Processes of Mass Communication

189 Pages·1972·17.901 MB·English

by  David Chaney (auth.)

Processes of
Mass Communication
DAVID CHANEY
Lecturer in Sociology, University of Durham
Macmillan Education
ISBN 978-1-349-00686-1 ISBN 978-1-349-00684-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00684-7
© David Chaney 1972
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1972 978-0-333-10086-8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, without permission.
First published 1972 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York Toro nto
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
SBN 333 10086 7
For My Parents
Contents
Preface 1X
1 Introduction 1
Part One: The 'Subjective Reality' of Mass
Communications
2 Audiences for Mass Communications 11
3 The Theory of 'Uses and Gratifications' 22
4 The Positive Study of Audiences 37
Part Two: The 'Objective Reality' of Mass
Communications
5 Introduction to the Production of Mass Communica-
tions 59
6 Public Control in the Development of two Media 65
7 Distribution and Structure 82
8 The Process of Television Production (with P. R. C.
Elliott) 97
Part Three: Meanings in Performance
9 The Analysis of Performances 115
Notes 149
Bibliography 161
Index 181
Preface
Following completion of this book further material has come to
my attention serving only to remind me of the shortcomings of
my work. The process of revision is, however, an endless task and
in this case I have felt that further revision would not substan
tially alter either any important argument or its conclusion. I
hope that the work presented here will encourage those presently
engaged in the study of processes of mass communication; will
stimulate others to see the possibilities inherent in this field of
study; and will help everybody concerned with any aspect of
mass communications to see their work in a broader perspective.
Perhaps because of the nature of the media concerned there often
seems a disproportionate emphasis on immediacy in the practice
of and research in mass communications. The book will have
succeeded if it provokes questions and discussion of the sort of
material still needed rather than encourages hasty judgements
on the nature of mass communication.
Without the active encouragement of my colleagues and
teachers at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies,
University of Birmingham, and the Centre for Mass Communi
cations Research, University of Leicester, this book would not
have been written. In particular I must mention the Directors
of these Centres, Richard Haggart and James Halloran. John
Wakeford has always helpfully encouraged and advised me from
inception to completion. I am extremely grateful to my friend and
colleague, Philip Elliott, who worked very closely with me on
Chapter 8 of this book and generally provided invaluable support
for the development of the perspective set out here. Wendy Eng
land laboured long but I suspect fruitlessly to rid the text of
unnecessary sociological jargon; to her and to all my friends and
colleagues in Hong Kong I wish to give thanks. Above all, to my
wife Judith, who tolerated and helped through all the vacillations
of a long and often painful enterprise.
'Of course objects are abstractions from processes'
(J. R. Smythies).
DAVID CHANEY
Introduction
1
One of the defining characteristics in the everyday life of many
societies is the presence of processes of mass communication such
as television, cinema, radio and newspapers, etc. So central have
these processes become to normal sources of information and
entertainment that urban-industrial life might seem inconceiv
able without mass media. Academic discussion of the quality and
characteristics of social experience has intermittently pointed to
the consequences of mass communications to endeavour to explain
many problems in contemporary societies. However, these theories
have only been tentative because a single perspective of what
mass communications mean to a society has never been agreed.1
Questions of cultural value, attitudinal effect, financial rewards
and sheer size have all seemed important, but the answers to these
and to many other questions have never given the impression of
mutual consistency, and have often been mutually contradictory.2
Some of the confusion in perspective may be resolved if two
dominant traditions are distinguished.
Tiryakian summarises one of these traditions as follows :
A common compassion animates sociologism and existentialism:
the predicament of the individual in modem society, who, cut
off from his traditional ties, has become deracinated. 8
He argues that a result of this common compassion is that both
sociologists and existentialists have been led to discuss and con
demn mass society and mass culture. The alienation of the con
temporary homogenised individual is at once highlighted and
masked by the poverty of the standardised culture, a culture that
is expressed, maintained and transmitted through the techno
logical innovations of the mass media of communication. From
this viewpoint it is but a short step to a concentration upon the
faults of the mass media. • The basis of this approach has been
the pervasive aspects of the media, and in particular a concen
tration upon distinguishing, classifying and interpreting different
1
styles of media content so that cultural readings develop from an
appreciation of the 'this-ness' of the media artefact. Richard
Hoggart has argued that this is a personal approach to mass
communications, in that they are being interpreted as expressive
groupings of symbols rather than being studied in their more
instrumental roles.5 However, it is preferable to see this approach
as impersonal, in that media and their content are being studied
independently of a particular audience.
At the core of what has been called the pessimistic view of
mass culture lies a view of the relationship between culture and
the individual which stresses the potential value of cultural arte
facts. The criticisms of mass culture pessimists do not assume
that what is popular is necessarily the lowest common denomi
nator, but rather that it fails to disturb the widest possible number.
Mass culture is therefore comprehensible, smug and safe. Some,
like Haggart, see the process of cultural standardisation as a chal
lenge that must be fought and overcome. Others, like Ernest van
den Haag, meet this process with angry resignation.6 But in both
cases the important point is that what disturbs the writers is that
it is the quality of the cultural relationship which is threatened
by industrialisation and standardisation, not a particular cultural
'effect'. Rosenberg dismisses possible beliefs that either capitalism
and/or America andjor democracy is responsible for this state
of affairs, and concludes gloomily that universally man is unpre
pared for the cultural implications of a technology of mass
communication.7
The second tradition largely consists of sociologists specifically
doing mass communications research.8 They find there is some
thing incomprehensible in discussing the quality of culture in
relation to mass media; in the majority of the research they read
and the majority of the books they write mass communications
have a completely different subject-matter. Scholarly studies of
aggressive behaviour following the viewing of violent films, de
tailed discussions of identification with models from the media
and studies of mass communications as educational aids do not
seem to bear much relation to a passionate furore over cultural
alienation.9 It is true that sensitive sociologists, in providing a
survey of communications research, will usually include a dis
cussion of mass communications and culture, but it is often little
more than an appendix, although it sometimes has the air of
illicit pleasures.10 The lack of correspondence between the pe:rs-
2
pectives of the communications researcher and the cultural pessi
mist stems from the different status they confer on the phenomena
they utilise; the former concentrates upon mass communications
as an effective rather than as an expressive relationship.
The different perspective of the communications researcher
has led increasingly to a concentration upon communications as
an agency facilitating social consensus, with the effect that media
content is not taken as a thing-in-itself, but is studied through
its interaction with the perception of the audience.11 An example
of this approach is provided by a study of the effects of a film
attempting to combat racial prejudice.12 The sociologist may well
ask, what is the point of laboriously interpreting the content of
such a film and predicting its likely effect, when an effects study
can demonstrate that a large proportion of the audience so mis
interpreted the content that the film had in fact a 'boomerang'
effect, and actually increased the prejudice of these viewers?
The communications researcher argues that the media are not
interesting as cultural things, but as the consequences of the
selective interpretations of the audience. Therefore, the researcher
must ask what people do with mass communications, and, im
plicitly, not what mass communications do to people, but rather
what people do to mass communications.
The traditions discussed, which can crudely be seen as
existential pessimism opposing a scientific optimism, both agree
on the potential importance of mass communications. Urban
industrial culture employs the facilities offered by mass media
so that they become an institutionalised element in the social
system comparable with other institutions.18 Sociologists would
conventionally speak of mass communication institutions as a
set of norms, coherently organised and capable of performing
distinct functions. Among these functions it is possible to dis
tinguish the diffusion of information about social events, provision
of role-models useful in individual and group problem-solving,
the provision of entertainment and the facility for participation
which in some cases is vicarious and is usually psychic rather
than physical. The way in which these functions are fulfilled
derives much of its character from the attributes of the media,
which include breadth, the simultaneous diffusion of perfor
mances through widely different types of social and physical
space, and speed, so that both diffusion and change are sometimes
assumed to be automatic. Breadth and speed contribute to a third
3