This document provides an overview of mass communication theory, including its evolution, key concepts, categories, and paradigms. It discusses the meaning and definitions of theory, elements of theory, categories of mass communication theory including post-positivism, hermeneutic theory, critical theory, and normative theory. It also covers paradigms in mass communication theory and the four eras of media theory: the era of mass society and mass culture; a scientific perspective leading to limited effects; competing cultural perspectives challenging limited effects; and the emergence of meaning-making perspectives.

1. Mass communication
theory –evolution
and development

2. Meaning of theory?
• The word theory came from Greek word meaning
“CONTEMPLATE”.
• Contemplate means to think deeply and at length.

3. What is theory?
• Theory is an idea to explain something, or a set of guiding principles. A set of
statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena.
• Theories helps us understand or explain phenomena we observe in social world.
• Bernard Cohen proposes that the central function of theory is to solve problems
• A theory, in contrast, is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain
things that have already been substantiated by data
• The most comprehensible thing about world is that it is comprehensible Albert
Einstein.
“A theory is a set of interrelated constructs (concepts), definitions, and propositions
that present a systemic view of a particular phenomenon by the specifying relations
between variables, with the purpose of explaining and predicting the phenomenon
• the word theory is quite variable in terms of its expression and use

4. Definition of theory
• According to MC Lean:
“Theory can be thought of as our understanding of the way things work. This allow us to always
have some theory about anything we are doing.”
• According to Kaplan (1964):
“Group of related generalizations that indicate new observations, which can be empirically
tested for the purpose of explaining or predicting.”
• According to Galtung (1985):
“ a theory is a set of assumptions structured by a relation of implication or interference.”
• Sir Karl Popper, a philosopher instrumental in shaping 20th century views of knowledge, says
“Theories are nets cast to catch what we call the world.”

5. Elements of theory
1. Idea
2. Concept
3. Construct
4. Source of knowledge ( intuition, authority,
common sense, tradition & personal experience)
5. Scientific method

6. Development in the history
of Mass Communication
DE Fleur and Ball Rokeach in 1989 point out to several important developments in the
history of mass communication
• Age of signs and signals
• Age of speech and language
• Age of writing- papyrus
• Age of printing after 15th century-Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type and printing
press in 1456
• But the age of MC was ushered by widespread distribution of newspapers (1920 radio
1940 TV)

7. Mass Media Includes
• Print media/printing press
• Electronic media ( telegraph, penny press, film, t.v)
• New media- Telematic media/ Internet

8. Definition of mass
communication theory
• “Mass communication theories are explanations and predictions of social
phenomena that attempt to relate mass communication to various aspects of
our personal and cultural lives or social systems” (Baran 374).
• Littlejohn and Foss define mass communication as “the process whereby media
organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics and the process
by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influenced by
audience”.

9. Goal of mass
communication theory
• Theory seeks to explain the effects of mass communication on society, audiences and people. These
effects can either be intended or unintended by those sending the message or messages.
• Theory seeks to explain the uses to which people put mass communication. Sometimes it is far
more useful and meaningful to study the uses as opposed to the effects. This tenets recognizes the
active role of the audience within the process of mass communication.
• Theory seeks to explain learning from the mass media. In this way theory covers most of the mass
comm study. How do audiences learn from the media? This question is still trying to be answered
definitively by communication scientists.
• Theory explains the role of mass media in shaping audience's values and opinions. Like it or not
audiences do learn from the media, they take on the views expressed in the media or seek out
media sources which agree with and reinforce their own views.

10. Categories of Mass
Communication Theory
• Scholars have identified four major categories of communication
theory
• (1) post positivism,
• (2) hermeneutic theory,
• (3) critical theory, and
• (4) normative theory—and although they “share a commitment to
an increased understanding of social and communicative life and a
value for high-quality scholarship” (Miller, 2005, p. 32), they differ in

11. Categories of Mass
Communication Theory
• Their goals
• Their view of the nature of reality, what is knowable—their
ontology
• Their view of how knowledge is created and expanded—their
epistemology
• Their view of the proper role of values in research and theory
building—their axiology

12. Post Positivism
• When communication researchers first wanted to
systematically study the social world, they turned
to the physical sciences for their model.
• Those in the physical sciences (physics, chemistry,
astronomy, and so on) believed in positivism, the
idea that knowledge could be gained only through
empirical, observable, measurable phenomena
examined through the scientific method.

13. Post Positivism
• People are not beakers of water.
• As a result, social scientists committed to the scientific method
practice postpositivist theory.
• This theory is based on empirical observation guided by the
scientific method, but it recognizes that humans and human
behavior are not as constant as elements of the physical world.

14. Post Positivism
• The goals of postpositivist theory are explanation, prediction, and
control (and in this you can see the connection between this kind
of social science and the physical sciences).
• For example, researchers who want to explain the operation of
political advertising, predict which commercials will be most
effective, and control the voting behavior of targeted citizens
would, of necessity, rely on postpositivist theory.

15. Post Positivism
• Its ontology accepts that the world, even the social world, exists apart
from our perceptions of it; human behavior is sufficiently predictable to
be studied systematically.
• Its epistemology argues that knowledge is advanced through the
systematic, logical search for regularities and causal relationships
employing the scientific method.
• That is, postpositivist find confidence “in the community of social
researchers,” not “in any individual social scientist” (Schutt, 2009, p. 89).

16. Post Positivism
• Cautious reliance on the scientific method defines postpositivism’s
axiology— the objectivity inherent in the application of the scientific
method keeps researchers’ and theorists’ values out of the search for
knowledge (as much as is possible).
• Postpositivist communication theory, then, is theory developed
through a system of inquiry that resembles as much as possible the
rules and practices of what we traditionally understand as science.

17. Hermeneutic
theory
• But many communication theorists do not
want to explain, predict, and control social
behavior.
• Their goal is to understand how and why
that behavior occurs in the social world.
• This hermeneutic theory is the study of
understanding, especially through the
systematic interpretation of actions or
texts.
• Hermeneutics originally began as the
study or interpretation of the Bible and
other sacred works.

18. Hermeneutic theory
• As it evolved over the last two centuries, it maintained its
commitment to the examination of “objectifications of the mind”
(Burrell and Morgan, 1979, p. 236), or what Miller calls “social
creations” (2005, p. 52).
• Just as the Bible was the “objectification” of early Christian culture,
and those who wanted to understand that culture would study that
text, most modern applications of hermeneutics are likewise
focused on understanding the culture of the users of a specific
text.

19. Hermeneutic theory
• There are different forms of hermeneutic theory.
• For example, social hermeneutics has as its goal the
understanding of how those in an observed social situation
interpret their own lot in that situation.
• As ethnographer Michael Moerman explained, social
hermeneutic theory tries to understand how events “in the alien
world make sense to the aliens, how their way of life coheres and
has meaning and value for the people who live it” (1992, p. 23).

20. Hermeneutic theory
• Another branch of hermeneutics looks for hidden or deep meaning in
people’s interpretation of different symbol systems—for example, in media
texts.
• As you might have guessed from these descriptions, hermeneutic theory is
sometimes referred to as interpretive theory.
• Another important idea embedded in these descriptions is that any text,
any product of social interaction—a movie, the president’s State of the
Union Address, a series of Twitter tweets, a conversation between a soap
opera hero and heroine— can be a source of understanding.

21. Hermeneutic theory
• The ontology of hermeneutic theory says that there is no truly “real,”
measurable social reality. Instead, “people construct an image of reality
based on their own preferences and prejudices and their interactions with
others, and this is as true of scientists as it is of everyone else in the social
world” (Schutt, 2009, p. 92).
• As such, hermeneutic theory’s epistemology, how knowledge is advanced,
relies on the subjective interaction between the observer (the researcher
or theorist) and his or her community.

22. Hermeneutic theory
• Put another way, knowledge is local; that is, it is specific to the
interaction of the knower and the known.
• Naturally, then, the axiology of hermeneutic theory embraces,
rather than limits, the influence of researcher and theorist values.
• Personal and professional values, according to Katherine Miller, are
a “lens through which social phenomena are observed” (2005, p.
58).

23. Hermeneutic theory
• A researcher interested in understanding teens’ interpretations
of social networking websites like Facebook, or one who is
curious about meaning-making that occurs in the exchange of
information among teen fans of an online simulation game,
would rely on hermeneutic theory.

24. Critical Theory
• There are still other scholars who do not want
explanation, prediction, and control of the social
world.
• Nor do they seek understanding of the social
world as the ultimate goal for their work.
• They start from the assumption that some
aspects of the social world are deeply flawed and
in need of transformation.
• Their aim is to gain knowledge of that social
world so they can change it.
• This goal is inherently political because it
challenges existing ways of organizing the social
world and the people and institutions that
exercise power in it.

25. Critical Theory
• Critical theory is openly political (therefore its axiology is
aggressively value-laden).
• It assumes that by reorganizing society, we can give priority to the
most important human values.
• Critical theorists study inequality and oppression.
• Their theories do more than observe, describe, or interpret; they
criticize.

26. Critical Theory
• Critical theories view “media as sites of (and weapons in)
struggles over social, economic, symbolic, and political power (as
well as struggles over control of, and access to, the media
themselves)” (Meyrowitz, 2008, p. 642).
• Critical theory’s epistemology argues that knowledge is advanced
only when it serves to free people and communities from the
influence of those more powerful than themselves.
• Its ontology, however, is a bit more complex.

27. Critical Theory
• According to critical theory, what is real, what is knowable, in
the social world is the product of the interaction between
structure (the social world’s rules, norms, and beliefs) and
agency (how humans behave and interact in that world).
• Reality, then, to critical theorists, is constantly being shaped
and reshaped by the dialectic (the ongoing struggle or debate)
between the two.

28. Critical Theory
• When elites control the struggle, they define reality (in other words, their
control of the structure defines people’s realities).
• When people are emancipated, they define reality through their behaviors
and interactions (agency).
• Some critical theorists are quite troubled by what they view as the
uncontrolled exercise of capitalist corporate power around the world.
They see media as an essential tool employed by corporate elites to
constrain how people view their social world and to limit their agency in
it.

29. conclusion
• Social theorists see postpositivist and hermeneutic theory as
representational.
• That is, they are articulations—word pictures—of some other
realities (for postpositivist, those representations are
generalizable across similar realities, and for interpretive
theorists, these representations are local and specific).
• Critical theory is nonrepresentational. Its goal is to change
existing realities.

30. Normative
Theory
• There is another type of theory, however. It may be applied to any
form of communication but is most often applied to mass
communication.
• Its aim is neither the representation nor the reformation of reality.
Instead, its goal is to set an ideal standard against which the
operation of a given media system can be judged.
• A normative media theory explains how a media system should
operate in order to conform to or realize a set of ideal social values.

31. Normative Theory
• As such, its ontology argues that what is known is situational (or, like
interpretive theory, local).
• In other words, what is real or knowable about a media system is real
or knowable only for the specific social system in which that system
exists.
• Its epistemology, how knowledge is developed and advanced, is
based in comparative analysis—we can only judge (and therefore
understand) the worth of a given media system in comparison to the
ideal espoused by the particular social system in which it operates.

32. Normative Theory
• Finally, normative theory’s axiology is, by definition, value-laden.
• Study of a media system or parts of a media system is undertaken
in the explicit belief that there is an ideal mode of operation based
in the values of the social system.
• Theorists interested in the press’s role in a democracy would most
likely employ normative theory, as would those examining the
operation of the media in an Islamic republic or an authoritarian
state.

33. Paradigms
• In general, paradigm is a whole system of thinking. Paradigm is a set
of propositions that explain how the world is perceived it contains a
world view a way of breaking down the complexity of the real world.
• Paradigms are broad theoretical formulations. They set forth sets of
postulates-assumptions that one can choose to regard as descriptions
of reality for the purpose of obtaining derived hypothesis. Such
hypotheses can then guide research on specific process and effects.

34. Paradigms
• “A paradigm is a set of beliefs, values techniques which are shared by
members of a scientific community, and which acts as a guide or map
dictating the kinds of problems scientist should address and the types of
explanation that are acceptable”. (Kuhn, 1970)
• So, paradigms includes basic assumptions, the important questions to be
answered or puzzles to be solved , the research techniques to be used and
examples of what good scientific research looks like. In other words, we can
say paradigms are different ways of looking at world- the way ways to
observe measure and understand social reality.

35. Eras of Media
• There are Four Eras of Media Theory
• The Era of Mass Society and Mass Culture
• A Scientific Perspective on Mass Communication Leads to the
Emergence of the Limited-Effects Perspective
• Ferment in the Field: Competing Cultural Perspectives Challenge
Limited-Effects Theory
• Emergence of Meaning-Making Perspectives on Media