Abstract
Media studies were born in the 1930s and 1940s with the popular assumption that film and broadcasting have enormous power to sway voters, shape the minds of children and direct public opinion. By the late 1950s, however, the cumulative research showed that the media, in themselves, are rarely the sole cause of aggressive behaviour, conversions or other personal changes. Media are definitely somehow influential, but media effects are a complex process mingled with the influence of family, friend groups, and the broader socio-cultural environment.
In the search for more nuanced explanations of media influence during the 1960s and 1970s, researchers suggested the need to examine not just specific attitudinal effects but the role of media in the development of the total cultural environment. A new CULTURAL STUDIES approach argued that media reproduce the national myths of aggression, racial supremacy, male patriarchy or models of family that set the agenda of values not just for some individuals but for everybody who lives in the culture.
Ironically, early cultural studies analysis retained much of the 'powerful media' assumption and simply added a 'powerful culture' perspective. McLuhan, for example, proposed that print and electronic media produce a particular cultural world view and influence whole cultural epochs. Some Marxists maintained that the cultural industries were almost totally dominated by elite ideologies and that media ideology so formed the mentalities of subordinate groups such as women, minorities or the working classes that these groups were duped into support of unjust power structures.
These 'powerful culture', 'powerful ideology' theories are now also being questioned. With methods of 'audience ethnography', researchers are discovering how audiences interpret media messages from their own local perspectives or resist media content they disagree with. This issue of Communication Research Trends reviews research on how audiences participate in the creation of cultures.
Recommended Citation
(1987)
"New Perspectives on Media and Culture,"
Communication Research Trends: Vol. 8:
No.
2, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/crt/vol8/iss2/1