MCM 733 – Communication
Theory
Chapters 1 & 2
Understanding and Evaluating MC Theory
Four Eras of MC Theory
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Overview
– Informed citizens?
• Satire
•…
• Fox News
– Is there a science of the behaviour? Cognition?
Sociality?
– Why is the link between the above and
communication so complicated?
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Defining & Redefining Mass Comm
– Very divergent theoretical perspectives
• Cognitive science … social theory… humanism
• Grand theories (TOE’s) vs. specific ones
– Mass Comm: “when an organization employs a
technology as a medium to communication with a
large audience.”
– Does this fit with Web 2.0: Facebook? Google?
iPhone? Lulu.com? Youtube? Reddit? Dig.com? Etc.?
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Mediated communication: a continuum from
interpersonal comm (eg. iPhone) to mass
comm (eg. CBC).
– Hotness/coolness determines placement on this
continuum (McLuhan)
– New Information & Communication Techs (ICTs)
enable audiences to be active and engaged. (eg.
myspace, flikr)
– “Knowledge Flow” is the new “Knowledge Capital”
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Science & Human Behaviour
– Physical scientists capture “positive” truths: they
uncover the laws of nature.
– Social and cognitive scientists construct
“representational models” or “snapshots” of the
social world.
– Social neuroscience may prove to be an exception
to this.
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Why does the public not trust socsci the same
as phys sci?
– We don’t like the thought that we are predictable
– We like to think of ourselves as mysterious
– We don’t like accepting that there are causal
relationships in the social.
– We prefer to think of things relativistically.
– Relativism may feel empowering, but it is a false
friend.
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Why do scientists have trouble accepting
“social science” as scientific?
– It is difficult to establish:
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Strong causal relationships
Replicability of findings
Falsification
Cumulative nature of findings
People don’t grow up in controlled environments
– The “social” and the “cultural” are moving targets
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Four Reasons for the Desert of the Real:
1. Most of the significant and interesting forms of
human behaviour are quite difficult to measure
2. Human behaviour is exceedingly complex
3. Humans have goals and are self-reflexive
4. The simple notion of causality is sometimes
troubling when it is applied to ourselves
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Defining Theory
– “Any organized set of concepts, explanations and
principles of some aspect of human experience.”
(Littlejohn/Foss, 2008)
– Comm theories are tricky:
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Many of them
Variably testable
Situationally based
Seem contradictory and chaotic
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Four major categories of comm theory:
– Postpositivism, Hermeneutics, Critical theory,
Normative theory
• They differ in their view of :
– Goals
– Ontology: the nature of reality, of what is knowable
– Epistemology: how knowledge is created and
expanded
– Axiology: how values figure in research and theory
building
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Axiology
– Values have a variable place in mass comm theory.
– Postpositivists attempt to eliminate them
• they cherish epistemic values: high values in R/D
• They also confront non-epistemic values (emotion, morals, ethics)
– Interpretivists wrestle with the proper application of
values through understanding of self and society.
Sometimes they “bracket” their values.
– Normativists and critical theorists embrace values but
have to be careful to not allow values to turn into bias or
beliefs. They need the “sanity check” of strong epistemic
values.
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Postpositivist theory
– Positivism: knowledge can only be gained through
empirical, observable, measurable phenomena
examined through the scientific method
– Post-positivism: all of the above + the fact that
humans are not deterministic and constant in the
same way gravity (Dennet)
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Hermeneutic Theory
– No wish to explain, predict, control social behaviour
– Wish to understand how and why that behaviour occurs in
the social world
– Hermeneutics: the study of understanding, especially
through the systematic interpretation of texts and actions.
– Social hermeneutics: how those in an observed social
situation interpret their own lot in that situation
– “Texts” are writ large: any product of social interaction
– Relies on “subjective epistemology” the researcher as
“interacting with the community” (cognitivism – Pinker)
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Critical Theory
– Know the social world so that you can change it
– Openly political: challenges existing way sof organizing
social world and the people and institutions that exert
power within it
– By reorganizing society we can give priority to the
“most important” social values
– “are concerned with how power, oppression, privielge
are the products of certain forms of communication
throughout society” (Littlejohn/Foss, 2008)
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Critical Theory (cont.) …
– Knowledge is only useful when it is used to free the
oppressed
– The “real” the “knowable” are the product of the
interaction between structure (political and social
organization of the world) and agency (how humans
behave and interact in the world).
– Reality is simply the product of the dialectic (struggle)
between the two. Control the struggle and you control
reality.
– Emancipated people have taken control of the
struggle
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Normative Theory
– Postpositivism and hermeneutics are
representational.
– Critical theory is non-representational it focuses on
struggle.
– Normative media theory is neither: it sets an ideal
standard against which the operation of a given media
system should operate to conform/realize an ideal set
of social values
– Ontology: the real is situational
– Epistemology: comparativist
– Axiology: Value-laden
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Evaluating Theory: Postpositivism
– How well does it explain the event, behaviour or
relationship?
– How well does it predict future events,
behaviours, relationships?
– How testable is it?
– How parsimonious is it?
– How practical or useful is it?
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Evaluating Theory: Hermeneutics
– How much new insight into the event, behaviour
or relationship does it offer?
– How does it clarify the values inherent in the
interpretation, not only embedded in the object,
but of the researcher?
– How much support does it generate among other
researchers?
– How much aesthetic apeal does it have?
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Evaluating Theory: Critical Theory
– All of the hermeneutic questions plus these :
• How useful is the critique of the status quo?
• How effective is it in providing a critique of elite power?
• Does the theory enable individuals to oppose elite
definitions of the social world?
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Evaluating Theory: Normative Theory
– How stable and definitive are the ideal standards
of operation against which the media system
under study will be measured?
– What and how powerful are the economic, social,
cultural and political realities surrounding the
actual operation of a system that must be
considered in evaluating its performance?
– How much support do other researchers lend it?
Understanding & Evaluating…
• Mass comm theory is really:
• …
• Mass comm theories
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Convergence is a buzzword (Googlezon)
• However, convergence also entails
“reorganization” and “profound change” in
society, culture, economics, politics and even
cognition.
• Technology evolves in a continuum
• New media and AI have expanded our
consumer choices, but also reshaped our
social and cognitive landscape
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• We will take a “historical” look at the evolution of
mass comm theory
• Social, cognitive and even physical/mathematical
theories are the product of the metaphors we live
by (George Lakoff).
• New theories respond to old ones, the change is
jerky, and chronologically unstable
• Social theories are the product of people and
they are dynamic. They flow through collective
consciousness like water, filling gaps and eroding
the banks of society and cognition. (epigenetics)
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• We will survey the following four eras:
– Era of Mass Society & Mass Culture
– Era of Limited Effects
– Cultural Perspectives Challenge Limited Effects
– Meaning-Making Perspectives on Media
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Era of Mass Society & Mass Culture
– Move to urban environments, growth of print media
that produced cheap, accessible newspapers
– Some theorists were optimists: more info, better
citizens
– Most were pessimists: industrialization was a
disruptive force, detaching people from the land to
objectify them as workers in factories, mines or
bureaucracies.
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Era of Mass Society & Mass Culture (Cont.)
• Mass Society theory is based on nostalgia
– For a rural time
– A golden age
• Every generation has a version of the Mass Society theory
when it feels threatened
• Politically, Mass Society theory is embraced by both Left
and Right
• Theories held interest of social elites (Left or Right) who
felt threatened by change (eg. penny press and yellow
journalism)
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Science leads to “limited effects” theory
– Paul Lazarsfeld began to empirically study
communication and society (eg. surveys and field
experiments to understand and solve social
problems).
– He argued that while empiricism was primordial, it
was important to not fall into pure modeling or
descriptivism
– Important finding: rather than being shaped by media,
researchers found that people developed ways to
resist media influence (eg. religion, family, friends)
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Science leads to “limited effects” theory (cont)
– Limited Effects: Media tend to reinforce social
trends and strengthen rather than threaten the
status quo. So existing trends are amplified
through the media.
– This gave media a very limited role in the lives of
individuals
– These theories tend to be labeled “Administrative
theories” (i.e. help improve organizations) and
their research “Administrative Research.”
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Science leads to “limited effects” theory (cont)
– Elite pluralism: blended limited effects notions with
social and political theory
• Democratic society is made up of interlocking pluralistic
groups led by opinion leaders who rely on media for info
about the world
• Leaders are active and engaged, but followers are apathetic
– By the mid-60s communication scientists stopped
looking for media effects. The problem was they were
looking in the WRONG PLACE (i.e. the rise of cognitive
neuroscience)
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Cultural Theory Challenge Limited-Effects
– Europeans had to find a way of processing the WW II.
– Euros skeptical about scientific approaches: accused
them of reductionism. This trend was linked to antiAmericanism
– Rise of the Neo-Marxists
• Media enable dominant social elites to creat and maintain
their power
• Mass media is a battleground where elites attempt to
convince the oppressed to accept being dominated
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Cultural Theory Challenge Limited-Effects …
– British Cultural Studies (based on Neo-Marxism)
• Discovered that people resisted hegemonic ideas in
media and propagated alternative interpretations of
the social world
• Hegemony: manufacturing consent without coercion
• Cultural theory began as a deterministic model (i.e.
media have direct big effects) but eventually
established itself as a non-scientific competitor to
limited effects model
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Meaning-Making Perspectives on Media
– Limited effects models have changed considerably
• Influenced by cultural theories but also by new ICTs
– Framing theory: expectations of the social world
to make sense of the social world).
– Media Literacy: the ability to access, analyze,
evaluate and communicate media messages
– Active audiences use media content to create
meaningful experiences
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Meaning Making Perspectives on Media
– Media effects are now acknowledged to be long
term
– Levels of Analysis: where the researcher focuses
will influence the scope of the impact of the
research
– Macroscopic: sociocultural effects
– Microscopic: individual effects
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• Meaning-Making Perspectives on Media
– Limited effects denied that advertising could have
sociocultural effects
– This enables advertisers, politicians and gov’ts to
claim innocence “we are just tapping into existing
social trends”, “we are just giving the audience
what it wants”.
– Critical and cognitive effects should constrain
advertising, if these effects are real (eg. we don’t
eat things that are poisonous).
Four Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• New Frontiers:
– The Mind/Brain: the future of communication
theory is not socio-cultural. It is cognitive and
neuroscientific.
– A whole new world of AI-inspired technologies are
changing EVERYTHING in our lives.
– Knowledge is being transferred to machines
– We are beginning to understand the interplay
between experience and the biology of our brains
Five?!? Eras of Mass Comm Theory
• A Fifth Era: Cognitive Science of Media &
Information
– Cognitive science and neuroscience will
completely reshape the field.
– Why: the new ICTs are mostly the result of
findings from cognitive science (eg. Bots, neural
networks, intelligent search, catered advertising,
neurofocus).
– Media is being modeled on the human
mind/emotions/perceptions/senses.