Each perspective has a different explanation of the role of the media in society and about who controls the media and how it influences audiences.

• Elite theory is based on the view that a small organised minority – the elite – controls the media and uses it to manipulate the majority. This is also known as the theory of mass society, from which the term ‘mass media’ originates.

• Pluralists do not deny that elite groups exist, but argue that there are many different sources of information to choose from. In this view, it is the consumers (ie audiences ) who hold the power.

• Marxists see the media as serving the interests of capitalism, as it is owned and controlled by the ruling class. The output of the media transmits a dominant ideology that disguises inequality and exploitation.

• Interactionists are interested in labelling processes and the effects of stereotypes. They have shown how negative labels created by the media can produce a spiral of deviance amplification.

• Feminists show how the media stereotypes women by casting them in traditional roles and by representing them as sex objects. The media serves the interests of patriarchy: men’s power over women.

• Postmodernists believe we now live in a media-saturated society. We are surrounded by a vast range of images, styles and sources of information – a media-scape-from which we pick and mix elements to fashion our identities.

Some perspectives see control of the media as concentrated in a few hands and media output as having a direct influence on a passive audience. Others see control of the media as diffused and the audience as active and capable of choosing from the range of media sources available.

Sociologists are interested in the factors that shape the output of the mass media. For example, who is it that makes key decisions and how far can advertisers, consumers, big business or governments influences the output of the media?

Murdock shows that most of the media is now owned by large business corporations. Ownership has become more concentrated: mergers and take-overs have meant a trend towards corporate control. As a result, media companies have become part of large conglomerates owned by shareholders and controlled by managers and media professionals.

Pluralists argue that there has been a divorce between ownership and control. Companies used to be owned and controlled by an individual or family, but now shareholders are the legal owners of large companies, whilst day-to-day control rests with managers and professionals.

Pluralists believe in consumer soverereignty: the view that the consumer is king. Media corporations are geared to providing that the consumer wants, so it is ultimately the consumer who controls what media companies produce. This means that media professionals, such as editors and journalists, are aware of what their readers and viewers want and have to compete with each other for a share of the audience.

Marxists argue that the media serves the interests of the capitalist system. The media is no longer owned by individual capitalists, but power and control remain concentrated among top executives. Day-to-day control may be delegated to editors and journalists, but they operate within a capitalist environment and have to conform to the values of the companies they work for. Marxists therefore dismiss the idea of consumer sovereignty.

Murdock identifies two main types of Marxist explanation:

Instrumentalist In this view the media justifies the position of the ruling class because it is owned by them. The ruling class uses the media as an instrument to maintain its power.

Structuralist In this view the media is tied closely to the structure of capitalism. Media corporations are part of the big business and run along capitalist lines. They have to make a profit and are controlled by the advertisers and the banks that finance them.

Curran’s findings support the structuralist explanation. For example, the popular press avoids serious discussion of politics because a formula of sex, sport and scandal is more attractive to advertisers. Equally, editorial advice about investment planning in financial papers provides an attractive context for companies to advertise financial products.

The recent growth of global and interactive media, such as satellite, cable and the Internet, has greatly increased the number of media channels throughout the world. Pluralists see these developments as strengthening consumer sovereignty

by extending choice. Postmodernists go further and argue that the difference between producers and consumers of the mass media is disappearing because new interactive media allow audiences to produce media messages themselves.

Murdock argues that these developments have not brought about fundamental changes in the relationship between ownership, control and what the media produce. The media is still owned mainly by western corporations and media output is aimed at western audiences. The demands of advertising and the need to appeal to large audiences restrict the range of programmes. Western audiences have more access to the media because they are better off.

Sociologists are interested in the causes of bias in the output of the media: how the mass media explains events, and the images of social groups it puts forward.

From a Marxist perspective, the Glasgow University Media Group identified the following sources of bias in television news coverage of strikes in the 1970s:

• Biased vocabulary: for example, union leaders are described as ‘demanding’ and ‘making threats’, but employers as ‘pleading’ and ‘making offers’

• Selective reporting: journalists are ‘gate-keepers’ who decide which stories to report and which to ignore or play down.

• Emphasis on effects not causes: reporting emphasises the inconvenience caused by strikes while ignoring the underlying causes and the views of strikers.

• Selective use of visuals: for example, by interviewing employers in the calm surroundings of their offices, but union officials outside, in front of factory gates, where they have to shout to be heard.

• Hierarchy of access: reporters take employers and their views more seriously. Employers are presented as normal, sensible people acting in the public interest, but strikers and their leaders are described as unruly and easily led, and are portrayed as a disruptive minority.

From an interactionist perspective, Cohen and Young show that media coverage focuses on newsworthy events and personalities. They point to three types of study which help to explain the causes of bias in the news:

Studies comparing news coverage with official statistics. For example, Roshier shows that newspapers are selective and biased in the way they report crime news. Some types of crime are given more coverage than others, such as serious crimes, those which are humorous or have a human interest angle and crimes which involve famous people.

• Studies linking stereotyping to the processes involved in newsgathering. Galtung and Ruge argue in relation to foreign news that the 24 hour news cycle and constant pressure for stories lead to an event and personality orientation which highlights dramatic incidents at the expense of background information.

• Studies of deviance amplification Cohen and Young show that the media create moral panics by focusing on newsworthy events. By focusing on deviant behaviour and labelling it, the media can provoke a negative reaction from the public, the police and other official agencies. This exaggerates the problem and sets a vicious circle in motion. Cohen shows this is in his study of media coverage of the mods and rockers’ disturbances of the 1960s.

Hall argues that the media plays an important but secondary role in this labelling process. There is a hierarchy of credibility, which means that journalists are more likely to believe information from official sources, such as the police or government, than information from other sources. Journalists are therefore secondary definers who rely on primary definers for their information. This means that the version of events presented by the media is likely to be the one provided by the police and other official agencies. Hall uses this framework to examine the moral panic about ‘mugging’ in the 1970s.

Hall’s view is challenged by recent studies. McRobbie notes that the media draws increasingly on a range of sources rather than relying on official sources alone. Minority groups often have experts and self-help groups to defend them. This adds a new dimension to moral panics, with claims and counter-claims and arguments that represent different points of view.

Postmodernists use the term hyper-reality to describe how images and reality merge. Images in the news vary widely in their relationship to what actually happened. This is apparent in news reports that present a pastiche of images to create a spectacle; the studio anchor, the reporter on the spot, documentary pictures, archive or amateur footage, expert opinion, artist’s impressions and computer graphics.

Studies of representations examine images of social groups in the media. News and documentaries provide some examples, but other areas are drama and sitcoms, music, magazines, cinema, etc.

In the 1980s, Golding and Middleton examined representations of social class in a study of the tabloid press. The found the press scapegoated benefit claimants, creating an ‘atmosphere of scroungerphobia’, which encouraged support for cutbacks in welfare spending. Another example is Glennon and Butsch’s study of American sitcoms. Most families in sitcoms are shown as middle class or wealthy; when working class families are portrayed, they are portrayed either as upwardly mobile or as figures of fun.

Representations of ethnicity are explored in Jhally and Lewis’ study of the Cosby Show. The show presents a comforting but unrepresentative image of a black American family – the Huxtables – who appear to be unaffected by problems of racism. The researchers argue that by representing black families in this way the programme, and others like it, mask the existence of racism. Hartmann and Husband adopt a different approach. Applying the deviance amplification model, they show how news and documentaries tend to focus on ethnic minorities mainly when they are in confrontation with authority. This results in stereotypes that perpetuate prejudice and discrimination.

Women’s magazines have been a focal point for studies of gender in the media. Ferguson found that from 1949 to 1974 the magazines’ main themes were love, marriage and self-improvement, reflecting a cult of femininity. By 1980, however, there was a new emphasis on self-esteem and mutual support, reflecting the struggle for women’s independence. Women were not represented solely as housewifes.

McRobbie observes a similar change of approach in magazines aimed at teenage girls. She sums this up in the contrast between Jackie in the 1970s and Just Seventeen in the 1990s. Jackie represented girls as passive and dependent, but in Just Seventeen they are represented as independent and self-confident.

Connell uses the term ‘exemplary masculinity’ to describe stereotyped images of the ideal man found in popular culture, such as sports programmes and Hollywood movies. These images are frequently linked to violence, for example, the Stallone or Schwarzenegger character, and their effect is to devalue other types of masculinity. Connell’s analysis helps to explain why gay men and other sexual minorities are under-represented and stereotyped in the media. Pearce shows that the media almost presents homosexuality as a problem or a threat. Gross argues that lesbians and gay men as ridiculous or pitiful.

Featherstone and Wernick examine images of old age in the media. They note that old age is represented as a period of dependency. Programmes like Last of the Summer Wine portray the elderly as going through a second childhood. Images of old age also reflect our culture’s denial of illness and death. The subject of dying (as opposed to killing), is generally avoided in popular television. Magazines like Retirement Choice avoid the topics of illness and death by presenting animage of the ‘young-old’ enjoying their leisure time.

In relation to disability, Cumberbatch and Negrine showed that people with disabilities are under-represented on prime-time television programmes, news broadcasts and specialist programmes; none appeared in game shows or current affairs programmes and they were a tiny proportion of characters in dramas. Drake approaches the subject differently. Far from being invisible, he argues that disability is the main theme in films like My Left Foot and Born on the First of July, but that such films stereotype disability by presenting it as something mysterious involving tragedy and triumph.

Research on the effects of the media began in the 1940s against the background of fears about brainwashing and propaganda. In common with elite theory, they hypodermic syringe model suggests that audiences are passive and unable to resist media messages. This view is challenged by research evidence.

Lazersfeld’s two-step flow model shows that people are not influenced directly by the media. He found in election campaigns that people interpret media messages through a framework of attitudes they acquire from primary groups and opinion leaders. Katz also rejects the idea that people are manipulated. His uses and gratification model suggests that individuals make selective use of the mass media to meet their needs for information and enjoyment.

From a review of research, Klapper concludes that the mass media is more likely to reinforce existing attitudes and behaviour than to change them. Our existing attitudes act as a protective net preventing any direct effect. It follows that the media has most influence when an audience lacks knowledge and clear opinions. Halloran believes that the media has most influence when individuals are socially isolated and when the audience lacks direct experience.

Deviance is an example of behaviour about which audiences often lack direct experience. This helps to explain why media coverage of deviance can create moral panics. The effect of moral panics is to reinforce the moral boundaries of society. From a functionalist point of view this creates social solidarity by reinforcing the shared values of the community, but Marxists argue that scapegoating of minority groups deflects attention from class inequality and protects the position of the powerful.

Hall’s encoding/decoding model examines the relationship between media production and effects. Encoding describes the production of media messages. From a Marxist perspective media production serves the interests of the dominant class. The media transmits what Althusser calls the dominant ideology. Hall accepts this view of media output, but argues that audiences are not passive victims of the dominant ideology, but can decode media messages in different ways.

Hall’s approach has been described as a hegemonic model because it is based on Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony. Gramsci argues that the power of the dominant class is not absolute but provisional. The dominant class promotes its view of the world (ie its hegemony) through the media and in other ways, but comes up against varying degrees of opposition and resistance from below.

Morley tests the encoding-decoding model in his study of Nationwide, a television news programme. He showed recordings of the programme to audiences from different backgrounds and found differential de-codings, ie they de-coded the programmes in one of three different ways:

• dominant de-codings where audiences shared the world view of the programme-makers.
• negotiated de-codings where audiences disagreed with some aspects of the programme
• oppositional de-codings where audiences rejected or ignored the programme altogether.

Oppositional de-codings are an example of what Gramsci described as cultural resistance and counter-hegemony. For example, a group of shop stewards in the study opposed the middle class bias of the programme and a group of black students rejected it as irrelevant.

Morley’s follow-up study called ‘Everyday Television’ uncovers the ‘politics’ of the living room by studying television viewing in the context of people’s homes. He found evidence of gendered viewing. For example, fathers appear to exert the most influence on the choice of family viewing.

Recent studies by the Glasgow University Media Group provide evidence of alternative de-codings which show that audiences are not passive recipients of media messages but that they interpret and construct them in a social context. Both Kitzinger’s study of media portrayals or HIV/AIDS and Philo’s study of audience responses to the 1984-5 miners’ strike show that audiences do not receive media messages in a vacuum, but play an active part in constructing them.

However, the media has the power to structure people’s thinking and set the agenda.

Feminist explanations of the effects of the media have changed. Early feminist approaches resembled the hypodermic syringe model in seeing women as victims of patriarchal ideology. However, as Jones and Jones observe, such explanations have given way to more complex ones that recognise that sections of the media, and women themselves, can play an active part in opposing patriarchy.

Abercrombie and Longhurst put forward a postmodernist explanation of the effects of the media. They argue that the nature of audiences has been transformed because we now live in a media-saturated society. Audiences have become fragmented. In postmodern society everyone is part of an audience almost all the time. Individuals and groups use the media as raw material to create their identities.

In post-modern society the difference between consumers (ie audiences) and producers is breaking down. Audiences now behave more like fans. Being part of an audience can mean adopting a certain attitude and personality. We can observe this in the fan following for fashion, musical styles and sci-fi programmes. However, it also applies to ‘mainstream’ areas such as sport, soap operas, DIY, gardening, etc.

Fiske recognises the importance of the processes that postmodernists describe but argues that only the affluent few are in a position to afford a post-modern lifestyle. Similarly, Murdock stresses that we should not lose sight of economic constraints that restrict people’s access to the media. Ownership of information and communication technology, including the Internet, varies greatly according to family income.