Page 267 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 257
tables. The order of causation is also problematic. Heavy viewers may bring a
more simplistic and wary view of the world to their experience of television
instead of taking over that point of view from its programmes. So far, very few
efforts have been made to chart the acquisition by heavy viewers of such social
beliefs over a longer period of time in which the direction of causation could be
more closely examined. Most striking is the failure of the Gerbner team to
comment on, or to try to make sense of, the many differences between sample
subgroups that their detailed results reveal. Why, say, should heavy viewing
males be more afraid to walk alone at night than are equivalent women, when the
reverse pattern applies to levels of personal mistrust?
Such neglect probably reflects the concern of Gerbner and his colleagues to
demonstrate an overall effect of television exposure regardless of population
differences. But that is why some critics see them as having naively reverted to
‘mass society’ notions that were discarded long ago by most other students of
mass media effects. It is also the target of critics like Hawkins and Pingree (1980)
who contend that differences both of individual psychology and in the forms of
mass media content that audience members regularly consume must help to
determine how people construct social reality and from what main sources. They
argue that the influence of television on people’s ideas about society should vary
according to a number of intervening variables, including their information-
processing ability; critical awareness of television; direct experience of other
sources providing confirmation or disconfirmation of TV messages; social
structural position; and patronage of various forms of programme content.
Underlying all this, of course, there lurks a more profound philosophic
difference. The Gerbner position tends to regard the mass media as capable of
imposing categories through which reality is perceived, by-passing potential
neutralizing factors and engulfing the audience in a new symbolic environment.
By their critics, however, media influence is regarded as essentially
differentiated, filtered through and refracted by the diverse backgrounds,
cultures, group affiliations and life-styles of individual audience members.
(Note: Since this chapter was written, Gerbner and his colleagues have tilted
lances with Paul Hirsch in the pages of Communication Research. In the course
of this debate Gerbner and his colleagues seem to have taken a more
differentiated view of the ways in which television influences the viewers’
construction of social reality.)

CONCLUSION: TOWARD A CONVERGENCE OF
CONCERN OVER AUDIENCE EFFECTS?

The reader of the first part of this chapter will have learned that empirical
enquiry into the audience effects of mass communication is not a universally
applauded pursuit. Numerous sources of doubt and criticism were identified
there, but at the core of the debate was a polarization of outlook between
pluralist and Marxist approaches to the analysis of mass communication systems