This document discusses sociological perspectives on mass media. It covers the functionalist, conflict, feminist, and interactionist perspectives. The functionalist perspective views media as entertaining, socializing, enforcing norms, conferring status, and promoting consumption. However, it can also have dysfunctional effects like numbing audiences. The conflict perspective sees media as reflecting and exacerbating social divisions through gatekeeping and promoting dominant ideologies. The feminist perspective argues media stereotype and misrepresent women. The interactionist perspective examines media in the context of how it provides social connectivity and interaction through platforms like social networks.

1. The Mass Media
6
3rd edition
Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Sociology in Modules
Richard T. Schaefer

2. Slide 2 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Sociological
Perspectives on the Media
• Mass media: mediums that embrace print
and electronic means of communication
that carry messages to widespread
audiences
• New forms of mass media changed
people’s viewing and listening habits
– Cultural convergence: flow of content
across multiple media, and the accompanying
migration of media audiences

3. Slide 3 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Functionalist Perspective
• The media:
– Entertain us
– Socialize us
– Enforce social norms
– Confer status
– Promote consumption
• May act as a desensitizing narcotic

4. Slide 4 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Functionalist Perspective
• Agent of Socialization
– The media increase social cohesion by
presenting a common view of culture
• Play significant roles in providing a
collective experience for members of society
– Some worry about using television as a
babysitter and the impact of violent
programming on viewer behavior

5. Slide 5 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Functionalist Perspective
• Enforcer of Social Norms
– Media often reaffirm proper behavior
– Can glorify disapproved behavior
– Media play critical role in human sexuality
• Conferral of Status
– Singles out one from thousands of other
people or similarly placed issues, making
them significant
• Publishing information about
frequency of Internet searches

6. Slide 6 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Functionalist Perspective
• Promotion of Consumption
– Hyperconsumerism: buying more than we
need or want, often more than we can afford
– Advertising encourages consumption
– Media advertising
• Supports economy
• Provides information
• Underwrites cost of media
• Also contributes to consumer culture that creates
“needs” and raises unrealistic expectations

7. Slide 7 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Functionalist Perspective
• Dysfunction: The Narcotizing Effect
– Narcotizing dysfunction: phenomenon in
which the media provide such massive
amounts of information that audience
becomes numb and fails to act on the
information

8. Slide 8 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Table 20-1: Status Conferred by the Media

9. Slide 9 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Figure 20-1: Branding the Globe

10. Slide 10 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Conflict Perspective
• Conflict theorists emphasize how media
reflect and exacerbate divisions of society
and world
• Gatekeeping
– How material must travel through a series of
checkpoints before reaching the public
– Gatekeeping less dominant on Internet
• Internet has some restrictions

11. Slide 11 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Conflict Perspective
• Media Monitoring
– Expanded to include monitoring individuals’
media usage and choices without their
knowledge

12. Slide 12 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Conflict Perspective
• Dominant Ideology: Constructing Reality
– Dominant ideology: set of cultural beliefs
and practices that helps maintain powerful
social, economic, and political interests
– Media tend to ignore the lives and
ambitions of subordinate groups
• Stereotypes: unreliable generalizations about
members of a group that do not recognize
individual differences within the group
• Television distorts the political process

13. Slide 13 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Conflict Perspective
• Dominant Ideology: Whose Culture?
– U.S. media is still most powerful worldwide,
though this position is evolving
– Television moving away from U.S. domination
– Nations that feel a loss of identity may
try to defend against the cultural invasion
– Developing nations argue for improved two-way
flow of news and information between industrial
nations and developing nations
– New trend: hyper-local media

14. Slide 14 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Conflict Perspective
• The Digital Divide
– Low-income groups, racial and ethnic
minorities, rural residents, and citizens of
developing countries have less access to
latest technology
– Internet and new media becoming
essential to economic progress

15. Slide 15 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Feminist Perspective
• Feminists share conflict theorists’ view
that mass media stereotype and
misrepresent social reality
– Women underrepresented
– Perpetuate stereotypical views of gender
– Emphasis on traditional sex roles
– Normalize violence against women
– Cautiously optimistic about new media

16. Slide 16 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Interactionist Perspective
• Views mass media in the context of
social capital—the collective benefit of
social networks
• Internet and social media provide constant
connectivity with others
• Online social networks
– New way of promoting consumption
– New forms of communication and social
interaction

17. Slide 17 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Interactionist Perspective
• Internet has also presented negatives
– New means for terrorists or extremists to
organize and spread message
– Pornography and abuse of minors
– Egocasting: personal management of
media exposure to avoid messages one
does not like
• May lead to less tolerant society

18. Slide 18 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Figure 20-2: Marketing Online through Social Networks

19. Slide 19 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Figure 20-3: Who’s On the Internet

20. Slide 20 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Table 20-2: Sociological Perspectives on the Mass Media

21. Slide 21 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
The Audience
• Who is in the audience?
• The segmented audience
• Audience behavior

22. Slide 22 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Who Is in the Audience?
• Mass media distinguished from other
social institutions by necessary presence
of audience
– Identifiable, finite group or a much larger,
undefined group
– Can view through microsociology or
macrosociology

23. Slide 23 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
The Segmented Audience
• Increasingly, media market themselves to
a particular audience
– Media have become so segmented, they have
taken on appearance almost of
individualization (Livingstone 2004)

24. Slide 24 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Audience Behavior
• Opinion leader: someone who,
through day-to-day personal contacts
and communication, influences opinions
and decisions of others
– Members of an audience do not
all interpret media in the same way
– Hunt (1997): race caused more different
reactions to media than gender and class

25. Slide 25 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
The Media’s Global Reach
• McLuhan predicted a global village
• Gitlin considers it a global torrent
– The Internet has facilitated all forms of
communication
– In Nigeria and Bangladesh, more than 70%
of households go without television
• Advances likely to change this pattern: battery
power; digital signal transmission

26. Slide 26 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Figure 22-1: Media Penetration in Selected Countries

27. Slide 27 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Social Policy and the Mass Media:
The Right to Privacy
• The growth of big data, or the
rapid collection and analysis of
enormous amounts of information by
supercomputers, presents a huge
challenge to personal privacy
• Is privacy a possibility in the postmodern
digital age?

28. Slide 28 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Social Policy and the Mass Media:
The Right to Privacy
• Looking at the Issue
– Recent advances made it easier for business
firms, government agencies, and criminals to
retrieve and store information about private
individuals
– Threaten privacy, freedom from crime,
and censorship
– Commercial websites use “cookies” and tracking
technology to monitor visitors’ web-surfing
• Some see online tracking as form of fingerprinting

29. Slide 29 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Social Policy and the Mass Media:
The Right to Privacy
• Applying Sociology
– Culture lag: material culture (technology)
changing faster than nonmaterial culture
(norms for controlling the use of technology)
– Functionalists: generally positive view of
Internet—point to manifest function of
facilitating communication
– Conflict theorists: stress danger that most
powerful groups in a society will use technology
to violate the privacy of the less powerful

30. Slide 30 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Social Policy and the Mass Media:
The Right to Privacy
• Initiating Policy
– Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 1986:
outlawed surveillance of telephone calls
except with the permission of U.S. attorney
general and federal judge
– Patriot Act, 2001: relaxed existing legal
checks on surveillance by law enforcement
officers
• Most online monitoring yet to be tested in court
• People less vigilant about maintaining privacy

31. Slide 31 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
20-1: Inside the Bubble: Internet
Search Filters
– Have you ever been frustrated by the
results of an Internet search? Describe
what happened, or what didn’t happen.
– Choose a topic of interest to you and
do an Internet search on it; ask several
friends or classmates to do the same.
Do your results differ? In what way?
Our Wired World

32. Slide 32 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
20-2: The Global Disconnect
– For nations on the periphery, what
might be some specific social and
economic consequences of the
global disconnect?
– What factors might complicate
efforts to remedy the global
disconnect in developing nations?
Sociology in the
Global Community

33. Slide 33 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
20-3: Charity Begins Online
– Have you ever texted a donation to
a charity and then shared your concern
with friends and family? If so, did you
or anyone you know follow up on the
charity’s efforts? If not, why not?
– If you worked for a charity, how
would you deal with the here-today,
gone-tomorrow nature of text
donations?
Our Wired World

34. Slide 34 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
21-1: Visual Sociology
– Choose an image or series of images
from reality TV or social media and
discuss it from a sociological
perspective. What can you learn from it?
What sociological concepts can you
relate to it?
– Might some images be misinterpreted
by researchers? Give an example. How
might scholars guard against such
misinterpretation?
Research Today

35. Slide 35 Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Lindsey Wallem,
Social Media Consultant
– Have you ever used social media to
participate in an online campaign?
If so, how did you participate—
by donating money, for example,
or attending a fundraising event?
– How might you use social
media in your own career?
Taking Sociology to Work