Page 8 - Culture Society and the Media

Preface

The writers of the Open University course on ‘Mass Communication and Society’,
from which this book is substantially derived, saw the understanding of various
differences and conflicts between theoretical perspectives on the mass media as
an important and desirable object of study for students taking the course. Rather
than aiming to show ‘how the media work’, the course attempted to indicate that
there were a number of alternative and sometimes competing theoretical
accounts of how the media work. In particular, the course focused on the division
and opposition between liberal-pluralist and Marxist views of the media. As part
of the pedagogic strategy of the course, students were actively encouraged to
follow the history of debates between Marxists and liberal pluralists over the
media and to question the assumptions of both sides. This opposition was set up
and, to a certain extent, simplified for students as in the following comparison of
pluralist and Marxist views.

The pluralists see society as a complex of competing groups and interests,
none of them predominant all of the time. Media organisations are seen as
bounded organisational systems, enjoying an important degree of
autonomy from the state, political parties and institutionalised pressure
groups. Control of the media is said to be in the hands of an autonomous
managerial elite who allow a considerable degree of flexibility to media
professionals. A basic symmetry is seen to exist between media institutions
and their audiences, since in McQuail’s words the ‘relationship is generally
entered into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms’ (McQuail, 1977, p.
91): and audiences are seen as capable of manipulating the media in an
infinite variety of ways according to their prior needs and dispositions, and
as having access to what Halloran calls ‘the plural values of society’
enabling them to ‘conform, accommodate, challenge or reject’. Marxists
view capitalist society as being one of class domination; the media are seen
as part of an ideological arena in which various class views are fought out,
although within the context of the dominance of certain classes; ultimate
control is increasingly concentrated in monopoly capital; media
professionals, while enjoying the illusion of autonomy, are socialised into
and internalise the norms of the dominant culture; the media taken as a