 (December, 1954), pp. 166-170. See also Rolf Meyersohn, "Social Research in Television," Mass Culture, ed, by B. Rosenberg and D. M. White (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1957).

38 This discussion is based on a re-analysis of material reported in Gary Steiner, The People Look at Television (New York, Knopf, 1963). Cf., Rolf Meyersohn, "Television and the Rest of Leisure," Public Opinion Quarterly, 32:1 (Spring, 1968), pp. 102-112; and "Differential Standards in Judging Deprivation and Excess," forthcoming.

39 Georg Simmel, "Fashion," American Journal of Sociology, 62: 6 (May, 1957), pp. 541-558.

40 Stuart Hall, in "The Role of Cultural Programmes on British Television," Report for UNESCO prepared by Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Birmingham, England), unpublished.