Media influence has a profound effect on people, whether they realize it or not. Right now, more than ever, people are exposed to mass media through their radios, computers, television sets and their smart phones. With the mass use of the Internet, people are also connected at all times through their mobile devices, so it is impossible to escape media in the developed world. This will undoubtedly have an effect on the way people make decisions about their lives and how they understand themselves (Austin et al., 2015), (Mackay, 2013), (Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006), (Paek, Hove & Jeon, 2013). Several sociological theories explain exactly how people are affected in these ways. This paper will look at mass media influence through the lens of structural functionalism, social conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, and post-modernism. In essence, mass media is all around us, and it will change the way we behave in our lives at deep levels, which is an aspect that we can address and learn to adapt to.
This subject is of deep sociological importance, because of the overreaching effects that media have on people. It is necessary to make sure that people understand how media affects them, of which they can then take steps to address the issue and fix the problem. This would be because “we cannot effectively appreciate and engage the mass media’s influence over us until we acknowledge that the media have moved from being merely present to being omnipresent,” (Mastrolia, 1997, p. 204). The process of understanding mass media and how it relates messages to the populace is called media literacy. People with greater media literacy would be able to think more critically (Austin et al., 2015). If people can be taught to think more rationally about the messages they receive from mass media, which at best exaggerate meanings behind anything, including sexual relations, political scandals and gender expectations, then these societal issues can be addressed with more reason and education. Media literacy in this sense seeks to repair this lack of awareness.
Literature Review
Structural Functionalism. This theoretical perspective takes a societal-level approach to mass media communication. “Functional analysis studies the functions which a structural item of the social system as a whole and how these functions bar on the structural item itself,” (Pietila, 2005, p. 135). Structural functionalism will look at society as the whole of the sum of its own parts. There is a “distinction between functions, wich make for the adaptation of the system, and dysfunctions, which lessen the adaptation,” (Pietila, 2005, p.135). In other words, structural functionalism is trying to determine how certain societal groups affect how society adapts and carries itself. However, this theoretical perspective “takes the existing institutions as given and unchangeable,” (Pietila, 2005, p. 135). This would essentially mean that its own concept of adaptation is limited – the perspective does not take into account the possibilities that certain parts of society can change over time and affect the societal whole in a new way.
Social conflict theory. This theoretical perspective “describe how identities – lacking any essence – are formed through political struggles, generating processes of othering (or the creation of a frontier between the self and the other),” (Carpentier & Cammaerts, 2006, p. 965). Both of these antagonizing identities essentially need the other identity to exist, and in order to “stabilize and articulate their own identity,” (Carpentier & Cammaerts, 2006, p. 965). It a Marxist-based theory that attributes conflict between groups that have resources and groups that do not have resources. Societal groups that do not have enough resources or power are then often taken advantage of and exploited by the groups that do. In relation to mass media communication, this would affect the types of political identities that people would be drawn to.
Symbolic Interactionism. This theoretical perspective describes the “context of a person’s own lived experience and innate ability to make sense of the interactions with people, media, and institutions, [that] shapes the evolving process by which one perceives symbolic meaning in mass mediated messages,” (Poe, 2012, p. 188). People will react favorably or unfavorably to messages and images that they see depending on their own societal interactions, and it is these interactions that “generate symbolic understandings and explanations within the individual that evolves as the individual continues to interact with the world,” (Poe, 2012, p. 188). This perspective mixes individual psychology with sociology. It looks into how society can shape a person’s understanding of the world, and will also look as to how individuals will then choose to behave based on what they are interacting with in the moment.
Post-modernism. This is a broad theoretical perspective that covers many areas, and is difficult to define due to this. It is a “culture of vague boundaries [that] boosted values such as individualism and superficial character, with the Mass Media as a crucial factor in spreading them,” (Capilla, 2012, p. 165). Post-modern societies are “characterized by the lack of unification, of a coherent system, of a whole, (Capilla, 2012, p. 166). A post-modern society is one that contains many identities and subcultures. It is a society affected by media influence through exposure of many ideologies and globalized cultures. The way this physically takes into effect with how society behaves would be this: “Utopias and the idea of progress are rejected, and religions are called into questions. The myths surrounding politics and leaders are destroyed. Great charismatic figures disappear and little ephemeral idols arise,” (Capilla, 2012, p. 167). A staple of a post-modern society is personalization, or a culture that praises individualism: “a value that remains and characterizes the Me Generation – in all aspects of social life. The body is limitlessly worshipped (corporal narcissism and so is personal liberation,” (Capilla, 2012, p. 167).
Information society. This describes the current technological environment that people live in. This is the “decline of extractive and more recently manufacturing sectors, and the growth of the service sector, in advanced industrial economies,” (Mackay, 2013, p. 117). In other words, information society is a time where large amounts of people are interconnected and are exposed to service companies and advertisements, which then manipulate the messages and advertisements that people are seeing based on what they are searching for. Advertising companies have more exposure and are able to know more about consumers based on their social media, as well. Networking connections reveal information about a person’s interests and their contacts’ interests, which will further manipulate media messages. Information society is also an ever-changing society, considering how relatively new social media is, which has affected possibilities for political campaigning and engagement and how surveillance has been implemented through the Internet. There is also the growing interdependence of world economies and growing cultural exchanges.
This will nevertheless affect the way people share information. The interactivity of these networks “bypass vertical channels of communication. With social media we are seeing new forms of cultural production, with users increasingly involved in creating as well as consuming content,” (Mackay, 2013, p. 118). People are getting news stories through citizen journalism and user generated content, shared through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. For example, people received a new perspective straight from the common person’s experience during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, where citizens were able to use their phones to record and tweet the events as they are happening live, bypassing traditional journalism which normally appears after the event. This participation is called the one-to-many model, where “authority is challenged, the power of traditional media organizations is diminished, and new channels of cultural and political engagement are facilitated as consumers become producers too,” (Mackay, 2013, p. 122).
In general, current media culture is highly a post-modern culture, and the exposure to mass media and social media keep people in that realm of post-modernism. As with the example of the Egyptian Revolution, mass media and social media gave people the tools needed to revolt against their current government, creating new identities that media were able to give them. From a structural functionalist perspective, this is shown in how media has destabilized the government through the use of individual power and citizen journalism. The people became directly involved with the coverage of the violence and riots in the streets, and used social media to spread messages of revolution. From the perspective of social conflict theory, media gave individual people a sense of power that they can use to create an anti-government identity and thus start the Arab Spring.
However, this doesn’t mean to say that while a post-modern society is one that praises and encourages individualism, this is apparent in every case for people exposed to social media. Media content also produces messages that are oversimplified and glamorized, that will inevitably hurt the public. Sexual content in mass media is misleading and fictionalized, which does nothing to help educate teens about it. The United States leads with the most teen pregnancies in comparison to any industrialized nation, which ends up costing the government 9.6 to 12.5 billion dollars annually (Austin et al., 2015). There is also a greater likelihood for teen mothers to live in poverty and suffering greater abuse or neglect. This is in part due to the early exposure of sexualized content, which is a “near omnipresent fixture in many media and an important source of sexual information for adolescents [with] more than 75 percent of prime time television programming contains sexual depictions and relatively explicit portrayals of sexual intercourse,” (Austin et al, 2015, p. 401). This process of exposure to sexual content that would then affect the way teenagers make decisions about their own lives and how they get educated about the subject is a prime example of symbolic interactionism. A society that is influenced by such a simplified message over a subject will then by influenced in behavior – one that is then encouraged by that same society.
Furthermore, this current information society “exposes citizens to messages carrying evaluative content,” (Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006, p. 19), where conversations about politics with other people on social media, and news that they receive through television and the Internet will affect the way people vote and decide on their political loyalties. This can certainly be harmful when considering how much misinformation there is, and will undoubtedly affect consumers’ political attitudes. In regards to social conflict theory, there is a sense that people’s identities are constructed by the media messages that they receive, and these identities will be formed no matter if the information is correct or not. This sets a dangerous precedent, considering that these groups will thrive to hurt each other based on misinformation.
Methodologies
Research gathered for this study included several studies in different fields in order to gather an overall understanding of mass media influence and how it is affecting people today. This will also be a discussion on methods that people can apply in order to address and alter mass media influence on their thoughts and opinions. Structural functionalist theory here cannot contribute to the adaptation of changing behavior, because it is not inherent that a societal group can adapt to change. It is necessary to again emphasize that a society influenced by mass media is inevitably a post-modern society.
As with the previous mentioned case of a higher teen pregnancy rate due to the misleading information about sexuality and pregnancy in mass media, a study of a sample of 922 teens was conducted by Austin et al. (2015). These teens were given five lessons that were 45 minutes long, over five consecutive days. The lessons varied, and included advertisements that explored how advertisers use sex to sell products and services; addressing unrealistic portrayals of pregnancy and parenting in the media; comparing reality television shows to their own environments as they learned about sexually transmitted diseases; reviewing previous material and practiced ways to resist pressures to become sexually active; and viewing a range of public service messages created by other teens and made their own prevention messages (p. 408).
The point of giving these lessons was to teach media literacy, with the belief that adolescents needed tools that helped them to “distinguish between healthy and unhealthy media messages. They also need to make use of this information in their decision making about sexual health,” (Austin et al., 2015, p. 401). Consecutive lessons throughout a few days were designed to help the teens develop decision-making skills, which is a learned skill. This media literacy intervention in this study proved to “nearly eliminate the effect of media-message desirability on attitudes toward sexual behavior and reduced the effects of desirability on expectancies,” (Austin et al., 2015, p. 416). This goes to show that getting involved in active discussion can help teens and media consumers to think twice about the types of messages they are receiving from mass media. But with empowering these teens through education, it certainly marks how powerful media influence would be. These teens have thus adapted, from the perspective of symbolic interactionism, to new behavior based on what they have learned. It also gives them individual empowerment to make new decisions for themselves.
Video messages also have their own ways of sending messages to people. An effective video is one that has high message sensation value. This means that a video is effectively sending sensory material that will elicit aroused responses. It is shown that “videos with high MSV levels can lead to persuasion. Viewers may attend to videos more if they contain evocative content and features such as intense imagery, movement and speed,” (Paek, Hove & Jeon, 2013, p. 228). In a study of 934 anti-smoking videos and more than 13,000 viewer comments on YouTube, it shows that humor or dramatic methods of sending the same message do not actually make a difference in cognitive responses. The way a person will react to a message has more to do with “persuasiveness and impact of its message features,” (Paek, Hove & Jeon, 2013, p. 227). Also, video content that was produced by a common person, rather than a health organization, would elicit better responses. In other words, mass media has tremendous influence in how people will interact with certain scenarios. In other words, it can act as a replacement for social interaction in how people will perceive messages, which is essentially how symbolic interactionism has adapted to a post-modern society. A perspective that is reliant on how people perceive messages based on societal interaction, post-modern media influence can serve to replace that for some of the time.
Political discussion has more variable factors when it comes to increasing media literacy. This means that when it comes to addressing people’s political opinions and being exposed to media influence, much of it depends on a person’s individual personality, where their own political sophistication would have an effect on how they perceive a political message (symbolic interactionism and social conflict theory). If their media intake has a directional bias, or a one-sided information flow, this would mean that media is teaching only one side of an issue. People who are least aware of media literacy “are most susceptible to influence in situations in which the information flow is very intense,” (Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006, p. 22), particularly when the information flow is one sided. On the other hand, “the condition under which news media are least likely to have an effect is if the public is exposed to both sides of an issue,” (Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006, p. 20). From the concept of structural functionalism, a one-sided information flow would contribute to a dysfunctional society, since the democracy would only be able to effectively stand on its own if its public is competent enough.
In a study comparing information flow within Denmark (which was one-sided) and the Netherlands (which was two-sided, or presenting multiple sides of an issue), results of public opinion have shown that “news media mattered when the message flow was one-sided,” (Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006, p. 30), and would actually shift public opinion. This would be problematic if one-sided news media was showing information that is prejudiced in any way, which would then disadvantage certain groups of people severely. There is also the fact that each individual retains his or her own post-modern autonomy, or choice in what they want to be exposed to. This is where a discussion of politics and a media literacy intervention would prove to be useful in order to improve on a person’s critical thinking skills. “Interpersonal communication, either among individuals or in groups, facilitates a better understanding of political issues and can lead to significant changes in attitudes and support for policies,” (Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006, p. 21).
This can be done in physical groups or in the social media sphere, where an individual can connect with anyone on the Internet and participate in active discussions with people who do not live in the immediate area. While studying information flow on politics in the Netherlands, studies show that “interpersonal communication weighed heavier in voters’ decision on whom to vote for than cues obtained from mass media,” (Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006, p. 21). This would imply that political discourse would have profound effects on how a person understands a political issue, like how media literacy intervention improves a person’s understanding of sexual issues as depicted in mass media. So while a post-modern society is heavily influenced by mass media and can have negative effects on which societal groups they choose to be a part of, the rise of individualism expressed through the platform of social media can help to tackle this issue.
Conclusion
Mass media influence can have a large effect on how people perceive sociological and political issues. However, developing media literacy and having an environment to openly discuss these issues (like what social media can give) would show that people can learn more about their subjects. Structural functionalism cannot serve in a post-modern society to really help societal groups to adapt and change, although it can merely be used to describe how a current subculture functions. The progress of individualism can have caveats or it can have positive effects, but there is a sociological factor that comes into play. In terms of creating identities and discussing politics, individuals inevitably choose sides depending on their personal experiences. Here is social conflict theory and symbolic interactionism at play together. But it cannot be denied that mass media influence has omnipresence in a person’s life. In order to keep this presence in check, it is necessary for people to be able to address it. As people learn more about how they react to mass media messages, then mass media influence will be rendered ineffective on several fields in a post-modern society.
References
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