Page 268 - Culture Society and the Media

258 POLITICAL EFFECTS
and processes. We argued that different judgements about the scientific pay-off
to be expected from effects studies followed logically from differences between
pluralist and Marxist views of society and of the role of the mass media in
society. One conclusion which might have been drawn from the discussion is
that the gap between the two approaches is so wide as to be unbridgeable.
Nevertheless, in this concluding section we wish to consider how abiding such a
compartmentalization of outlook is likely to prove, and whether any signs can be
discerned of the emergence of a measure of agreement between researchers of
different persuasions about some of the issues involved in studying the impact of
the mass media.
At the outset of this exploratory journey it should be firmly stated that no
papering over of the ideological and theoretical incompatibilities of Marxism and
pluralism is envisaged. Holders of the former position are bound to postulate a
subordination of mass media institutions to the interests of dominant classes, just
as scholars in the latter camp will conceive the media as reacting to and
impinging on a wider and much more loosely-knit set of socio-political power
groupings. It is not merely unrealistic to expect either side to abandon its
theoretical core; such a move if it happened would also dilute what is one of the
most exciting sources of significant debate in the field at the present time. Rather,
the question for review is whether the two schools can converge in studying
audience responses to mass communication so as to put their respective theories
to an empirical test at that level.
It may be useful to summarize at this point the conceptual obstacles to that
form of convergence. Preoccupation with the effects of the mass media follows
naturally from the pluralist tradition’s view of society as constituting a plurality
of potential concentrations of power (albeit not necessarily equal to each other)
which are engaged in a contest for ascendancy and dominance. The mass media
are then seen as a central means through which this contest is conducted and
public support for one or another grouping or point of view is mobilized.
Clearly, questions about the effectiveness of the media as sources of influence
and persuasion loom large in this perspective, and the attention of media
researchers is thus directed to ways of measuring and assessing such influence
and to the sociological and psychological variables that intervene in and filter the
process of persuasion. The Marxist perspective, on the other hand, starts from
Marx’s familiar assertion that, The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas
of the epoch’, and so can readily relegate the question of media effects (if
defined in terms of their capacity to bring about changes in attitudes and
opinions) to near-irrelevance. The social functions of the mass media are
conceptualized instead in terms of their ideological role in the production and
reproduction of consensus, and the central questions raised focus on explaining
how that role is performed and consensus is achieved.
Put in this manner, the differences appear basic. Nevertheless, in some recent
work and writing on both sides of the theoretical/ideological divide it is possible
to discern the seeds of a measure of agreement, so far as conceptualization of the