Social Media And Mass Media

• Mass Media


  Print, radio, television, and other communication technologies. Transmit from a few sources to many people.
• Social Media


  Apps and websites that allow people to interact and create and share content via cellphone networks and the Internet. Transmit from many sources to one, few or many people.
• Why study media?


  • Media reflects, upholds, reproduces, reconstructs, and creates
  • It shows us back our society but also constructs our society
  • Media upholds dominant ideologies about gender, sexuality, race, class, disability
• Media as an institution of socialization


  • One of many primary institutions of socialization
  • Media is a ubiquitous part of our lives
  • Media is everywhere! Even in places that used to be media free (public bathrooms, bars, university hallways)
• The Rise of Mass Media

  1. First developed systems of writing—5200 years ago

  2. Print media a mass phenomenon—1800s

  3. 1950—The newspaper was the dominant mass medium

  4. Samuel Morse sends the first telegraph message—1844

  5. Long-distance communication no longer required physical transportation

  6. The first commercial television broadcasts—1920s

  7. U.S. Department of Defense—ARPANET—1969

  8. World Wide Web publicly accessible—1991

  9. Wi-Fi (wireless Internet) publicly available—1999
• Causes of Mass Media Growth

  • The Protestant Reformation
  • Democratic Movements
  • Capitalist Industrialization
• Sociological Theories of Media Effects

  • Functionalism
  • Conflict Theory
  • Social Interactionism
  • Feminist Theory
• Functionalism and Media Effects

  • Mass media perform important functions like coordinating society, acting as agents of socialization, reinforcing shared ideals, engaging in social control, and providing entertainment
• Conflict Theory and Media Effects

  • Social inequality can be fostered by the mass media
  • Mass media favour interests of dominant classes and political groups
  • Disproportionate benefits - mass media broadcast beliefs, values, and ideas that create widespread acceptance of the basic structure of society, including its injustices and inequalities
  • Media ownership is highly concentrated in the hands of a small number of people and is highly profitable for them
  • Media bias - concentration of mass media in fewer and fewer hands deprives the public of independent sources of information, limits diversity of opinion, and encourages the public to accept their society as it is
  • Biasing mechanisms - advertising, sourcing, flak
• Noam Chomsky - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M Thoughts? Are we just victims of the media? (in other words, do we have agency?)
• Social Interactionism and Media Effects

  • Promotes the idea that audience members are people, not programmable robots
  • Audience Interpretations - Intended and received meanings may diverge; audience members may interpret media messages in ways other than those intended by the producers
• Feminist Theory and Media Effects

  • In the 1970s, feminist researchers focused on representation—or misrepresentation—of women in mass media
  • Women tended to be cast in subordinate roles, usually appeared in domestic settings, and were targeted in advertising only as purchasers of household products and appliances
  • The news rarely mentioned issues of importance for many women
  • Some stereotypes persist, but the way in which the mass media treat women and members of various minority groups has improved over time, especially in children's TV programming
• Case Study: Disney

  • Disney teaches gender roles to both girls and boys
  • How to dress
  • How to act
  • Defines who ideal women and men are
  • Defines who is not
  • Defines what is important to girls and what is important to boys
  • Defines what girls can do and what boys can do
• The Internet

  • The Internet offers more opportunity for audience influence than do the traditional mass media
  • Gives consumers new creative capabilities than do traditional mass media
  • By partially blurring the distinction between producer and consumer, the Internet has the potential to make media somewhat more democratic
• Internet Access


  • Primarily individual users must pay for the Internet's expensive infrastructure
  • In Canada, households that are richer, better educated, urban, and younger are most likely to enjoy Internet access
  • More than 90 percent of Canadian households have access to the Internet, but about three-quarters of households in Indigenous communities have no access to fast service
  • Internet is more expensive in urban areas which limits who can afford it
  • Internet access is not evenly distributed globally as well
• Internet Advertising

  • Advertising is the major source of revenue for many big Internet companies
  • The Internet provides advertisers with ways to influence consumers more effectively than newspaper, magazine, radio and TV ads do
  • Advertisers buy information on internet activity and demographic characteristics so they can target specific market segments
• Internet Algorithms

  • Rules that computers follow and which drive the Internet and social media
  • Algorithms have incorporated biases which tend to favour privileged and/or right-wing groups
• Impact of social media

  • Our use of social media affects our identity (how we see ourselves), social relations (the patterned connections we form with others), and social activism (the ways in which we seek to cause social change)
• What is the impact of corporations and advertising on social media?