Theories
Media-Society Theory I: the Mass Society
In this and the following sections, several distinctive theoretical approaches to these themes are discussed. They are presented more or less in chronological order of their formulation and they span the range from optimistic to pessimistic, from critical to neutral. The first to be dealt with, mass society theory, is built around the concept of ‘mass’ which has already been discussed in Chapter 3. The theory emphasizes the interdependence of institutions that exercise power and thus the integration of the media into the sources of social power and authority. Content is likely to serve the interests of political and economic power holders. The medial cannot be expected to offer a critical or an alternative definition of the world and their tendency will be to assist in the accommodation of the dependent public to their fate.