Page 209 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 199
dominant power-bloc; the wider dislocative effects of new media which by-pass
or displace established mediating organizations and groups; the emergence of
new media which reflect and amplify increasing conflicts within the social
structure; and the central role of the media, when there has been a close
integration between the hierarchy of power and control over communications, in
maintaining consent for the social system.
This examination will concentrate mainly upon three historical periods—the
central middle ages, early modern Europe and modern Britain. It will take the
form of a schematic analysis in which we will move backwards and forwards in
(3)
time in order to elucidate particular aspects of the impact of the media .
Inevitably a survey covering so broad a canvas will be highly selective and, in
places, conjectural. But hopefully it will serve as a mild antidote to the
conventional approach to examining media influence, in which media
institutions are tacitly portrayed as autonomous and isolated organizational
systems transmitting messages to groups of individuals with laboriously-
measured and often inconclusive results, that has dominated media research for
(4)
so long .

COMMUNICATIONS AND POWER
The rise of papal government is one of the most striking and extraordinary
features of the middle ages. How did the See of Rome, which even in the early
fourth century was merely a local bishopric with no special claim to legal or
constitutional pre-eminence, become the undisputed sovereign head of the
western Christian Church? Still more remarkable, how did a local church with no
large private army of its own and initially no great material wealth and which for
long periods of time was controlled by minor Italian aristocrats develop into the
most powerful feudal court in Europe, receiving oaths of allegiance from princes
and kings, exacting taxes and interfering in affairs of state throughout
Christendom and even initiating a series of imperialist invasions that changed the
face of the Middle East?
The See of Rome had, of course, certain initial advantages which provided the
basis of its early influence. It was sited in the capital of the old Roman empire; it
was accorded a special status by the emperors in Constantinople who were
anxious to unite their Christian subjects in the west; and it was the only church in
western Europe which was thought to have been founded by St Peter.
The papacy capitalized on this initial legacy by spearheading the missionary
expansion of the church and by skilfully exploiting the divisions within the
deeply fissured power-structure of medieval Europe to its own advantage.
Successive popes played off rival monarchies against each other, exploited the
tensions and conflicts between monarchies and feudatories and even, on rare
occasions, backed popular resistance to aristocratic repression. The papacy also
utilized to its own advantage the desire of some leading ecclesiastics to increase
their independence from lay control as well as the tensions and rivalries within