Mass Media

Mass media are extremely important agents of socialization because they make visible major and minor features of the culture and are ubiquitous. It is very difficult for anyone who is remotely a social being to avoid being affected by television, radio, newspapers and other print media, or the Internet--all of which bear the symbols, information, history, and content of cultural experience. Exposure to media shapes perceptions because what is presented is perceived to have a reality.

Media content has been found to powerfully affect perception and opinion, and media resources and sources can influence the production of content. For example, the perception of American poverty is that the poor are mainly African American families headed by single mothers--a view reinforced by TV reports that stereotype poverty with that image (Scott and Schwartz 150). That in turn reinforces social expectations of the demographic group being portrayed and those of the public. Racial identity is thus stigmatized in public imagination. Racial cleavages are also fed by programs that valorize the color white and condemn as evil the color black (152). The negative associations with blackness permeate the culture.

According to the propaganda model, there is a connection between media activity and the objectives of certain institutions, including government, which may seek to influence media to support its policies, and corporations, which may seek to use media to support its marketing goals. An

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le make use of the media as much as the media make use of them. On the other hand, limited-effects theory seems to have arisen before the ubiquity of TV and the Internet. It is tempting to declare that what should be done about the mass media and their consequences on the society is to restrict the content of what they disseminate or how they do so. However, that raises First Amendment issues, and some media irresponsibility is perhaps the price of a free society. The real thing that has to be done is to raise the quality of perception on the part of the masses that the media target, or in other words to try to recapture the power of limited-effects theory. Critical thinking about the media messages presupposes education and reliable information, as well as suspicion of the validity of ideal pictures that are out of line with actual experience. Enforcement of "equal-time" policies is one aspect of this, but insistence on verification is equally important. 4. Deviance and the policing of deviance are functional for society because they can create social solidarity, such as in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (Schwartz and Scott 215). They also clarify cultural norms and demand norm adherence. The prison industria

Category: Psychology - M