Mass Media’s Influence on Society and Individuals
The People and the Mass Media
The mass media of communication is the most common way of circulating messages. It has become relevant in shaping our information, our ways of perceiving, and conceiving the world. When we talk about mass communication, we refer to radio, television, film, books, newspapers, and magazines.
A Look Through Time
The media has been present in all seasons and in all cultures. Communication is a consequence of human society, and the media, when they appeared, modified the informational and cultural horizons of society.
From Fascination to Rejection
The media explosion that occurred in the twentieth century faced different positions. Some were fascinated, and others criticized it. Those who celebrated the arrival of the media thought that everything would become more democratic. In addition, they offered the possibility of accessing both scientific information and reports, etc. Those who refused it said that the media only served to distract society and were able to manipulate its opinion.
Pioneers in the Study of Mass Communication
Theoretical approaches emerged simultaneously in the United States, with Mass Communication Research, and in Germany, with the Frankfurt School.
Mass Communication Research (MCR) formed the first flows of communication research. It was influenced by behaviorist psychology (human behavior as a response to environmental stimuli). The members of the Frankfurt School linked these problems to problems covering an entire society as a whole. Its main influences were Marxism and Freud’s psychoanalytic theory.
The Hypodermic Needle
During the 1920s, the large-scale dissemination of mass communication included increased propaganda actions by governments and political parties. It played a key role in the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. The underlying idea is that media messages are received uniformly by every member of the public, and that immediate and direct responses are triggered by these stimuli.
The Hypothesis of Persuasion
Psychologists said that a stimulus is not always associated with a response. They sought to discover which were the optimal organizational forms so that messages could effectively serve as elements of persuasion.
Theories of Limited Impact
The effects of the messages are strongly determined by the individual’s social context and their working groups. For example, when Roosevelt was elected president, people’s votes were defined by religion, socioeconomic status, and place of residence. It is conceivable that the communication process is always inscribed in a network of social relations. Personal communication is more influential than mass communication.
New Trends
Since the 1960s and the expansion of television, some researchers have once again raised the idea that the mass media has important effects on people. They were devoted to studying the influence that exists in the media in organizing a certain idea of the world in which we live. They focused on the cognitive aspect from the very beginning.
Frankfurt School
This German school of theory proposed to produce a general character that might explain the situation in the twentieth century, especially during the war. Theorists of this school saw that in mass society, critical reason (illustrated) had given way to instrumental reason, which contributed to the manipulation of people to make them functional to the capitalist system.