Mass Media

1
Mass Media Society

• Chapter 10
• Mass Media Society

2
Elitist VS Populist Values

• High art requires sophisticated taste to be
  appreciated
• Low art can be appreciated by almost everyone
• Kitsch trendy, trashy, low art
• Elitism mass media should gear to sophisticated
  audiences
• Populism mass media should seek largest
  possible audiences

3
Role of Media in Culture

• Herbert Gans created continuum
• High-culture audiences highbrow
• Middle-culture audiences middlebrow
• Low-culture audiences lowbrow
• Popular art art that tries to succeed in the
  marketplace revisionism has inherent value
• Evocative, popularization, societal unifier

4
Social Stability

• Media-induced ritual
• Evening news Competitive shopping
• Media the Status Quo
• Media Cognitive Dissonance
• Occurs when people realize their values are
  inconsistent
• Agenda-setting and Status Conferral
• Media Morality
• Private actions public morality dichotomy
  that exposes discrepancies between behavior
  values

5
Cultural Transmission

• Historical transmission communication of
  cultural values to later generations
• Contemporary transmission communication of
  cultural values to different cultures
• Diffusion of innovations process through which
  news, ideas, values, information spread
• Awareness, interest, evaluation

6
Mass Media Fundamental Change

• Human Alienation dissatisfaction with
  individual and cultural deviations from basic
  nature
• Detribalization the removal of humankind from
  natural, tribal state
• Retribalization restoring mankind to natural,
  tribal state
• Global Village instantaneous connection of
  every human being