The idea that media binds us together is a legacy of Marshall McLuhan that can be found in a wide range of cultural writings. Consider, for example, Hillary Rodham Clinton's best-selling 1995 book about the problems confronting children. The book's itself was inspired by an African folktale of the same name.
To many, this brave new world seems dehumanizing and inhospitable. It is not
surprising then, that there is a yearning for the 'good old days' as a refuge from the
problems of the past. But, by turning away, we blind ourselves to the continuing,
evolving presence of the village in our lives, and its cultural importance to how we live
together. The village can no longer be defined as place on the map, or a list of people
or organizations, but its essence remains the same; it is the network of values and
relationships that support and affect our lives."
The horizon of the contemporary village extends well beyond the town line. From the
moment we are born, we are exposed to vast numbers of other people and influenced
through radio, television, newspapers, books, movies, computers, compact discs,
cellular phones and fax machines. Technology connects us to the impersonal global
village it has created.
Since the mid-1960s, culture studies have exploded as a theoretical framework in which to investigate the influence of media on modern society. This short book brings together some of the most the provocative ideas that have been suggested by these cultural theorists. Chapter I examines the general impact of media on society; Chapter II then builds on this foundation to focus on critical-cultural theories involving concenrs that people have about the undue and potentially negative impact of media power on human experience.
Along with behavioral research, cultural studies are one of the two principal ways through which researchers investigat the mass media today. Both approaches are valuable and important, but differ significantly:
Behavioral research examines the impact of media by focusing on individuals, and specifically by studying the influence of media on audience knowledge, attitudes and actions. Behavioral researchers describe the impact of media in terms of media effects, reflecting their training psychology and sociology--the first social sciences to examine mass media in a serious way. Behavioral researchers rely primarily on surveys, experiments and formal content analyses to test a priori hypotheses or predictions, mostly using quantitative methods. A typical behavioral research study, for example, examines how specific features of mediated messages or differences in audience characteristics influence the processing of messages.
Cultural studies, by contrast, address more global concerns, focusing upon the impact of media on groups of people and the lifestyles they share as members of a community, a nation or the world. Cultural theorists use the more generic term media consequences to describe media's influence (rather than media effects). Besides psychology and sociology, media researchers who pursue cultural approaches to understanding media can be found in such diverse disciplines as anthropology, history, literary criticism, philosophy, political science and speech communication. As result, cultural investigations can involve a diverse range of methods. These include many qualitative methods, which do not rely upon statistical analysis. These can include the systematic observation of media prodouction processes, depth interviews with audiences, and the textual analysis of content. The overall intent is to understand how media communications operate in society and how different groups derive meaning differently from mediated messages.