The future of the mass audience / W. Russell Neuman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Neuman, W. Russell.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mass media--Audiences.

Mass media.

Mass media--Technological innovations.

Mass media--Psychological aspects.

Physical Description:

xiv, 202 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Summary:

The Future of the Mass Audience focuses on how the changing technology and economics of the mass media in post industrial society will influence public communications. It summarizes the results of a five-year study condcuted in cooperation with the senior corporate planners at ABC, CBS, NBC, Time Warner, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. The central question is whether the new electronic media and the use of personal computers in the communication process will lead to a fragmentation or "demassification" of the mass audience. Some analysts, for example, have suggested that with the growth of increasingly specialized cable television channels and on-demand electronic publishing, citizens will filter and preselect news concerning only their own special interests and prejudices, with the result that cultural and political life will be increasingly polarized, and the common culture and national media will atrophy.

This study indicates, however, that the movement toward fragmentation and specialization will be modest and that the national media and common political culture will remain robust. The analysis draws on a detailed review of the economics of advertiser- and subscriber-supported "narrowcast" media and the psychology of media use. The author concludes that the production and promotion costs and economies of scale for electronic media put natural constraints on special-interest, small-audience programming. The conclusion sets forth a policy agenda for making the most of the participatory and democratic potential of evolving electronic communications systems.

Contents:

Whither postindustrial society? 2

Rethinking postindustrialism 4

The social effects of the new media 5

Pool's thesis and time's arrow 7

The exhaustion of mass society theory 10

A strategy of analysis 14

1. Two theories of the communications revolution 22

Mass society theory and the perils of propaganda 23

Democratic theory and the promise of political pluralism 31

In the balance 41

2. The logic of electronic integration 48

The nature of networks 48

The nature of digital electronics 50

The technological drivers 53

A universal broadband digital network 74

The communications revolution as a sociopolitical force 76

3. The psychology of media use 79

The other side of the story 79

The helpless audience 80

The paradox of propaganda 85

A more balanced assessment of communications effects 87

The media habit 89

McLuhan's hunch 97

Interactive media 104

Persuasion in perspective 113

4. The fragmentation of the mass audience 115

The fragmentation hypothesis 115

The diversity of human interests 119

Diversity within mass society 127

5. The political economy of the mass media 129

The structure of the American communications industry 130

The concentration curve 137

Economic pressures toward homogenization 145

The economics of the new media 158

6. The future of the mass audience 164

Theories of technological effects 165

Pluralist versus mass society 166

The critical epoch 171.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-193) and index.

ISBN:

0521413478

0521424046

OCLC:

23655201