MC101: PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATION
SULAY JALLOH
1
PERSPECTIVES ON
MASS COMMUNICATION
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DEFINITION:
In is simplest form, the functional approach holds that something is best
understood by examining how it is used. In mass communication, this
means examining the uses that audiences make of their interactions with
the media
ADVANTAGES:
1. it provides us with a perspective from which to examine mass
communication
2. it generates concepts that are helpful in understanding media
behavior
3. it makes us aware of the diversity of gratifications provided by the
media
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The Macro analytic View
uses mass media)
(the wide-angle view, or how society
MC101: PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATION
SULAY JALLOH
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1) Surveillance: (informative role) Refers to role media plays in
relaying news and information.
 Warning surveillance (beware-of-threats): occurs when the
mass media warns us about impending dangers such as storms,
economic declines, military threats, etc.; also used to warn of longterm dangers such as diseases, pollution, population growth, etc.
 Instrumental surveillance: information that is useful and helpful
in everyday life such as movie schedules, stock quotes, sports
scores, fads, new products, how-to pieces, etc.
Note also that not all examples of surveillance occur in the news media;
instrumental surveillance often comes from a wide variety of other
media sources.
Class Discussion: What are some of the consequences of relying on
the mass media to perform this surveillance function?
Consequences of relying on mass media surveillance:
1. News (accurate accounts as well as mistaken ones) travels further
and faster than ever.
2. News of events comes to us second-hand and is usually not
personally verifiable; as such, we’ve come to place our trust in
media credibility.
3. Sometimes media content can inadvertently harm society such as
in the Y2K bug scare. These harmful or negative consequences are
called media dysfunctions.
4. Being featured by the mass media may give individuals or issues
status conferral, a belief by the audience—justified or not—that
simply being featured is a sign of importance.
MC101: PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATION
SULAY JALLOH
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2) Interpretation: (viewpoint role) Refers to role media plays in giving
meaning and significance to events.
Gatekeepers provide
interpretations, comments, analysis, and opinions on various events so as
to give the audience a better understanding of the event’s relative
importance to society.
Class Discussion: What are the consequences of the mass media
performing this function?
Benefits of the media’s interpretation function:
1. Audiences are exposed to a wider range of often contrasting
viewpoints
2. Allows us to weigh all sides of an issue before deciding on our
position
3. Gives us a greater depth of expertise upon which to draw
conclusions
Potential dysfunctions of the media’s interpretation function:
1. Media content or positions may receive adverse reactions from
special-interest groups
2. No guarantee that how the media interprets something is accurate
or valid
3. Individuals could become overly dependent on media
interpretation and lose the ability to analyze situations or think for
themselves
MC101: PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATION
SULAY JALLOH
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3) Transmission of Values: (socialization function) Refers to ways
in which an individual comes to adopt the behavior and values of a
group. Individuals exposed to media portrayals of certain types of
behavior and value systems are likely to grow up and accept them as
their own, and thus pass along these values from one generation to
another.
Class Discussion: What are the consequences of the mass media
performing this function?
Consequences of the media’s socialization function:
1. Helps stabilize society by creating common bonds between
members in terms of shared values and experiences
2. Large organizations have enough media clout to set or encourage
their version of the status quo
3. The media can also transmit values by enforcing social norms
TV and socialization:
1. Of all mass media, television has the greatest potential for
establishing common social values
2. TV serves as a source of knowledge (accurately or not) about
occupations and role models
4) Linkage:
(connective role) Brings together various elements of
society in terms of common interests, usually matching wants with
needs, e.g., buyer with seller; dating services; lost and found; Internet
outlets such as e-Bay, Web MD, chat rooms, newsgroups.
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SULAY JALLOH
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5) Entertainment: (diversionary role) the importance of this media
function has grown proportionately to the rise in our collective leisure
time, and we are spending increasing amounts of that leisure time being
passively entertained by all forms of the mass media.
Class Discussion: What are the consequences of the mass media
performing this function?
Consequences of the entertainment function:
1. Most entertainment content is designed to appeal to the lowest
common denominator of taste.
2. Being passively entertained may inhibit our ability to actively
entertain ourselves
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The Micro analytic View (the close-up view, or how individuals
use mass media)
At the individual level, the functional approach is called the uses-andgratifications model. This model holds that audience members have
certain needs or drives that are satisfied by using both non-media and
media sources. The “media” uses are generally broken down into four
categories:
1. cognition
2. social utility
3. diversion
4. withdrawal
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1) Cognition: The process of coming to know something, which is
closely parallel to the surveillance function. On the individual level,
cognition has two common motivators:
1. keeping up with current events
2. learning about something out of self interest or desire
2) Diversion: Using the media to “get away from it all” can stem
from several common needs; they
include the need for stimulation, relaxation, and emotional release.
 Stimulation: Satisfies a basic human need for emotional and
intellectual mental activities.
 Relaxation:
Satisfies our need to escape from sensory
overload; note that media content is not the defining characteristic
factor here, since virtually any media material might be used for
relaxation by various individuals.
 Emotional release: Satisfies an individual’s complex need for
emotional catharsis, generally by creating a vicarious participation
in, or emotional empathy with, a media-based situation (fictional
or otherwise).
3) Social Utility:
This function helps satisfy our need to better
affiliate with others, generally by using the mass media as a common
denominator of experience. Social utility can manifest itself in several
forms, the two most common being:
Conversational currency: Provides a common base of information and
experiences in which to share with others.
Parasocial relationships: develop when individuals create a one-sided
relationship with media characters (fictional or not).
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4) Withdrawal:Media used to create a barrier or buffer zone between
other people or activities.
Content and Context: It’s important to remember that it’s not only
the media content that determines audience usage, but also the social
context within which the media exposure occurs. The functional
approach to studying mass media also makes several assumptions:
 Audiences take an active role in their interaction with various
media.
 The mass media compete with other sources of consumer
satisfaction.
 The uses-and-gratification approach assumes that people are aware
of their own needs and are able to verbalize them.
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Both the functional approach and the traditional effects approach rely on
empirical methods common to the social sciences. Researchers ask
people questions and count their responses.
Critical/cultural studies, by contrast, take a macro analytic perspective
that examines such concepts as ideology, culture, politics, and social
structure as they relate to the role of media in society.
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History:
Critical/Cultural studies begin in 1930s-1940s with a group of people
committed to the analytical ideas of Karl Marx; they came to be known
as the “Frankfurt School.” In general, their theory held that the best way
to understand how a society worked was to examine who controlled the
means of production that met the basic needs of the population.
In the case of mass media, the question was extended to examining who
controlled the production of cultural goods. Capitalists themselves, the
established media industry was said to be exploiting the masses by
producing formulized media content that appealed to mass audiences,
glorified capitalism, and encouraged the social status quo.
The Frankfurt School held that the culture industry helped destroy
individuality by promoting the social dominance of large corporations.
Often criticized for being pessimistic and gloomy and for
underestimating the power of the audience, the Critical/Cultural theory
nonetheless caused many mass media researchers to take a closer look at
the impact of the media industries on the political and economic life of
society.
The theory was later modified in the 1950s and 1960s by British
scholars who suggested that a mass media audience was quite capable of
taking the products of mass culture, redefining their meaning, and
creating entirely new definitions for the audience’s own purposes and
self image.
Important to the cultural studies group were the values that were
represented in the content, often being the dominant values of the ruling
class. Feminist scholars in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s , adopting
the Critical/Cultural theory, viewed inequalities of wealth and power
distribution as stemming from values steeped in a male-dominated
culture (sometimes referred to as patriarchy).
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SULAY JALLOH
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Other scholars looked instead to how communication can create,
maintain, or modify a culture by looking at communication as a ritual—
a drawing together of people who hold shared beliefs and values
(Monday Night Football, the Oprah Show, or blues concerts, for
example). Some scholars suggest we look at how cultural myths are
embodied in mass communication (a story that celebrates society’s
common themes, heroes, and origins such as in the various Star Trek
series).
The critical/cultural perspective is multidimensional and encompasses a
wide variety of topics and analysis methods. It is difficult to summarize
the important notions of such an eclectic approach, but the ones listed
below have general relevance.
CONCEPTS:
Some of the key terms used in the Critical/Cultural Theory include:
 Culture: a complex concept that refers to the common values,
beliefs, social practices, rules and assumptions that bind a group of
people together.
 Text: broadly defined, text is the object of analysis, such as TV
program content, films, ads, or other non-traditional categories
such as T-shirts, video games, and dolls.
 Meaning: interpretations that audience members take away with
them from the media text.
 polysemic:
the nature of text whereby audiences can impart
different meanings to any text.
 Ideology: a set of beliefs embedded within texts, regarding social
and political themes.
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 Hegemony:
has to do with power relationships and
dominance; hegemony, however, is based not on force but instead
depends on the dominated group accepting their position as natural
and normal and believing that maintaining the status quo is in their
best interest.
Perhaps the most important point to be understood between the
functional approach to studying mass media and the cultural/critical
approach is not to highlight their differences as “better or worse” than
one another, but rather to understand that each can—and does—
contribute to a greater understanding of the relationships between mass
communication and its audience.