Page 128 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

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Media

Peter Horsfield

Media as culture
Media as industries
Media as text
Media as technologies

The term media in the study of media and religion may be understood
in either a focused and specific way or a more expansive and discursive
1
way. Understanding this difference is important in making sense of the
development of the study of media and religion and also of the different
perspectives that become apparent in approaches to writing and research in
the area. Both have particular strengths and limitations.
The interest in media as an area of study can be traced back to the
United States in the 1920s, when the relatively new mass communication
technologies of newspapers, film, and radio were assembling large audiences,
giving them the potential to influence social behavior on a mass scale that was
not possible in previous times. Anecdotal evidence about the effects of Nazi
propaganda in Europe and the desire to understand how these new media
could be harnessed for political and commercial purposes led to an interest
in more accurate information about media uses and effects. The dominant
methodologies of research for these investigations were the relatively new
but influential social and behavioral sciences.
In line with the scientific preference for clear definition, media in this
paradigm were understood primarily as the recognized utilities of mass
communication, such as newspapers, magazines, film, radio, and later
television. Reflecting the scientific concerns to understand phenomena in
terms primarily of causes and effects, media communication was understood
as a linear process: a sender constructed a message, that message was fed into
media technologies that multiplied and distributed it to a widely scattered
mass audience, where it worked its effect. Research was directed primarily
toward isolating and measuring the particular contribution made by each
stage of that process to the final outcome. Whether the communication
was effective was evaluated according to whether the effects intended by