Mass Society Thoery

Mass Communication is a process of transmitting a message to a larger audience. Mass communication is done through different mediums such as radio, television, newspaper and the internet. It is the quickest way of reaching a large audience.

There are four eras of the Mass Communication Theory. These are ; The Era of Mass Society Theory ,The Era of the Scientific Perspectives, The Era of Limited Effect Theory ,The Era of Cultural Theory.

The Mass Society Theory was brought into being during the 18^th and 19^th century. It shows that media has a large influence on shaping people’s minds and their perception as well as setting social classes. It also says that there are no alternative perceptions in media and that the actions of media reflect on mass society. It was also assumed that mass media is higher than culture and it can inevitably cause decline in civilization.

The first mass media medium was print media. This started with the distribution of religious texts and then went on to literature. This also brought in the Renaissance period in history. Then the industrial revolution came in which marked itself as the most rapid social revolution in history. New social classes were developed which consisted of the upper class (bourgeois) and lower class (proletariat). Slowly the taste of the bourgeois became more important than that of the proletariat causing a huge disturbance within the social order. Average people were being made to believe they are lower class so that the capitalists can stay in control. This continued in making life for the bourgeois better and created the “bourgeois idealism” (according to Horkheimer and Adorno). Thus the idea of mass society became “both elites and non-elites lack social insulation; that is, when elites are accessible to direct intervention by non-elites, and when non-elites are available for direct mobilization by elites” (Kornhauser 1959: 43, emphasis in original).

Marxism is a theory derived by Karl Marx. This states that society is divided into two parts. The bourgeois are the wealthy people who possess power over the media and are less in number. The proletariat are more in number but aren’t wealthy and do not possess any power over the media thus having lower value in society as well.

Mass Society was a centralized way of thinking meaning that there were no realized aims in the local groups in media. It had a narrower public sphere and it was just used to control people. This brought about a number of problems like social dissolution, moral degeneration and breakdown of consensus.

But as media began to develop, the lower class started to rise against this. For media to survive there was the need of audience acceptance. It also became known that media power can vary throughout different times and we can see this in history.

References:

Naveed, F. (2016) ‘THE RISE OF MEDIA INDUSTRIES AND MASS SOCIETY THEORY’, Theories of Mass Communication, 29 November. Available at: http://www.masscommunicationtalk.com/rise-media-industries-mass-society-theory.html

No Date) Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/hllbrh/mass-society-and-early-theories-of-mass-media

businesscom (2013) What is mass communication? Available at: https://thebusinesscommunication.com/what-is-mass-communication/