UNIVERSITY OF CHILE SOCIAL SCIENCES FACULTY & PHILOSOPHY AND HUMANITIES FACULTY y g Ph.D. Dissertation 2001 o l o p o r h t n A a i d e M Francisco Osorio ([email protected]) Fulbright/Conicyt Fellow s Department of Anthropology at University of Chile s a M Francisco Fernandez ([email protected]) Academic Adviser Department of Sociology at University of Chile Acknowledgments When I attended Elihu Katz’s conference at the University of Chile, where I was following the Ph.D. program in philosophy of social science, I never thought I would be writing my dissertation with Katz as a Fulbright/Conicyt Fellow visiting the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. I do not have the words to express my gratitude to Prof. Katz for his support. Let me say that I am a newcomer to the field. As a social anthropologist, with both a MA and a Ph.D. in epistemology, I just was in the right place at the right time. This situation has advantages and disadvantages, as everything I supposed. The disadvantage is that I did not know nothing about mass communication (which I could easily apply to anthropology and philosophy). The advantage is that mass communication is an awesome prospect for me. When I started to learn this new language, I was impressed that field anthropologists working in the subject talked about people as consumers, producers or audiences. Before that moment, I only heard about peasants, indigenous peoples or natives. They also speak about exposure. I understood that technology influenced families, but I never thought families could be exposed to a cultural product, like people taking the sun in the beach. When I read the word viewer, I first thought it was a synonym for anthropologist, because we usually refer ourselves as observers. However, the viewer is not a social scientist but someone who watches television. Then I realized that an observer is not a viewer. In addition, it was interesting to me that viewers consume, interpret, appropriate, resist or negotiate television’s texts. Almost all the social sciences are here, from economics (consume), politics (negotiate) to hermeneutics (interpret). I say almost because the point is that anthropology has yet to join this conversation. For example, during the twentieth-century there was not a book called “Anthropological Introduction to Mass Communication”. At the same time, I felt comfortable as an outsider, fitting the traditional role of an anthropologist. At Philadelphia, I want to thank the Canadian scholar Mark Brewin who commented on the whole dissertation, helping me to make this work understandable. I received support and friendship from the Bolivian Amalia Prado, the Canadian Avril Orloff, and the Israeli Lilach Nir. I want to thank the Americans Barbara Grabias, Elena Larsen, Jane Appleyard, Ricardo Wray and David Park for their kind hospitality. At Santiago, I want to thank my colleagues Marcelo Arnold, Andres Recasens, Fernando Duran and Guido Vallejos for commenting earlier drafts of this essay. Francisco Fernandez guided me through the last part. I want to thank him. I conducted this research with a fellowship from the Chilean National Council of Science and Technology. I received a fellowship from The Fulbright Commission to visit Prof. Elihu Katz. I want to thank both institutions. Francisco Osorio Philadelphia, winter 2000 Index The problem. How the social sciences deal with mass media, with particular reference 1 1 to anthropology 1.1 Media Effects Tradition 1 1.2 Anthropology and Mass Media 2 1.3 Objectives 4 1.4 Appendix Chapter 1 6 2 Mass media appearances in anthropological literature: a journal review 1970-1999 11 2.1 Themes and problems 12 2.1.1 Media effects 13 2.1.2 Anthropology and media 17 2.1.3 Mass media and ritual 18 2.1.4 Family and kinship 19 2.1.5 Mass media and health 19 2.2 Commentary 20 2.3 Appendix Chapter 2 22 Comparing treatment of anthropology in journals of sociology, political science and 3 57 visual anthropology 3.1 Sociology 58 3.2 Political science 59 3.3 Visual Anthropology 59 3.4 Commentary 61 4 Where else anthropologists do write about mass media? 62 4.1 Communicational journals and other journals 62 4.2 Books and dissertations 63 4.3 Commentary 64 4.4 Appendix Chapter 4 65 5 Why is interest in mass media anthropology growing? 77 5.1 Studying cultures at a distance (World War II) 77 5.2 Anthropology and Nationalism 78 5.3 Anthropology and Development 79 6 What can anthropology contribute to communication research? 82 6.1 Call for anthropological concepts 82 6.2 Examples of use of anthropology in communication 83 6.3 Anthropological methods that might prove useful 89 6.4 Anthropological concepts that might be useful 91 6.5 Appendix Chapter 6 97 7 Closing stages. Proposal for an anthropology of mass communication 100 7.1 The subject matter 100 7.2 Methodology 100 7.3 Theory 101 7.3.1 Anthropological schools in mass communication 101 7.4 An anthropological theory for the mass media 102 7.5 Closing stages 107 8 Appendix from the journal research 108 8.1 Anthropological studies of mass communication 109 8.2 Sociological studies of mass communication 117 8.3 Political studies of mass communication 134 8.4 Anthropological studies of film 141 9 Bibliography 146 1 1. The Problem. How the Social Sciences Deal with Mass Media, with particular reference to Anthropology As a member of the social sciences, anthropology until recently (1980s) did not work systematically with mass communication. We did not know if anthropological research were following the same trend or not (comparing to communication research). We did not know if anthropology were answering questions posted by communication research. We did not know how many studies were conducted by anthropologists or where they were writing. We did not know if anthropology could make a contribution. The purpose of the present work is to answer all these questions in order to help in the institutionalization of an anthropology of mass communication. I think it is time to coined the term mass media anthropology. Mass media anthropology must be understood as a new study object for anthropology, not as a new discipline within the social sciences. I cannot justify the existence of a whole new discipline called mass media anthropology because it makes more sense to define a new area within anthropology than to create an independent domain. This chapter has three sections. The first one gives the context to the relationship between social science and mass communication. The second section reviews the discussion about the connection between anthropology and mass media and, finally, the third section describes the objectives of this work. 1.1 Media Effects Tradition One possible way to understand how the social sciences deal with mass media is attending to the summary descriptions of media effect traditions written by Elihu Katz, which appeared in the International Encyclopedia of Communications (see page 5). I think it is justified to take this path because most of the anthropological research on mass communication falls into the media effects tradition. However, before developing this argument, I will concentrate in the way social sciences have dealt with mass media. Katz’s argument is that there is a popular belief that television (and other mass media) has the power to influence individual behavior. This folk knowledge says that television can change the mind of any member of the society and, therefore, to change individual action. Our friends, neighbors, we ourselves can all give examples from daily life. However, when we ask how this is possible, what is the mechanism underlying this situation, the answer gets confused. Such a mechanism needs to fulfil two characteristics. First, it has to rely only on the broadcast and, second, incorporate an inoculation. The first condition asserts that a television campaign, asking someone to vote for a particular candidate cannot physically bring the candidate into the home but only the candidate’s televisual representation. This symbol is broadcast and penetrates into someone’s mind. Therefore, the broadcasts symbol breaks through barriers (whether physical, biological, social, cultural or mental) and enter the individual. Nevertheless, this condition is not good enough, because other candidates can do the same. If a second candidate uses this media, then it will again change the individual’s mind. In order to avoid this problem, and to be effective, an inoculation is needed for the broadcast. This inoculation has to block any other political message, even if the opponent uses the same television time slot, to produce a powerful effect in someone. As far as we know empirically, there is no such a mechanism. Politicians and advertisers cannot in a simply way control someone’s will through their broadcast message. The question is whether there is no hope to such enquiry, or do we simply not know it yet. From the point of view of social science, the former path has a longer trajectory than the later. As Katz says, the history of the mass communication research can be described as a persistent search for effects that better describe the social roles of the mass media. In other words, if campaign studies are wrong, then who is right? There is no easy answer to this problem. Different research traditions, anchored in almost every social science, have contributed to the field of mass communication (see the table displayed at the end of this chapter). According to this literature, drawing on the summary of Emily West (1999), the Uses and Gratifications school investigates the active audience. Instead of assuming a direct relationship between messages and effects, it proposes that audience members put media messages to use, and that such uses act as intervening variable in the effect process. This school views media use not just as exposure to messages, but as the very act of being exposed to a particular medium, within a specific social context. The assumptions of this school are the following: a) The audience is conceived of as active. 2 b) Much initiative in linking needs gratification and media choice lies with the audience member –individual and public opinion have power vis-à-vis supposedly all-powerful media– media use is goal-directed. c) The media compete with other sources of needs satisfaction. d) Audience members are able to report their own uses of media. e) Value judgements about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored on their own terms. f) Media consumption can fulfill a wide range of gratifications although media content alone cannot be used to predict patterns of gratifications accurately. g) Media characteristics structure the degree to which needs may be gratified at different times. h) It is possible that gratifications can have their origins in media content, exposure, or the social situation in which media are consumed. Diffusion research, according to Katz, has a different focus. Taking the group or the society as the unit of analysis, it searches for the way in which communication elements are transmitted between people. The assumption of this school is that interpersonal networks filter media messages and influence their interpretation and evaluation. The knowledge gap school, Katz says, explores the possibility that media may widen rather than narrow the information differential between social classes. Socialization studies focus on the influence that family, peers or teachers (primary and secondary groups) can have over the individual and its relationship with the mass media. Uses and gratifications, diffusion, knowledge gap and socialization argue that there are factors that intervene between a message and the targeted attitude or action. Therefore, Katz calls them models of limited or indirect effects. However, other models argue for direct or unmediated effects. Such models include agenda setting, technology studies, and ideological (or critical) studies. The agenda setting approach is concerned with how the mass media can influence people by creating a common theme, or problem, that people talk about in daily life. The assumption is that the media constitute a forum or bulletin board in which society’s central issues are aired for consideration, in Katz’s words. Technology is almost a synonym for Marshall McLuhan’s work. Ideology studies are the application of neo-Marxism and the Frankfurt school to communications studies. From an epistemological point of view, all these research traditions follow either causal explanations, functional explanations, rationalism, critical theory and hermeneutics. Because at the beginning campaign studies looked for causal explanation, other epistemologies can be seen as reactions against causality. All these theoretical systems are alive, and historically social science has moved back and forth from causality to hermeneutics through the twentieth- century century. Mass communication research can also be understood from this perspective. Campaign studies are mainly concerned with a causal explanation of human behavior. Functional explanation and rationalism were the first reaction, led by the Uses and Gratifications school. In addition, Critical Theory has played an important role in this area. Hermeneutics –semiotics, literature, and symbolism– played a major role in the 1980s and 1990s. I insist that all these theoretical systems are currently being elaborated by social scientists related to one or more communication schools, and the debate is not over. 1.2 Anthropology and Mass Media Nevertheless, this debate has a new guest: anthropology. One of the latest social sciences to enter at mass communication research –and let me say an expected participant– began systematic research during the 1980s and 1990s. What is the news that anthropology brings us? First, that most media effects found in America are also found elsewhere, in places such as China, India, Brazil or among Mayan people. The first question that someone could ask is if this is a good or bad news. The good news comes from the fact that anthropological research supports the media effects tradition. For example, now we know that families all around the world spend large amounts of time watching television, or that television is a medium for configuring national identity, either in state-owned (China, India), commercial (Puerto Rico), or indigenous systems (Australia). The bad news is that anthropology did not solve the problems of effects, it only gave more fuel to the flames. Now, what the social sciences have to explain – especially anthropology– is why television viewing is so pervasive (everybody watches television). 3 Most of the anthropological research confirm old beliefs in communication research (television viewing punctuates time), but also disprove some knowledge (television viewing is a private activity), and adds some new knowledge (television viewing does not alter basic family patterns of the use of space). Nevertheless, before to enter upon the anthropological knowledge, we need first to discuss the points of contact between both disciplines. In the social sciences, few scholars have discussed the relationship between mass communication and anthropology. As far as I know, four authors deal with this question: Dickey (1997), Spitulnik (1993), Eiselein (1976), and Peck (1967). These scholars are optimistic about the relationship between anthropology and mass communication. Why are they optimistic? In Dickey’s words, anthropologists are entering media studies at a time when the field is coming up with questions that they can answer. Eiselein argues that within anthropology the study of media does not require any new theoretical concepts or methods. Spitulnik thinks that although mass media anthropology is not an institutionalized area, it is growing and it could be a contribution. Now, I will concentrate in their arguments, making some questions and comparing the essays. What does anthropology understand by mass media? Dickey defines mass media as communications media that are, or can be, widely distributed in virtually identical form, including not only film, video, television, radio, and print periodicals, but lithographic prints, advertising billboards, and the World Wide Web. Eiselein’s definition of communication media is the mechanical amplification of communication to transcend geographic and/or temporal barriers. He thinks that among non-industrial societies, media are found in the form of petroglyphs, artwork, smoke signals, and signal drums. Spitulnik argues that the mass media are at once artifacts, experiences, practices, and processes. They are economically-and-politically driven, linked to developments in science and technology, and bound up with the use of language. Because of these broad characteristics, she says, anthropology can approach mass media as institutions, workplaces, communicative practices, cultural products, social activities, aesthetic forms, and as historical developments. Considering the previous definitions, there is no argument to exclude mass communication from anthropology (an argument already developed by Peck in 1967). In other words, we are justified to study mass communication as a subject matter of anthropology. But these definitions are saying something more: mass communication is not only an industrial phenomena (a product of a mass society), but exist in non-industrial societies anthropologists had studied. It has always been with us. The point is that we did not see it. How does anthropology approach to the mass media? These scholars agree that anthropology is well aware of the trends in communication research. Spitulnik argues that during the 1990s, the discipline centered its attention in the interpretative practices of media audiences, the diversity of media audiences and media uses, and the multivocality and indeterminacy of media texts. In Dickey’s words, the trend in communication studies has been toward the differentiation of media participants, which anthropology had supported. According to this, anthropologists have been well aware of media studies. They know the main theories, trends, subject matters, and problems. The point is that so far anthropology is not doing something new and the question of its contribution still remains open. What is the objective of an anthropology of mass communication? According to Eiselein, the subject matter is to explain how media creates integration in a world where the networks of kinship, residence, and social stratification are incapable of providing social and cultural integration on a massive scale. According to Dickey, to study the process of constructing identities in interaction with media, i.e., an understanding of how media are used in mundane and extraordinary practices to create and contest representations of self and other. According to Spitulnik, to integrate mass media studies into the total social fact of modern life, i.e., to theorize media processes, products, and uses as complex parts of social reality. According to Peck, to conduct cross-cultural research in order to test the findings of communication scholars and see if they are only applicable to some Western societies or valid to every culture in this world. All these definitions are true, in some extent. Peck’s definition describes a very good number of anthropological research. Nevertheless, I do not agree because the consequence of that proposal is that anthropology will prove to be 4 nothing more a technique. I will further develop arguments against it. Eiselein and Spitulnik write with the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s, i.e., the functionalist view of mass media. Dickey writes in the mood of the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., critical and hermeneutics. All these theoretical systems are well alive, and all are represented in anthropological research. Therefore, we do not have an unified approach to study mass communication, and we do not have an unified object. Could we understand in another way the objective of an anthropology of mass communication? I think another method is to attend the questions these researchers ask to the field. Peck does not make questions to compare. Dickey Spitulnik Eiselein • How do different people • How do mass media represent • What is the function of media create and use different and shape cultural values within a society? media? within a given society? • What is the meaning • How are those media • What is their place in the concerning the daily lives of embedded in social, political, formation of social relations people? and economic systems? and social identities? • What is the nature of the • How do viewers (readers, • How might they structure interaction between media listeners) interpret the people’s sense of space and sender and media receiver? messages they receive? time? • What is the difference • How do they use • What are their roles in the between those who use representations to comply construction of communities, newspapers, those who use with and contest the ranging from subcultures to television news, and those ideologies embedded in texts, nation-states, and in global who use both? and to create identities and processes of socioeconomic imagine other realities? and cultural change? • How do they organize social, cultural, and political activities around the media? The questions they ask cannot differentiate anthropologists from other social scientists. Therefore, by this method we do not know the specific mission of mass media anthropology. This situation allows me to give the context of my own research, which I will present as objectives in the following section. 1.3 Objectives We are observing during the 1980s and 1990s the growing relationship between anthropology and mass communication. Because of its novelty, my research deals with the following objectives in order to understand this relationship. 1. To describe mass communication’s anthropological research. 2. To compare this research with the traditions such as sociology and political science. 3. To describe the uses of anthropology by communication researchers. 4. To propose a contribution of anthropology to mass communication. The structure of this essay follows the same order of objectives. Chapter 1 presented an introduction to the problem. Chapter 2 makes a journal review to answer the question about what anthropology has said about mass communication and what knowledge has come from it. Chapter 3 compares anthropology with other disciplines. Chapter 4 looks for anthropological knowledge outside anthropological journals. Chapter 5 tries to answer why interest in mass media anthropology is growing. Chapter 6 describes how anthropological concepts and methods have been used by communication research. Chapter 7 is my proposal for the anthropology of mass communication. The appendix section includes the databases constructed to make this work. My research is theoretical. Therefore, I did not make fieldwork research to test my proposal. I would be grateful if this work in included within the epistemology of social science. In addition, I hope that my arguments could help to understand the contribution of mass communication to anthropology. 5 Mass Media Effects [International Encyclopedia of Communications Oxford 1989 Vol. 2 p. 492] Research Traditions Gratifica Campa- know- child ideologi- psycho- -tions; Agenda techno- sociolo- ign diffusion ledge socializa cal analytic; depende setting logical gical studies gap -tion (critical) textual ncy role in Active tabula Informa- informa- regressi- instituti- Image of atomized seeker; rasa; active tion tion passive, ve, on, audience decision multiple seeks Citizen seeker proce- proce- atomized lonely class; member maker needs, adult ssor ssor voyeur demogra roles status phy Differen other social Forum social malaise, Societal mass -tiated, Stratifie sociali- mass differen- net- of public forma- discon- context society pluralis- d zing society tiated works opinion tions tent tic agents social Resourc informa- instru- media persua- role teasing, reality; The e tion, mental Social attribu- hegemo- sive models, nonstop conflict “text” material; innova- informa- issues tes, nic appeals values flow manage toolbox tion tion codes ment ubiquity ubiquity need for of Needs, needs, of orienta- need for Basis of Need for message; interests, need to interests, identific medium; tion, identific members involve- orienta- conso- depen- keep up pro- ation participa belong- ation; hip ment tion nance of dency blems tion in ing, escape appeal decoding escape accept crystalli- hegemo- Gratify frustra- Hypothe ze patterns nic needs, tion; -sized change improve gain beliefs, Revises, of reality; interests; vicarious belong; indivi- opinion, situation informa- beha- adopts thought, false unantici- pleasure; conform dual action or status tion vior, agenda persona- consciou pated arousal; effects self- lity sness, effects identity concept reassu- rance social mobiliza evolutio- social Hypothe societal legitima- integra- -tion, nary widen Shared organiza -sized Societal stability, te status consume tion, participa change, social social -tion; societal stability reproduc quo; rism consen- tion, develop gap focus integra- effects tion control sus, control ment tion control rural psycho- technolo social, sociolo- sociolo- analysis; Durk- Functio- Cognitiv Political gical behavio- gy, gy, symbolic heim. Theory nal e science; determi- neo- ral anthropo social interac- symbolic roots sociolo- psycholo journa- nism; marxism psycholo logy, psycholo tionism; anthropo gy gy lism humani- gy epidemi gy humani- logy ties ology ties ethnogra phy; retrospec neuro- intros- field tive and psycholo pection, experi- Retros- sociome- field longitu- Content Typical gy; message content ment; pective tric experi- dinal analysis, survey method historica analysis analysis; panel survey survey; ment survey survey l experi- survey measu- research ment res of time adoption With what to what to where to what to believe, how to think, who What to belong Key think; when to how to think, what not what to choose, should think (with question from think behave where to to think feel do (short think about whom to what to (long belong term) think) choose term) 6 1.4 Appendix Chapter 1 1. Sara Dickey (1997) Anthropology and Its Contributions to Studies of Mass Media [International Social Science Journal 153, 414-427] She understands mass media as communications media that are, or can be, widely distributed in virtually identical form, including not only film, video, television, radio, and print periodicals, but lithographic prints, advertising billboards, and the World Wide Web. Dickey is optimistic, saying that anthropologists are entering media studies at a time when the field is coming up with the questions that they can answer. She thinks that anthropological theory and method is well equipped to deal with the following questions. i) How do different people create and use different media? ii) How are those media embedded in social, political, and economic systems? iii) How do viewers (readers, listeners) interpret the messages they receive? iv) How do they use representations to comply with and contest the ideologies embedded in texts, and to create identities and imagine other realities? v) How do they organize social, cultural, and political activities around the media? She says that perhaps one relevant concept to deal with mass media is cultural performance. Citing J. MacAloon (1984) Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle, these are occasions in which a culture reflects upon and defines itself, dramatizes its collective myths and histories, presents itself with alternatives, and eventually changes in some ways, while remaining the same in others. Maybe, Dickey says, this perspective could be useful to understanding mass media. Dickey focuses on the 1990s, saying that the trend in communication studies has been toward the differentiation of media participants. Instead of a single message in the text or a single audience mechanically influenced by that message, Dickey thinks that most research is trying to avoid unitary categories and look for diversity. For example, she uses the concept “production” to refer to any shaping part in the creative process, including direct creation as well as financial sponsorship. In one sense a producer is different from a consumer, but Dickey says that producers are also consumers of the media. For this reason, she uses the term “media participants” to refer to consumers and producers together. She says that the main point made in anthropological studies of media consumption is that audiences are active interpreters of the material they read, see and hear. Dickey gives as an example the work of P. Mankekar on Indian television [see 2.1.1]. She summarizes the argument by saying that Indian viewers interpret its messages from the perspectives of many subjectivities, which have been influenced by the whole discursive practices coming into contact over the courses of their lives. In other words, the media can help to form a subject, but at the same time the ground each medium covers is a contested one, i.e. involving multiple participants whose ends often compete but occasionally coincide. In order to ask where the message is, Dickey says, we must look not in the text itself, nor in the creation process at the producers. Because consumers have a role in constructing the meaning, all these participants must be viewed as a whole, to discern mass media’s meanings. From this argument of media participant differentiation, Dickey gives as ethnographic examples L. Abu-Lughod on Egyptian television [see Chapter 4], A. Davila [see 1.1.2] and her book from 1993 Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India. Dickey asks the following: What do we gain by examining media participants as differentiated actors in the creation and utilization of media? Her answer is: an understanding of how media are used in mundane and extraordinary practices to create and contest representations of self and other. She says that a main function of media is to portray persuasive images. Because these images are widely disseminated, she thinks that the use of representations in constructing identities and imagined realities has increased, along with the contest over their control. Dickey says it is easy to recognize that one of the media’s function is the provision of a space for the play of imagination and the construction of identities. She cites A. Appadurai (1996) as an anthropologist developing theoretical arguments for this point. Dickey’s example is that news reports, novels, radio dramas and films all provide contact with experiences, realities, and aesthetic canons that differ from our own. She says that they create both the awareness of actual and potential differences, and the materials with which to imagine those differences. Another intellectual 7 source comes from B. Anderson [an argument already discussed by Spitulnik]. Thus, she explains current anthropological research as focusing on the process of constructing identities in interaction with media. Dickey argues that media are consumed in places like theaters, living rooms, tea stalls, and subways. Therefore, research also has to consider media contexts, as well as producers and consumers. In addition, she says, consumption is not limited to the moment of viewing, reading and listening. There are adjoining behaviors like political activities and fan clubs. The point to stress, she says, is to attend to wider perspectives in order to understand the daily uses of media. Finally, she concludes that anthropologists have been so deadly serious that do not see pleasure as a research subject. The cost of this is blindness is high, Dickens says, in so far as they are supposed to study culture as a whole. In addition, anthropological research could give a grounded understanding of media by looking at particular uses. 2. Debra Spitulnik (1993) Anthropology and Mass Media [Annual Review of Anthropology 22, 293-315] Her first sentence is that there is as of yet no anthropology of mass media. She defines mass media as the electronic media of radio, television, film, and recorded music, and the print media of newspapers, magazines, and popular literature. She says that they are at once artifacts, experiences, practices, and processes. They are economically-and- politically driven, linked to developments in science and technology, and bound up with the use of language. Because of these broad characteristics, she says, anthropology can approach mass media as institutions, workplaces, communicative practices, cultural products, social activities, and aesthetic forms, and as historical developments. Spitulnik says that the main challenge is to integrate mass media studies into the total social fact of modern life. Therefore, she asks the following questions. i) How do mass media represent and shape cultural values within a given society? ii) What is their place in the formation of social relations and social identities? iii) How might they structure people’s sense of space and time? iv) What are their roles in the construction of communities, ranging from subcultures to nation-states, and in global processes of socioeconomic and cultural change? Analyzing the main theoretical points in communication research, Spitulnik considers that there is more consensus among themes than in methods or theories. During the 1970s, she says, the main concern was the power of mass media. Scholars moved between two poles: critical and functionalist. Spitulnik characterizes the British cultural studies as centering on mass media as forces that provide audiences with ways of seeing and interpreting the world, ways that ultimately shape their very existence and participation within a given society. One consequence of this theory, she says, is that the mass media create a fragmented society, forcing individuals to construct images of other social members. She says that this argument is related to B. Anderson’s thesis of society as an imagined community, where members may not all know each other, but where each share the idea of a common belonging through the mass media. Spitulnik says this conceptualization of mass media as vehicles of culture, and as modes of imagining, has had limited empirical support. According to her, studies focusing on the ideological functions of mass media have attended to media texts. The assumptions in these studies, she says, are that a) mediated meanings are to be found in media messages, and b) mass media are sites of collective representations. Those studies lead to the analysis of media production, political economy and social history of media institutions, and media consumption. Spitulnik says that through the 1980s, the dominant model has been linear: message production, message transmission, and message reception. In other words, she says, the message is taken as the essential unit of cultural meaning and a powerful refraction or reproduction of a society’s dominant ideologies. Functionalist, on the other hand, study mass media power and its role in reinforcing or changing the attitudes, values, and behavior’s audiences. She cites Gerbner’s Cultural Indicators Project as an example (see 2.1.1). She criticizes both research traditions saying that focus in isolate media messages and “armchair” analysis of media texts. She says that functionalist are interesting in content units for quantification, and critical scholars in understanding audiences as passive receivers. The reaction to these traditions, Spitulnik points out, has been to divert attention towards the next set of issues.