Mass society, mass culture, and mass communication

From Driscollwiki

Lang, K. & Lang, G. E. (2009) "Mass society, mass culture, and mass communication: The meaning of mass." International Journal of Communication, 3, pp. 998-1024.

Contents 1 Abstract 2 Distance-communication 3 Propaganda and mass stimulation 4 Expansion of audience, beyond tribes and locality 5 Critics of "mass" (1001) 5.1 Beginning in 1950s, "vehement attacks" 5.2 Context, Bell predicts "end of ideology" (1001) 5.3 Bell's critique of ideology behind "mass" theories 6 Origin of the term "mass" 6.1 LeBon, 1895, on entering "the era of crowds" 6.2 Tarde, less psychological, more sociological 7 Society and collective behavior 7.1 "Mass" as distinct from "crowd" or "public" (1008) 8 Rebellious masses 9 Masses and public opinion 10 Turn to propaganda 11 Mass culture 11.1 What is different about mass culture? 11.2 Shifting attention from quality of mass culture to its function 11.3 Influene of mass culture not wholly negative 12 Mass revisited 13 Future research

Abstract

• Brief overview of the term and the concept of "mass"
• Distinguishing ideological connotations from analytic use

Distance-communication

• Pre-1930s
• Linked to transportation, mail, and other non-mass media form
• Not yet thinking about simultaneous, large audiences (999)

Propaganda and mass stimulation

• Initially, little distinction made between mass comm and propaganda
• Willey, 1935, suggested that "mass communication" was a category larger than (but inclusive of) propaganda (999)

Expansion of audience, beyond tribes and locality

• Importance of mass comm to shared identity across large populations
  • Sociology, Chicago School, University of Chicago (1000)
• Ferdinand Tönnies, first to attempt "systematic forumation" of newness in modern society (1000)
• Relationship of two types of communities (1000)
  • Gemeinschaft: smaller, "more natural", gift-giving
  • Gesellschaft: larger, not "quintessentially" connected, detached despite connectedness, exchange
• Theodor Geiger, sociologist, looking at "mutual dependence" among strangers (1000)
• Daniel Lerner, 1957, mass comm enables a kind of empathy among strangers, necessary for connected community across distances

Critics of "mass" (1001)

Beginning in 1950s, "vehement attacks"

• Daniel Bell, 1956, 1959, 1962
• Edward Shils, 1957, 1962, 1975
• Raymond and Alice Bauer, 1960

Context, Bell predicts "end of ideology" (1001)

• Part I. Effects of post-war industry in 1950s US:
  • Middle class, urbanization, immigration, education, decrease in revolutionary agitation (labor, etc.)
  • "Nameless masses on margins of society no longer fit" (1001)
• Part II. Cold War threat and lingering fear of fascism
  • Critical sociologists and communists "toned down" (1002)
• Part III. Research indicates power of local, interpersonal relationships
  • Interpersonal relats and group norms could "override [...] formal organization controls" (1002)

Bell's critique of ideology behind "mass" theories

• Conservatives critique "mass" because they miss the olden days of social distinction
• Marxists critique "mass" because of "ills" of modern society, Frankfurt, duped
• Bell lumps a large swath of theory together to contrast his own neo-liberal Cold War ideology

Origin of the term "mass"

LeBon, 1895, on entering "the era of crowds"

• Conflates crowd behavior with mass (1004)
• Talking about "psychological crowds" that may not be geographically close

Tarde, less psychological, more sociological

• What bonds large numbers of unacquainted people socially? (1005)
• Reading the same newspapers, "currents of opinion" (1005)
• Envisioning a more plural society, accompanied by "printing, the railroad, and the telegraph" (1006)
• Public may deteriorate into a crowd but is not the same
• Press enables interpersonal discourses to move to "big things", participation (1006)
  • Hence, press mediates among legislative institutions, assembling and presenting "public" opinions
• Yet, family ties remain strong despite new social groupings (1007)

Society and collective behavior

Robert E. Park, linked to Chicago School, sociology

• "Publics" develop when shared opinions extend beyond share space
• They are not isolated, anonymous, but
• "Collective action" in which "group acts upon itself" (1007)
• Complicates simplistic notions of advertising by saying that it works through people interacting around it rather than through "direct suggestion" (1007)

"Mass" as distinct from "crowd" or "public" (1008)

Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929), Univ of Michigan

• Tradition (historical) competes with contemporary peer influence (1008)
• Resulting "unity" is a form of collective behavior that is "mass" but not "crowd" nor "public"

Georg Simmel (1858, 1919)

• "Mass" is not a behavior but a sociological category (1008)
• Contrasted the widespread and common with the rare and individual
  • Mass would always be lowest-common denominator (1008)
• True of all manner of organizations: clubs, institutions, political parties, etc.
• Not a "totalizing form", however, only shared "fragments" make up the mass
  • Individuals retain their unique characteristics (1009)
  • Money, for example, enables mass activity but also encourages individual exploits, development
  • Presuming you have access to money!

Gerhard Colm, 1897-1968

• Replace colloquial notions of mass with something free of ideology
• Looking at shared emotional experiences - disappointment, deprivation, grief (1009)
• Leaderless, non-hierarchical, the mass cannot accomplish goals
• He believed that they formed in historical moments following tragedy
  • When traditional social bonds were broken

Rebellious masses

Theodor Geiger, 1891-1952, sociological analysis of the rebellious actions of the mass

• Distinguishes "mass" from "masses" (1009)
• Mass is a "collectivity" that arises as a protest toward community, against society (1010)
• Mass have experienced "similar frustrations" (1010)

Robert Michels, 1876-1936, and Hendrik de Man (1885-1953)

• Warned against seeing socialist party members as homogeneous masses (1010)
• Masses can only be "destructive" and cannot carry out revolution on their own
• They are only tenuously linked in discontent, otherwise quite diverse

Masses and public opinion

Graham Wallas (1858-1932)

• Social universe expanded, people responding to global phenomena (1010)
• Used the phrase Organized Thought (1917) to describe a kind of mass thinking and sense-making (1011)
  • People have a "large body of knowledge in common"
  • Distinction between industrial-era individuals communicating in and around newspapers and communitarian village discourse
• Justification for expanded public education, enabling more people to engage with public discourse

Turn to propaganda

Wallas

• WWI: "Senseless slaughter" led to disillusionment (1011)
• War critics fixated on propaganda as culprit for wartime enthusiasm (1012)

Walter Lippman, 1889-1974

• In Public Opinion, 1922, he describes a decision-making process by which people act based on info about the world
• Too much info to ascertain in total, people build mental "models" and "maps" (1012)
• Stereotypes stand-in for individuals in our mental models
• Models informed by information we get 2nd-, 3rd-hand from other people
• "Mass" power arises when large numbers of people attach similar emotional response to a symbol
  • They may "act together", resist what they do not like
  • But the cannot act with nuance. They are limited to "Yes or No on an issue" (1012)
• Warns of a "false ideal of democracy" (1013)
  • Not everyone has access to resources of elected official
  • Therefore, population is divided into "insiders" and "outsiders"
  • Outsiders usually do not directly intervene in government matters (1013)
• Not altogether a pessimist
  • If people could use their limited knowledge in concert, they could have "real power"
  • Rather than "fall victim to propagandists" (1013)

Karl Mannheim, 1893-1947

• Refugee sociologist from Germany
• Concerned about large support for Nazis
• Believed that industrialization required specialization and a yielding of "individual autonomy" (1013)
• Irrationality is amplified by mass comm, participation, and propaganda; dangerous
• He believed that small member organizations could prevent emergence of irrational mass
  • The small group (be it a club or a labor union) could "mediate" between mass and institutions of power

Propganda "indespensible" for "any" political end in a democracy by end of 1930s (1014)

• Leaders have PR staff
• Many social scientists of different stripes engaged in "defensive" study of propaganda
  • Inoculation projects
  • Institute of Propaganda Analysis, NYC: major research center
    • Tended to focus on content, not effects
• Propaganda shifted from emotional, moral appeals to "factual" statements
  • Re: Lippman, a misrepresented fact is easy to integrate into one's mental model, harder to detect (1014)

Mass culture

• Conservative tension betwee "esteemed" culture and "marketplace" culture
  • Fears about deterioration, "massification" (1014)
• Left attachs "deficiency of cultural opportunities for working class"
  • Jerome Davis, Capitalism and Its Culture, 1935
• Some Marxists placed hopes in development of Proletkult, briefly extant in Soviet Union
• Neo-Marxist critique arose later with Frankfurt exile and revival of Gramsci in 1940s (1015)

José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), conservative

• Disdain for "unschooled" appreciation for mass cultural artifacts
• People and culture "dragged down" (1015)
• Resonated with earlier fears about the "dilution of taste" by pop literature
  • e.g. William Hazlitt, 1817, "public incompetence" leads to lower standards by authors (1016)
• Also, the notion of mass artifacts crowding out higher quality output
  • e.g. F. R. Leavis (1895-1978), citing abridgement and adaptation of literature to film, radio

What is different about mass culture?

Few critics engage with the unique, new characteristics of mass culture

• Lacking roots in "local tradition" (1016)
• Need for economic viability and the requirement of an audience of certain size
• Emphasis on novelty, newness
• Ubiquity and hunger. Maws even the avant-garde (1016)

Shifting attention from quality of mass culture to its function

Mannheim

• Absence of institutions to connect "producers with recipients"
• Effect is that producer-practitioners cannot count on sustained audience
  • e.g. Rather than supporting a theatre troupe, audiences support single production of a play
  • (How did this change over time? Remedied by branding? Pop?)

Influene of mass culture not wholly negative

Herbert Blumer (1900-1987)

• Student of Park
• Movies provided youth with images of life "unknown to them"
• Such images may change dominant norms
  • Creates "aspirations", raises "expectations" (1017)
• May also effect stereotype development
• Blumer does not suggest passivity. Audiences actively affirm and select movies to watch. (1017)
• Movie-goers are an "anonymous", "homogeneous mass" only insofar as their movie-watching is concerned
  • Still maintain local bonds, connections, commitments
• Stereotypes and images of the world resulting from movie-going are subject to revision based on local conversations, future experiences
• Meanings that two people draw from the same movie may be "diametrically opposite" (1018)

Mass revisited

New paradigm of mass communication, "limited effects" (1019)

• Promoted by the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia Univ
• Refining the "hypodermic needle" approach to effects
• An "obvious boon" to the media industry because it strengthened their claim for First amendment protection

Mass: "a temporary convergence of choices by a geographically dispersed multitude that lacks cohesion." (1019)

• Participants are anonymous as regards their presence in the mass
• Shifting and fluid
• Participants only "vaguely" aware of their colleagues in mass
• Features of the mass:
  • Expanded scope of discourse
  • Increased reason
  • Growth of individualism
  • Potential for establishing links between geographically-dispersed people

Some media technologies have audiences that fit the concept of "mass" (1019)

• Compatible with family, friends, or other interpersonal media engagement groupings (1020)

Mass is not symonymous with "public"

• Cannot achieve anything (1020)

Future research

• Focus on two levels (1020)
  • Individual
  • Society
• Needs to follow content trends as well as those who follow them
• Account for "pervasiveness" of particular media technologies
  • e.g. broadband penetration