Microsoft cofounder Bill gates told his audience at the 2004 electronics shows that convergence, the erasure of distinction among media does not happen until you have everything in a digital from that the consumer can easily use on all the different devices. What becomes of the distinction between newspapers, magazines, radio and television when all can be accessed anywhere, anytime on a single handed device and when each medium can combine graphics, video, printed text, sound, music and interactive to satisfy our entertainment and information needs?
We are in the midst of a revolution in communication that is transformating social orders and cultural order around the world and in our country. For many of, the consequences of this revolution have been both pleasant and benign. Powerful tool of mass media invades our privacy, shapes our views of the social world and whether it enriches our thinking and creativity or it further alienates us from gaining a holistic perspective need Careful analysis by the academia of different disciplines and psychology in particular which claims to be critical nourishes and preserver of our behavioral repertoire. Certainly people can apply idiosyncratic interpretation to the context of media before them, and they can choose to direct however much attention they wish to the screen. They can choose to actively seek meaning from media content or they can choose to passively decode it. But their control and involvement can’t directly alter the message being transmitted. Political leaders across the world exploit and manipulate the power of new media technology to alter public attitudes and beliefs.
Lazarsfeld (1941) argued that it was not enough to merely speculate about the influence of media on society. It was not enough to assume that political propaganda is powerful- hard evidence was needed to prove the existence of such effects. Lazasfeld’s most famous efforts the “voter studies” actually began as an attempt to demonstrate the media’s power. During 1950’s limited effects notions about media gained acceptance within academia (Campbell- 1960 Deutschmann & Danielson 1960). This theory views society as a number of interlocking pluralistic groups led by opinion leaders who rely on media for information about politics and the social world.
In a controversial essay, Bernard Berelson, who worked closely with paul lazarsfeld, declared the field of mass communication research to be dead (Berelson 1959). Ironically he wrote his essay just before the field of media research underwent explosive growth. Neo- Marxist left – wing social theorist believe that media enable dominant social elites to maintain their power – media provide the elite with a convenient, subtle yet highly effective means of promoting worldviews favorable to their interest.
When we are use media to serve certain purposes gain information manage moods and seek excitement it is called “meaning making perspective” ability to induce desired experience. But at the same time we are caught in a process that brings unanticipated and unwanted consequences. For example if you are to catch a train and you get a message about its running behind the schedule it saves your time and energy but even if you are praying suddenly an hyper active caller call’s many a times to your mobile and the land line number it appears horrible interference in your private space.
Social – psychological and cultural research must be carried out a number of levels from macroscopic to the microscopic. How far socially constructive and creative behavior patterns are finding it difficult to survive as a means of our enriched intellectual and cultural existence. Most of the significant and interesting forms of human traditions are on the verge of extinction such as story telling, deep relationship sharing folks the gap of success & failure, classical music, interpersonal discussion, tolerance and countless other habits that brought more satisfaction for a quality living. We do not want to be guided by elders explaining us our behaviors. We say we think critically and media has the least role in deciding my preferences. Ironically we are also convinced that other people are much more likely to be influenced by media (the third person effect – Tewksbury
As communication theorist Katherine Miller explained “Different school of thought will define theory in different ways depending on the needs of the theorist and beliefs about the social world and the nature of knowledge’’ (2002 p.i.g).
Scholars have identified four major categories of communication. Theory – post positivist, hermeneutic theory, critical theory and normative theory and they share a common and increased understanding of social and communicative life but they also differ in their goals, their ontology- their view of nature of reality their epistemology – their view of how knowledge is created and expanded and their axiology – their view role of values in research & theory building.
Thus definition of social science in mass – communication theory is so ambivalent that it requires more merging to a super ordinate goal of better explaining and analyzing behavioral perspective. The goals of post – positive theory are explanation, prediction and control. Its ontology accepts that the world even social world exists apart from our perception of it; human behavior is sufficiently predictable to be studied systematically. They might believe and explain which commercials will be more effective to control behavior of targeted citizens. Hermeneutic theory is “the study of understanding, especially by interpreting action and text (Little John – 1996p. 208). But in a given social context how people interpret their own lot is called social hermeneutics. Ethnographer Michael Moerman (1992 p.23) explained social hermeneutic theory tries to explain how event’s “in the alien world make sense to the alien’s how their way of life coheres and has meaning and value for the people who live it.”
Any product of social interaction – a movie the president or Prime Minister Address to its citizen’s a love letter, can be a source of understanding. The ontology of social hermeneutic theory says that there is no truly measurable social reality. Instead reality can’t be understood except through a consideration of the mental & social processes that are continually constructing that reality (Katherine Miller 2002 p. 52) personal and professional values are a lens through which social phenomena are observed. Critical theory starts from the assumption that the social world is deeply flawed and in need of transformation. Most critical theories are concerned with the conflict of interest in society and the way communication perpetuates domination of one group over another. What is real, what is knowable in the social world is the product of the interaction between structure (the social world’s rules norms & beliefs) and agency how human behave and interact in that world. Reality then to critical theory is constantly being shaped and reshaped by the dialectic (the two structures agency).critical theories see media as an essential tool employed by corporate elites to constrain how people views their social world and to limit their agency in it.
A normative media theory explains how a media system should operate in order to conform to or realize a set of ideal social values. Its ontology argues that what is known is situational or knowable only for the specific social system in which that system exits. Its epistemology is based on comparative analysis- we can only judge (and therefore understand) the worth of a given media system in comparison to the ideal espoused in which it operates. Its axiology by definition is value laden. Mass society theory made several basic assumptions that media are a malignant force which has a power to reach out and influence the minds of average people. Once people’s minds are influenced by media it can bring sort- term and long term consequences. Average people are vulnerable to media because they have been cut off and isolated from traditional social institution, debasing higher forms of culture and a bringing a general decline in the individual & social well – being.
Among the originators of mass society notion was a German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies. He proposed a simple dichotomy – gemeinschaft or folk community and gesellchaft a modern industrial society. Gemeinschaft “consisted of a dense network of personal relationship based heavily on kinship and the contact that occurs in a small closed village. Norms were largely unwritten and individuals were bound to mutual interdependence that touched all aspects of life (Fukuyama – 1999 p. 57). In addition a collective has the character of a gemeinschaft insofar as its members think of the group as a gift of nature created by a super natured will (Martindate – 1960 p. 86).
In contrast the gesellschaft represent the frame work of laws and other formal regulation that characterized large, urban industrial societies. Social relationships were more formalized & impersonal: - individual did not depend on one another for support and were therefore much less morally obligated to one – another (Fukuyama 1999 p.p. 57-58).
French sociologist Emile Durkheim offered a theory with the same dichotomy but with a fundamentally diffrent interpretation of modern social order. In Durkheim’s conception people are bound to one another through consensus and traditional social role like the parts of a great engine – mechanical solidarity. In Durkheim’s theory people are like specialized cells of a body rather than like cogs of machine. He compared modern social orders to animals rather than to machines. He used the term organic solidarity to refer to the social ties that bind modern social order together. Remember that he has used the metaphor of folk cultures not modern society. Durkheim’s praise for organic solidarity has been echoed in the many theories that have extolled the virtues of new media and new technology. Proponent’s of new media usually argue that communication technology will permit the formation of important new social bends. Frequent allusions to an internet fueled “electronic democracy” in which the people can directly communicate with their leaders. There will be “electronic town halls” where the people will be able to decide what they want government to do for them. Durkheim in hi book suicide (1951) documented rising suicide rates in those countries where tradition religions and social institutions had lost their preeminence. In his later work, Durkheim showed growing concern for the declining strength of common morality. (Ritzer 1983 p. 99) .people is no longer bound by traditional values in which greed’s are replacing our needs and passion our replacing our compassion. In the name of globalization moral virtue included is on the sale, fantasy replacing the real and everyone wants an objective world of him self or herself. We are mostly unwilling to accept the peaceful co-existence of others. It is far easier to take refuge in surrogates, which neither inhibits, us or our cravings.
Moral and emotional knowledge is being replaced with pop culture that provides easy going forms of social cohesion. We have been easily replacing the harmonic, rhythmic texture of classical music and aesthetics with a grammarless murmur of repetitious noise. There is a rising gap across the generations and the young generation has spontaneously acquired a culture which has increased the gap ever before between a teacher and the taught. Our traditional, social, political and cultural institutions are facing a threat to their status quo and phenomenal rapid diffusion of interest and worldwide web is facilitating the formation of multinational alliances that is challenging the existing elites as well. The rapid technological challenges effected massive media industry mergers. According to journalist and media critic Ben Bagdikian (2004), the numbers of corporations controlling most of the country’s news papers magazines, radio and television stations, book publishers and movies studio’s have shrunk from fifty, when he wrote the first edition of his classic The media monopoly to five today. This concentration of owner ship of media industries led him to comment as follows:-
Left to their own devices a small number of the most powerful firms have taken control printed and broadcast news and entertainment. They have their own style of control not by official edict or state terror but uniform economic social goal. They have their own way of narrowing political and cultural diversity not by promulgating official dogma, but by quietly emphasizing ideas and information congenial to their profits & political dereferences. Although they have a disproportionate private influence over the political authorities and over public today. (1992 p. p 239 -240).Bagdikian, a strong proponent of media freedom is not mass theorist. Mass mediated propaganda is spread throughout the world which deeply affects our politics and culture. Propaganda freely uses lies and deception to persuade. Propaganda has also been classified as black, white and gray (Snowball 1999). Black propaganda involves deliberate and strategic transmission of lies. White propaganda involves intentional suppression of potentially harmful information and ideas and promotion of ideas that distract attention from problematic events. Gray propaganda involves transmission of ideas that may be true or false. Propaganda then and now live in an either/or good/evil world. Even concept’s like truth consent and justice are manufactured through engineering consent of people a term coined by father of modern public relation Edward L. Bernays by mastering techniques of persuasion & communication. Harald Laswell’s propaganda theory (1934) referred to the concept of master or collective symbols associated with strong emotions and possess the power to stimulate beneficial large scale mass action if they are used wisely. It is no wonder our eating habits, reading habits, recreational habits and even interpersonal sharing are becoming subject to manipulation by propagandists. The discrepancies that exist in our head is ever widening. Pictures of outside world are being projected that India
Social responsibility should not be something that is discussed in the classroom or academic debates but how far it unites cultural & social well being must correspond to the reality of the day. Whether dramatization more in the investigation of truth and portrayals of public good is generating barriers to freedom or enhancing our diverse ethos. A movement of sort is needed to steer mass – media towards reinvigorating public life which does not satisfies the appetite of a selective few and exclude the common ordinary citizens. Social cognitive theory assumes that observer can acquire symbolic representation of behaviors and mass – media provide information on which they base subsequent behavior.
Writing in 1994 Bandura summed the accumulated knowledge of social cognitive theory to conclude that television viewers “acquire lasting attitude, emotional reactions and behavioral proclivities towards person’s places or things that have been associated with modeled emotional experience. W. James Potter (1997) identified Reward/Punishment, consequences motive, realism, humor, identification and arousal as encouraging factor of acquisition of mass – media behavior through modeling. Development perspective assumes that children undergo extensive and varied cognitive growth between birth and adulthood that is extremely rich complex and multifaceted. Logically, older children will read television differently than will younger children. This developmental perspective seeks to describe and explain the nature of the communicative differences between four year older six years’ olds & adults. Research indicates that although even children as young as seven can tell the difference between commercial and other televised content, they might not understand the commercial selling intent and that much advertising especially premium advertising cos that promise a gift or toy with purchase can cause conflict between parent and children.
A process called spiral of silence needs special attention of the researchers. Because of people’s fear of isolation or separation from those around them, they tend to keep their attitudes to themselves when they think they are in minority. If various viewpoints about agenda items are ignored, marginalized or trivialized by media reports, then people feel reluctant to talk about them. It is noteworthy to highlight and explore the possibilities where intra – personal, interpersonal inter group identities grow in terms of confidence harmonious co-existence creative climate of collective and pluralistic living. We should engage ourselves in research and discussion that may result in participated without fear of exclusion and infuse elements of social, cultural & cognitive inclusion of all. This is an attempt to uncover the all encompassing cover that is how virtual reality is affecting us and it needs more the attention of psychologists from an interdisciplinary approach.
