Compendium of theory of the communication

 2. History, theories and currents of media 

 2.1. The existing relation between culture, society and mass media 

K.E. Rosengren in “Introduction under consideration of the communication” emphasizes that: The massmedia they are important socialization agencies because they transfer the culture from the level of the society to that one of the individual.

In how many agencies of socialization, the modern ones massmedia possess various only characteristics:

• they act for various hours to the day, practically every day of the year, and catch up all potentially the members of the society;
• they potentially offer to a flow infinitely of entertainment and information;
• they establish the agenda of the political, economic and cultural debate;
• they supply one formal and oriented socialization to the education;
• they contribute to conserve the existing structures of the power and, at the same time, they prepare the land for the vital processes of change for every modern, industrial and postindustrial society, and probably for all the postmodern societies.
  (Rosengren, 2001, p.164)

It comes defined produced contained culture of mass the typical one and diffused from the mass media of mass and that it goes distinguished is from the high culture produced from the cultural élite ones, it is from the culture of the folclore, traditionally produced within rural or inferior classes (McQuail, 1993, p.46).

The mass culture can consider deriving of some nearly unavoidable processes of the modern society: the increase of the market; the supremacy of the organization on a large scale, the availability of new technologies for the cultural production (Bauman, 1972).

The mass media of mass (print, cinema, radio, television, etc) have colonized the other cultural shapes until constituting one new cultural tipologia.

Denis McQuail in the book “the mass communications” exposes some characteristics to us of the institution of the mass media:

• He is connected to the production and the distribution of the “acquaintance” under shape of information, ideas, culture…
• He supplies channels by means of which some persons enter in contact with others: issuing with receiving, members of the audience with other members of the audience, everyone of they with the society and the institutions that constitute it…
• The media operates nearly exclusively in the public sphere: they constitute an institution opened to which all can participate like receiving and, in determined conditions, also like issuing…
• The participation to the institution as member of the audience is essentially voluntary, without one constriction or a obligation social…
• The institution is connected to the industry and at the market, through its dependancy from the force job, the technology and the necessity of financings.
• Although of for himself it deprives of being able, the institution variously is connected to the power be them by means of some of its uses accustoms them and through mechanisms legittimanti lawyers and ideologies…
  (McQuail, 1993, p. 50)

The mass media of mass give the possibility to know the contours of the symbolic atmosphere within which it is lived, rendering it more individuals common that they reach therefore to a degree of common perception of the truth.

Moreover the mass media stop a role of mediation between the objective social truth and the personal experience, integrating the direct perception of the truth.

According to Thompson (1998) the term “mass” appears misleading because it induces to imagine an immense public, while the public of technical means of communication can be circumscribed and be specialized.

For Thompson the term “mass communication” is to indicate simply that the products of the communication are accessible in principle to one pluralità of adressees.

Moreover the term mass, for Thompson, appears unsuitable in how much induces to think next to the adressees of the mediali products like to watching passes to you and acriti (Thompson, 1998 to us, pp.41-43).

For Thompson the “mass communication” indicates “the institutionalized production and the spread generalized of symbolic goodses through the fixation and the symbolic transmission of information and contents (Thompson, 1998, p.44).

Thompson thinks that they are five elements, mainly, to characterize the mass communication:

• the technical and institutional means of production and spread;
• the mercificazione of the symbolic shapes;
• the structural separation between production and reception;
• extended accessibility of the products of the media in the time and the space;
• the public circulation of mediated symbolic shapes.
  (Thompson, 1998, p.44)

Thompson (1998, p.122-129), in order to examine the various produced types of relation from the use of the mass media, proposes one distinction between three types of interaction:

• the interaction makes face, that it is carried out in a compresenza context (in which a common system of reference is shared space-thunderstorm), and that it assumes the characteristic of the dialogicità;
• the mediated interaction, than is carried out with the aid of technical means, between far individuals in the space and/or the time, limiting the series of symbolic addresses on hand of the participants;
• nearly the mediated interaction, that it concurs to exchange symbolic contents between far participants in the space and/or the time, second a unidirectional flow of communication, turned to with of receiving upgrades them indefinite.

In the event of nearly the mediated interaction the social differences between receiving affect the ways in which these rapportano to the messages that they receive and on the way with which they interpret them and them intergrano in the own life.

They can however to have place sets in action of answer concerted, than they are taken place when the individuals react in a similar way to mediated events.

An important consequence of the development of the telecommunicationses has been the reorganization of the space and the time that has produced above all as a result of the discovery of the despazializzata simultaneità.

In fact currently the individuals experience according to new modalities the characteristics space-thunderstorms of the social life.

A sense of the mediated storicità has been created, for which the our learning of the events of the past it comes put molding on from the mediale industry.

As McQuail (2001 says, p.76) “the information, images and ideas rendered available from the mass media can be for the majority of people the principal source of a conscience of a collective past (history) and of it it puts into effect them social position”, until coming to constitute one true and own map of our identity.

We are in presence of a mediation of the contact with the social truth, than ago yes that relationships are created, mediated from the mass media, plus weak people of the directed personal ties.

“The new technology, in fact, can carry to revolutionary changes where the intermediation replaces or integral the process of mediation” (McQuail, 2001, p.78).

Our perception of the space and our sense of belongings are changed also: we at least partially belong in fact to community and groups constituted from the media.

The world today more is contracted, since has gone modifying the sense of the distance (Thompson, 1998, pp.50-58).

Rosengren supports that:

For approximately cinquant'anni, two guidelines have dominated the scene of the communication research: the so-called theory of the uses and gratifications, focused on the use characterizes them of the massmedia, and the search on the effects, concentrated on the effects to short and in the long term that the use of the massmedia produces on the individual. (Rosengren, 2001, p.164)

For Rosengren (2001) five processes are had by means of which the content of the massmedia catches up and influences the individuals and the groups:

• the information dissimation (that it acts in terms of hours and days) is the process with which the sources of the massmedia they collect and they diffuse the news to the population;
• the agenda setting (that it acts in terms of weeks and months) is the process with which the massmedia they communicate to the members of the society which are the arguments on which reflecting;
• the spiral of Hush (that it acts in terms of months and years) is the process that determines asserting itself of opinions and discapito “corrected” points of view to of the inusuali points of view, that they come vieppiù taciuti until disappearing from the conversations;
• the search on the cultivation (that it acts in terms of years and decades) is the process with which the common culture of a society comes strengthened from the massmedia between all the members of the same society;
• the Offentlichkeit to the Habermas (that it acts in terms of decades and centuries) is the idea of public sphere that rests on general the social acquaintance, it comes modeled from the social institutions, and is correlated to the cultural climate.

The content of the massmedia catches up and influences the individuals to second of the modalities of gate-keeping and the level of accessibility puttinges in action

Gate-keeping (the selection of news to work of the “porter”) is the function that determines the passage or less of the information to the ends of one elaboration to a successive level.

Accessibility is the possibility or less than to have approached the massmedia and the information and therefore of being able to influence and to participate to the collective decisions.

 2.2. The teorizzazione of the media 

As J. Bourdon in “Introduction to the media” says:

The media has been object of a literature that we will define “profetica”, to the confluence between philosophy and saggistica… … the term theory can be used in order to characterize the “theories of medium range”, like has calls to them a sociologist, Robert Merton: insiemi of hypotheses destined to render account of a phenomenon or of one category of phenomena, inside of a scientific discipline, without to expect in its entirety of being valid for the discipline. (Bourdon, 2001, p.18)

It can be spoken about search traditions in case this type of theories has resistito to repeated verifications empiricists.

The great theories, about which Bourdon speaks, represent of the idealtipi, not existing intellectual models really, but that they allow to orient themselves, to classify and to render the truth intelligible.

The authors can place themselves in the several currents, but never with the characteristic of exclusive feature.

Bourdon, in distinguishing the several currents, characterizes a profetico pole and a scientific pole.

According to McQuail the associate-scientific theory has meant to relatively deal mainly three issues to the activity of the systems of public communication in the society: the exercise of the power in the society, social integration and the social change (McQuail, 1993, p.68).

The scientific pole can be subdivided in one current empiricist and one critical current.

The current empiricist refuses the powerful idea of media and values the active role of the public, it is recalled to the funzionalista sociological tradition and is optimistic and pluralistic on the political plan.

Independent organizations and professionals are consider you respect the interests economic-politi us which they are legacies.

Strongly influential the critical current on the contrary considers the media on the public and making part of a total process of social domination in the capitalist societies.

To the inquiries on the public the analyzes of documents produced from the media and the survey of the orders owners and being able inside of the organizations are preferred.

Recently the investigators have been influence you from the microsociological currents, plus relativiste on the effects and that rinunciano to one total political appraisal.

The profetiche currents are protect from theirs not verifiability, speak about the future and foretell the effects produced from the media, approaching themselves the critical current as far as the infuence attributed from they to the media, approvals like powerful.

The profetiche currents can be subdivided in currents of optimists and utopisti and currents of elitist pessimists and.

The utopisti, often journalists, have of time in exalted time the ability to the media to establish or to re-establish the political or cultural democracy.

The elitist ones emphasize the traditional, minority and elitaria culture, that they consider threatened from the media.

The profetiche currents are distinguished also for the type of privileged explanation.

They are joined considering the man svincolato from the social ties.

The technological determinism considers that every single half technological it can produce precise effects.

The thesis of the massificazione considers the isolated individual like in the mass, that it becomes the place prince of the action of the media.

Draft of the more pessimistic thesis, and is near the elitismo.

 2.3. The different you approach under consideration of the media 

 2.3.1. The theory of the massificazione 

According to its theorists, the massificazione disintegrates and destroys the society and its cultural inheritance.

The masses are seen like credule and manipulable.

McQuail reminds to us that:

The theory of the mass society assigns to a pre-eminent role to the mass media in producing a mass society and in supporting it, and a lot is stopped on the idea for which the media they offer a vision of the world, a substitute or one pseudo-atmosphere, that it is a powerful one half of manipulation in the comparisons of the individuals, but also an aid to their psychical survival in difficult conditions. (McQuail, 1993, p.74)

According to the theory of the mass society, an infuence of the apex exists on the base and the media filter and control function carries out one.

Mills (1956) emphasizes that a undemocratic control practices from above, that gives little possibilities of retort.

Lasswell uses the metaphor of the ipodermico needle to indicate that the media represents one risen of injection that addormenta the individuals.

Ciacotin explains with the comportamentismo the fact that the individuals can come condition to you.

Therefore as the agitator manipulates the crowd, the media manipulates the mass.

The public comes instead seen in a more positive meaning, in how much exists in it an integration feeling.

The media acts for suggestion, from the metaphor of the ipnosi in order to mean the manipulation carried out through the media here.

For Bon rising of submission instinct exists that is typical of the crowds.

Ellul distinguishes between liberal western the sociological propaganda of the media, that propaga a style of life with the consent of the social group, and the political propaganda, practiced deliberately the political power to the aim to model the opinions.

For Debord the show constitutes the model of social dominant life and is the affirmation of one chosen already operated in the productive within.

Bourdon emphasizes the many critics who come made television means:

• Popper in the years Ninety denunciation the TV baby-sitter, than propina to the children it abandons to you to if same contents degenerates to you;
• Bourdieu denunciation the symbolic violence of the television, than is taken care of futili facts, rilascia contained premanifactured and is accredited;
• Sartori speaks about the burlap-child put molding on since small from the television in order to become homo videns ET insipiens.

Baudrillard denunciation the “iperealtà”, produced from the communication electronic, in which it is risked to cancel the difference between real world and mediated image.

The facts come replaced from the simulation of the media.

For Vattimo, instead, the proliferation of the media has offered also to new hopes of emancipation, generating one vision of the more pluralistic truth.

The important problem is but that one of the erosion of the truth principle.

The British tradition denunciation the threat that the mass culture makes to weigh on the élite culture of.

The traditional high culture comes submitted to objects to you trades them.

Also the contemporary educational system comes considered enslaved to the industry of the divertimento.

Therefore Bloom and Finkielkraut think to it.

Some decidedly more optimistic positions are had also.

For Shils the mediatica transformation goes less in favor of the picked ranks.

Friedmann makes to correspond to the extension of the free time the hope of one cultural democracy.

Above all with the advent of Internet, in speaking about communication, reference to a fragmented and active public is made and the mass not more.

To cite itself at last it is the distinction that ago Echo in apocalyptic and integrated years Sixty between.

The apocalyptic ones are taken care for the spread of a culture of mass, accused of homogeneity and insufficient originality, submitted conformista and to the laws trade them.

For Ortega y Gasset this critic does not regard but the mass culture how much the same masses.

While for Dwight MacDonald the problem is that the mass culture is fertile land for authoritarian temptations.

The integrated ones speak on the contrary about popular culture.

The massmedia, seen in this optical they acquit to the task of innovation of the languages and sensibilizzazione.

Practically, the solution proposed to the massificazione seems to consist in the liberatorio use of new the media from the bottom (Enzenberger, 1970).

It is possible for the public one to sottrarsi to the manipulation and the control, in how much the infuences of group, class and subcultura or the localismi limit the manipolatorio power of the media (McQuail, 2001).

The postmodern theory is antithetic to the vision of the society of new mass and the media utopian vision of the society encourages one.

 2.3.2. The technological determinism 

The determinists emphasize the relationship that exists between the technological supports uses you for the communication and the cognitive processes you that they put themselves in action

The historian of the Innis economy (founding of the School of Toronto) has attributed the characteristic features of the ancient civilizations to the gradually dominant techniques of communication, glare of the various social shapes.

For Innis:

• the means of production and distribution of the knowledge stretch to being monopolize from a group or one to you class;
• an empire is determined from the dimensions of space or time, and therefore the mass media act mainly or on one or the other.

For Marshall McLuhan the medium is the message, that is the container influences the content and its perception.

McLuhan has subdivided the media in colds and warmth, but this its classification has not resistito to passing of the time and has spoken about total village, even if pure this partially is refuted from the facts.

On the contrary of the McLuhan optimist, Baudrillard turns out is much pessimist with its affirmation that the contents of the media are alone simulacri.

The media is exclusively means of social control.

For Ferguson (1986), the neo-technological determinism - than it is concentrated on operated the computer science and mediatica revolution from new the media - constitutes a system of sideboards that stretches to operate like one profezia that autoavvera.

 2.3.3. The current empiricist 

The main representative of this current is Lazarsfeld, that she proposes the inquiry like moment prince of the sociological job.

The empiricists are not largely support to you from the theory in the conduction of their job, that it is of fact a job on the field.

The searches on the effects of the media are placed in funzionalista perspective.

It is attempted to characterize to which functions acquits the communication process: for Lasswell to the control of the atmosphere, to the correlation of the members of the society and to the transmission of the social inheritance.

To these functions it will come later on added that one of the divertimento from Wright.

Lasswell reduces the society to a flow of mediatiche communications and comes eliminated the possibility to reach to one general theoretical synthesis.

For McQuail (1993), the acquitted main functions from the media for the society are following:

• to make information (on events, relationships of being able, innovation),
• to produce correlation (through the interpretation of the events, with the support to the authority, the socialization)
• to give continuity (expressing the dominant culture, recognizing the sottoculture and creating one comunanza of values),
• to entertain (amusing and reducing the social tension),
• to mobilitare (to the aim to catch up objects to you social).

The searches on the public demonstrate that the mass media aim at rinsaldare the attachment to the society and its values (Katz, 1973).

The funzionalista theory explains the relative phenomena you to social integration, however in a complex society more ways exist than to obtain the control and the consent.

 2.3.4. The critical current 

The critics are pessimists and refuse the technological determinism.

They assume that the individual mentally ill and is manipulated from the media.

One first citabile theory of Marxist derivation is the political-economic theory.

This theory asserts the dependancy of the ideology from an economic base and wants to empirically analyze to the structure of the property and the ways to operate of the market forces in the media (McQuail, 1993, p.76).

According to Garnham the contents veicolati from the media are subject to pressure shapes and condition to you from the economic interests of the owners (Garnham, 1979).

The School of Frankfurt develops the critical theory and elaborates the concept of cultural industry.

According to I adorn the produced fraudulent art from the media perverte and destroys authentic the popular cultures.

The needs are train and produced to you from the cultural industry from above.

The “system of production of mass of the assets, the services and the ideas had made to accept more less completely or the capitalistico system with its devozione to the technological rationality, the consumismo, the gratification of short term and the myth of the society without classes (McQuail, 1993, p.78).

Therefore the mass media had been a powerful mechanism for the control of the change.

For Marcuse the industry of the culture had created one unidimensionale society.

In the years Thirty Benjamin had already emphasized as the riproducibilità of the art work conferred them the dimension of the present time and the negation of the oneness, than it rendered cult object.

Habermas speaks instead of decline of that bourgeois public space, in which it could be discussed openly about the exercise of the power be them.

The public opinion endures the manipulation of the media and the publicity.

The theory of the hegemony of the media has concentrated on the ideology and its shapes of expression and on the mechanisms with which it is developed invading the conscience of its victims.

Althusser the church, the school and the media exercise a symbolic violence perpetuating the rappresentazioni with the consent of the individuals that are subordinates.

The ideology is a pervasiva and deliberated cultural infuence that it concurs to interpret the truth, it dominates and it imposes a reference picture.

According to the model of the hegemony, the media is subordinate to the institutions and “they diffuse one vision of the world modeled from the guideline of dominant interests” (McQuaii, 2001, p.79).

The critics study us mainly the structure of the property of electronic means, documents produced from the media and cultural imperialism.

The associate-cultural approach reveals a more positive point of view nei confronts of the mass culture, attributing equal importance to the message and the public and proposing themselves to estimate the choices and the reactions connected to the fruizione of the communication from part of the subgroups of the society.

According to the pluralistic model, élite united dominant does not exist one and “to stimulate the question they are publics differentiates to you in a position to resisting to the attempted ones you of persuasion and to answer actively to the offer of the media” (McQuail, 2001, p.80).

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