Mass Media and Social Control

Paper Summary:

This paper demonstrates how mass media plays an important role in communicating to individuals what other people in their society think and enable leaders to broadcast their messages to large audiences. It explains in depth that public opinion is shaped both by relatively permanent circumstances and by temporary influences. The paper intelligently displays how mass media in the United States facilitates cohesive public opinion for a large population spread over wide geographic area.

From the Paper:

"When we ask to what extent the mass media influence our perceptions of who belongs and who doesn't, on the role of race in America, on the "deviance" of certain groups within American society, a large measure of what we are asking falls under the more general rubric of how public opinion is formed, as Riggs suggests. Public opinion is shaped both by relatively permanent circumstances and by temporary influences. Among the former are the ideas that characterize the popular culture of a given place at a given time. In the U.S., for example, the youth-oriented culture of the early 21st century affects the attitudes of many people toward aging and the elderly and the images of whites vis--vis other groups within the mass media certainly affects American perceptions of race."

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