What is mass media?

They are the means of conveying messages ( in the widest sense of the word) from a

source to a theoretically unlimited number of people, who are at a certain spatial distance

from the source of the message and from each other.

• Defining the mass media as ‘means’ implies their aesthetic and ethical neutrality, which means that their nature is conceived neither in positive nor in negative terms. Their positive or negative character depends on the way they are employed.

• Such an attitude is incompatible with those theories which a priori evaluate the mass media either positively or negatively in aesthetic and ethical terms.

• The definition also points out that mass media tend to convey messages to a theoretically unlimited number of people.

• A medium which lacks that characteristic is still a medium for conveying messages, but it is not a mass medium.

Example…

Closed-circuit television, or a film meant exclusively for private use are not mass media, since they lack the essential characteristic of the mass media, a tendency towards theoretically unlimited expansion.

The definition emphasizes that messages conveyed by means of the mass media are imparted to unspecified individuals. So, the telephone is not a mass medium, unless it is used as an indirect means of conveying a message within some wider communication system.

• In their tendency to address as wide a public as possible, the mass media have to adapt to the tastes and standards of the masses who are their potential consumers. So, they adapt their programmes and activities to the level of the average consumer.

The production of the mass media is thus the result of a compromise between the desire for as large audiences as possible and the desire for high-quality programmes.

So, in that sense, the effect of the mass media on culture is twofold: on the one hand, they democratize culture by making it accessible to the masses, and on the other hand, they reduce mass culture to an average level, which meets the needs of the widest public.

Will the positive effect of the democratization of culture be undone if mass culture is reduced to a dictatorship of mediocre taste?

To guard against this likely danger, apart from democratizing culture, the programmes of the mass media should exercise, an educational function, raising the level of the average and mediocre consumer, and to some extent at least, satisfying those consumers whose aesthetic needs are on a higher level.

• Theorists differ in their views of the ethical and aesthetic effects of the formation of mass culture.

Attitudes towards the aesthetic and ethical value of the mass media vary from almost uncritical glorification (e. g. Marshall McLuhan) to great scepticism and pessimism (e. g. Adorno).

What is culture?

• Throughout the world, ‘culture’ has been doggedly pushing its way onto the center stage of debates not only in sociological theory and research but also throughout the human sciences.

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. In general, the term culture denotes the whole product of an individual, group or society of intelligent beings. It includes technology, art, science, as well as moral systems and the characteristic behaviors and habits of the selected intelligent entities.

Key components of culture

A common way of understanding culture is to see it as consisting of four elements that are passed on from generation to generation by learning alone:

Values, norms, institutions and artifacts

• Values: comprise ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the rest of the culture.

• Norms: consist of expectations of how people will behave. Each culture has methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of laws.

• Institutions: are the structures of a society within which values and norms are transmitted.

• Artifacts: things, or aspects of material culture—derive from a culture's values and norms.

Ways of looking at culture

• Culture as civilization – defined in terms of civilization, nature, the elite, mass culture, popular culture, subcultures, high culture and low culture.

• Culture as worldview – defined in terms of anthropology, evolution, domination and resistance, corporate and organizational cultures.

• Culture as symbols - practices of social actors, the context that gives such practices meaning, the "symbolic gloss" which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance and meanings. They are the "webs of significance" in Weber's sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu (1977), "give regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices of a group”.

• Culture as a stabilizing mechanism - the possibility that culture itself is a product of stabilization tendencies inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms.

• Culture and evolutionary psychology - In order to fully understand culture we must understand its biological conditions of possibility.

The commercialization of culture

• Accessibility of culture to the masses, which largely results from the influence of the mass media, has resulted in culture becoming a common need of ordinary people. It is disputable, however, how autonomous this need is and on what level most of that culture is for which the masses feel a need.

Perhaps it is this ‘need for culture’ that is one of the main reasons for culture being considered as a business of the highest order, that is, an extremely profitable field of money making.

Culture becomes institutionalized in the form of organizations strong enough to

engage well-qualified personnel and large funds and thus to be competitive

on a market abounding in ‘culture products’.

These circumstances make advertising necessary as a means of attracting consumers and promote the kind of programme that will be accepted by as large a public as possible. Would this lead to catering to mediocre tastes of the masses and the creation of ‘products’ suitable for such tastes?

• Another phenomenon closely related to mass culture is the fetishization of some works or their authors or performers, who become values in themselves.

So, the very sight on the screen of a movie star can send thousands of his or her fans into a ‘trance’ no matter

what part and how he or she is playing.

• Are these objects of fetishization created by the mass media or are they created by virtue of their objective value?

• The fact that culture is seen as the source of a livelihood for large numbers of people results in the maximum professionalization of all those who work in that field. It is only the most persistent and the most ingenious that survive in the market – be they the ‘culture people’ or all those who are engaged in the large mechanism which produces and markets a ‘product’.

• This professionalization can be considered as a kind of cultural alienation. At the same time it has contributed to the continuing perfection of the people who work in that field.

• Perfectionism has become a mass phenomenon, since all those who do not meet the standards fail, and the standards are getting higher and higher.

• Is mass media able to put this tendency towards perfection, produced by mass culture, to ‘good use’? Is the mass media, which symbolize mass culture, serving as a means of raising its level?

Objections levelled against the mass media

a) The mass media offer their consumers a limited choice of programmes and content. Thus, they actually limit the cognitive potentialities of the individual and stultify him. The programmes offered are at a very low level, and it is very narrow circles of people who decide on them and have the opportunity to manipulate the masses, an opportunity which they sometimes misuse.

b) The mass media enslave and alienate the individual, with the result that he becomes antisocial, or follows the bad examples offered by the mass-media programmes.

c) The world that the mass media bring into our homes is an illusion, a distorted view of reality.

The counter to the objections

a) Given the large number of radio stations and TV channels which we have at our disposal, as well as the almost infinitely wide range of magazines, papers and films that are released annually and presented to the public throughout the world, it could be said that limitations of choice are of an essentially technical nature, that is, they result from the incapacity of the media to register the complete culture output of one country, let alone of the world.

• b) The positive or negative nature of mass media depends on the use. Apart from being potential means of manipulation, the mass media can act as an important factor in aesthetic and ethical development. To exert a positive influence on the public, the media must be democratically used and socially controlled.

‘Mass-media Robinson Crusoes’ - This phenomenon is generally considered to be a result, rather than the

cause, of man's alienation. Have mass media engendered a dehumanized society with its alienated loners or a dehumanized society, lacking real human

contact, that has made man look for a friend in the radio or television set? Are mass media the cause of

antisocial behaviour and delinquency or are mass media influencing the development of already existing

predispositions

c) The third objection against the mass media can be understood in two different ways. A distorted view of reality can refer to false or partial information aiming at the manipulation of the masses or it can also mean the aesthetic distortion of the message in the widest sense of the term, which also means the distortion of the reality to which this message refers.

A few points to note here

• We can only speak of an optimal or desirable degree of objectivity, in the sense of correspondence to a particular reality, which depends on the kind of message that is being conveyed.

• The issue concerns aesthetics and philosophy, and what still remains to be dealt with is the question of the suitability of particular media for particular ‘reality’ and their specific ways of expression.

Thus the degree of distortion of the message depends on the

quality of the message itself as well as on the adequacy of the

medium.

Interaction between the mass media and culture.

• In every society the programmes of the mass media must be adapted to the dominant culture and, therefore, can be called an expression of that society. The mass media influence the society as a whole, and particularly its culture.

Thus we can speak of the relation between the society and the mass media in terms of an

interaction.

• The adjustment of mass-media programmes to their consumers can only be relative. The complete output can never meet the needs of the whole public.

• In order to be a positive factor in the cultural development of a country, a mass-medium system must optimally suit the different tastes and needs of the consumers.

The mass media and music

• The effect of the mass media on musical culture is basically the same as it is on culture in general.

• In the field of musical culture the mass media exert an important educational function. Apart from making the musical heritage accessible to large numbers of people, they are the main source of information on current events in all fields of music. The public can freely choose

• from the offered programmes, applying their critical sense. The mass media also supply musicians with the information which they need in order to advance and keep up with the work of others.

• Along with commercialization, other phenomena closely related to the mass media are maximum professionalization, institutionalization and the formation of a mass taste. Thus we see the formation of a mass musical culture, along with all the positive and negative side-effects which accompany these phenomena.

• The trend towards professionalism results in catering to the mass taste, which in no musical genre is at a high aesthetic level. Record companies, producers and musical editors on radio and television must comply with the mass taste so that they make a profit, which, means earn a living. Not only do they cater to the current whims of mass fashion; they also launch new stars and hits of similar aesthetic and artistic value.

• Thus, governed by the inexorable rules of the market, 'culture people' must turn their attention to consumer goods, which are inferior in terms of quality, but superior in terms of the sale and profit they guarantee.

• The ubiquity of the mass media has also brought into prominence another factor in musical culture - musical criticism.

A ‘critical appraisal’ has become a very important factor in the formation of the

standards of the public

The mass media and the listener to music

• Due to the radio, television, records and tape recordings, music has left the traditional institutions where it used to be performed and moved into homes, offices, or weekend resorts. The listener is often compelled to concentrate on something else when listening to music. Thus, the music serves him only as background, and the rite of listening is abandoned. Not paying enough attention to the music, he receives no artistic experience.

• Two main questions arise in connection with the relation between the mass media and the listener-

1. Is it at all possible to receive a complete artistic experience from a piece of music conveyed by a mass medium? Can the perception of music through the mass media replace the experience of a live performance?

2. Do the mass media exert a positive influence on the development of the consumer's tastes and standards, or do they hinder it by imposing on him their own aesthetic criteria?

Conclusion

• The mass media as such are neither positive nor negative aesthetically and ethically. Their positive or negative nature depends on the way they are employed and on the objectives of the culture policy of the society or the social stratum by which they are used.

• There is no doubt that in spite of the controversial views of some aspects of their use, the mass media have brought about great changes in people's minds and in culture, such as the democratization of culture to an extent that would have been unthinkable without them.

• It is hard to say whether without the mass media, or at least without their great influence, culture would be better or worse.

Still, one thing is certain: without them it would be essentially different.

Ivo Josipovi, The Mass Media and Musical Culture

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