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Socialization is a life-long process through which people learn the patterns of their culture, including behavioral expectations, values and truths.” Increasingly ubiquitous and ever divergent, the mass media is a major agent of socialization that shapes the way we see ourselves and the world around us.
Sociologists have studied and postulated media impacts for much of the last century. Early researchers theorized that the mass media destroys the individual’s capacity to act autonomously. However, subsequent scholars posited a more complex interaction between the mass media and society. Elevating the role of human agency in the socialization process, this later work contended that individuals actively evaluate and interpret mass media narratives. Theories about media influence have evolved from those which emphasized direct and immediate influence (a hypodermic needle” model) and those which suggested relatively little influence (a minimal effects” model) through those that maintained a select influence (an agenda setting” model) and long-term effects (a cultivation” model). Recognizing the dynamic tension between human agency and social structure most contemporary media scholars address both the media as a process and also the relationships among the myriad elements of this process.
Certainly the mass media are vital sites of cultural and economic brokerage. Never fully shut out, mass media narratives serve as conduits through which society re-presents itself and ways by which social and personal identities are articulated and disseminated.
Bibliography:
- Fiske, J. (1994) Media Matters. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.
- Potter, W. J. (2008) Media Literacy, 4th edn. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
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