ownership and control ; pluralism , neo-marxism and marxism

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  • Created by: precious
  • Created on: 04-12-13 20:15

PLURALISM

Media content reflects diversity in society - Pluralism

·        Pluralism is a development from functionalism Jean Blondel (1969)

Functionalism has some slight differences from Pluralism. They believe it :

·        Communicates common values , norms and aspirations to society

·        Complementary to the functions of the family and the education

Ø              Mass media can sometimes undermines norms and values , which is then possibly responsible for social change.

 

-  Society is made up of lots of different and interacting parts and the state overseas them to keep them in check(state regulations).

-  A strength of pluralism is that mass media reflects the norms , values and individual interests from many groups within society.

- They believe in consumer choice and we can accept or reject which media outlets we which to indulge or invest in.

- the free market economy is the key to a pluralist media . Any media which reflects the value consensus of society would be popular and say in business , any that the public don't like will lose viewers and henceforth the business will collapse.  However some people have argued that from new media , people can express their own individual choices . For example , YouTube and twitter etc .

Weakness - acknowledgement of different groups and there's so much choice but the choice may be in favour of a particular social group , consequently there's little choice in terms of media content.

Marxist would develop this argument and say that the reason as to why 'choice' can be seen to be much more 'one-sided' is because those who are in charge are part of the ruling-class and want to oppress people's choice and retain theirs through submitting the dominant ideology through the media.

MARXISM

Traditional Marxists say media serves the Economic Power of the Ruling Class

-  According the Traditional Marxists , they see mass media only in favour of the minority group r/c , at the expense of the majority group the w/c.  For example stock shares and share prices featured on the national news bulletin. Marxists argue that this isn't applicable to everyone because only the minority group in society have stock shares or an interest in it.

-  Marxist theory say it's the 'logic of capitalism' . the institutions  in society will always be used as INSTRUMENTS OF POWER by the capitalist society . for example , education , mass media and crime and deviance all to certain extents have influences from those in power and how they should function or operate.

 For Example Advertising .  Advertisements on TV or in

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