The professional of the careers of Social Communication, Sociocultural, and Journalism in their training demands not only from the disciplines of their specialty but significantly a solid conceptual and methodological basis in order to raise their professional technical rigor and remove it from the risks of empiricism, improvisation and instrumentalism at the same time that they contribute to a thorough understanding of the scope, the meaning of their social formation and the responsibilities that are inherent to them.
There is a discipline where a theoretical proposal of communication processes is conceived, with a chronological order endorsed by specialists from all over Geography, this is the Theory of Communication and it must be taught in the aforementioned careers, but it does not always happen even by the methods proposed or endorsed by the authors… hence the comment.
Commentary
It is known, sociologists say, that the mass media have three functions: to inform, educate and distract. The understanding of the first two is obvious, only if necessary we will dwell on them, but the third function calls us to an analysis powerfully.
If we consider the proposal of a famous journalist, specialist in geopolitics and international strategy, doctor in Semiology and professor of Communication Theory at a University of Paris who tells us: “… distraction can turn into alienation, cretinization and brutalization; and it could lead to collective deceit, to the domestication of souls, to the conditioning of the masses and to the manipulation of minds ”; then there is no doubt it is necessary to think about what I am exposing myself to just because I don't know what they can do with me.
If Sociologists, Political Scientists, Psychologists, Linguists and Mathematicians call us to the fact, it is necessary, at least, to pay attention to an analysis, not traumatic or exhaustive at the moment; because better now than never.
Let's think about how the study of some Theories, based on the Information process that some call Communication, can help us to be better understood and therefore better accepted. That is our proposal.
For this we will analyze the Communication Theories proposed for the universalization in the careers of Social Communication and Sociocultural Studies; we must have some necessary definitions.
Information: act of transmitting, emitting, verb informing.
Communication: dialogue, exchange, sharing relationship, being in correspondence, verb to communicate.
From here we will define each of the proposed Communication Theories with the objective, as we had announced, to be better understood and better accepted.
Hypodermic theory
Historically, it takes place in a context characterized by the danger of the two world wars and the large-scale diffusion of mass communications. This current represented the first reaction to the phenomenon of mass communication among scholars from different disciplines.
The main interest was to answer the question: what effect does the mass media have in a mass society?
The main elements that make up this Theory are:
• explicit presence of a theory of mass society.
• a psychological theory of action (in its communicative aspect).
• a theory of and about propaganda (central theme regarding the MCM “media” universe).
This theory states that: "Each member of the public is personally and directly attacked by the message."
The way of analyzing the phenomena of mass communication is closely linked to political propaganda during the First World War. Its main representatives were Walter Lippman and Lasswell Chakhotin.
At this time there is a concept of Mass Society. It is an ambivalent term and presents different elements and veins associated with aspects such as:
• Loss of exclusivity of the elites.
• weakening of traditional ties (family, professional associations, brotherhood)
• isolation and alienation of the masses.
• antithesis of the educated humanist.
• Mass: judgment of the incompetent, destroys everything that is different, singular, individual.
• equal, undifferentiated, spatially separated members with no links between them and no possibility of interaction.
• isolated and 'atomized' character of the individual.
This explains the criterion of the theory as a manipulative capacity of the first mass communication media (MCM).
Hypodermic Theory Budget:
• Each individual is an isolated atom that reacts separately to the orders and suggestions of the media.
• If the message reaches the public, it achieves the pre-established success.
Model
Stimulus → Response
"Stimuli that produce no response are not stimuli and a response must necessarily have been stimulated"
This approach suggests that MCMs are the main source of information that man has about the world, therefore they have an almost uncontrollable power to create a fictional world.
In the golden age of this theory (1930s) a model or paradigm was developed by Lasswell:
As can be seen, despite its defects, it is considered the paradigm of the entire science of North American communication:
• Overemphasis on effects.
• Own scheme of interpersonal relationships.
• Personalistic view of the issuer.
It is obvious that it is a mechanistic and isolated conception of communication that divides the communicative act, bringing disruptive consequences in the understanding of the communicative act. It establishes a linear and one-sided relationship between the different elements. They distort the complex reality that defines the act of communicating.
Overcoming the Hypodermic Theory occurs in three directions:
1st Current Empirical - Experimental or Persuasion.
2nd Empirical Sociology.
3rd Functionalist Theory.
Current Empirical - Experimental or Persuasion.
It was developed in the 1940s in a parallel way to empirical studies on the ground and is represented by Carl Hovland and the Yale School, it is also known as Effects Psychology and constitutes the first experiences of applied psychological research closely linked to the political and military demands of the United States.
The main objective of this approach is to measure the profitability and effectiveness of the message, the optimal effectiveness of persuasion, and therefore explain why some persuasion attempts have failed.
Postulates, basic ideas
"The persuasion of the recipients is possible as long as the organization of the message is adequate to the personal factors that the receiver activates in its interpretation" that is
"Media messages contain specific characteristics of the stimulus that interact differently with the specific personality traits of the members of the public"
De Fleur (1966), points out the incidence that the development achieved by Psychology has on this theory, a Science that already in those years showed:
1. Interest in learning.
2. Interest in Motivation (some motivational drives can be acquired through learning. Not all individuals are motivated by the same incentives).
3. Interest in the study of personality traits and elaboration of refined tests for their quantitative measurement.
4. Social psychology coins new concepts to replace the idea of instinct.
Audience factors:
- Interest in acquiring information Selective exposure Selective perception Selective storage
Factors related to the message:
- Credibility of the communicator Order of arguments Type of arguments (exhaustiveness) Explicitness of the conclusions
Audience Factors
1. Interest in acquiring information: the more exposure to a topic or information, the more interest, the greater the interest, the more motivation to search for information.
2. Selective exposure to the media: the public is preferably exposed to messages that are related to their attitudes and avoids those that are discordant. The economic, educational level, sex, age, profession, etc. also influence.
3. Selective perception: the public receives the message according to their attitudes, values, convictions. This determines the interpretation of the message. This interpretation transforms and shapes the meaning of the message, to the point that its meaning can be radically changed.
Factors relating to the message
1. Credibility of the communicator: exerts a positive influence on the persuasion process, especially in the short term, then this effect is erased, persisting the influence of the arguments.
2. Order of arguments: Bilateral communication → refers to whether the most important arguments should appear at the beginning or at the end of the message.
Critical appraisal
Contributions
• Evidence for the first time the complexity of the elements that come into play in the communicative relationship.
• By including the role played by individual psychological barriers, the non-linearity of the communicative process stands out.
• Instrumental value for the concrete development of messages, campaigns, communication strategies today.
• First formulations on the active role of the receptor.
Limitations
• Methodological difficulties derived from laboratory experiments. (Different access to communication in natural conditions: here the individual chooses what he wants, he is selective)
• How the process takes place: interpersonal links are avoided.
• Short-term effects under experimental conditions without mediating interactions.
• It only studies or focuses on electoral, informative, propagandistic, advertising campaign situations, which implies that communication:
o It has specific purposes and is planned to obtain them.
o It has a defined time duration.
o It is intensive and with wide coverage.
o Your success can be valued.
o It is promoted by institutions of certain power and authority.
o Your arguments must be "sold" to the public.
• Communicative context linked to the administrative nature. It focuses on effects desired by the issuer, which implies an instrumental purpose.
Empirical field studies or limited effects theory
This current relates the communicative processes with the social context in which they occur.
It develops in Two slopes or Filones (M. Wolf):
- Study of the differentiated composition of audiences and their consumption models. Research on the social mediation that characterizes such consumption.
This line of research is developed together with political campaigns, especially the study of Propaganda in Presidential Campaigns. Its main figure is Paul Lazarsfeld, a Viennese of German formation (recognized as the father of communication research) and whose sociological activity is characterized by empiricism and quantification.
While the first studies were related to the Radio Audience (Philo 1), the second aspect was developed from the measurement of the Effects of Electoral Campaigns.
First slope. Radio Audience Studies:
Lazarsfeld, as director of the Princeton Office of Radio Research, develops the scientific systematization of audience studies, elaborating what Melvin de Fleur calls Theory of Social Categories, based on the fact that despite the heterogeneity of modern society, people with similar characteristics share similar habits and ways of thinking about mass communication.
Because of this similarity in their modes of orientation and behavior, they will relate to the mass media in a fairly uniform way. The members of a certain social category will select more or less similar contents of the communication and their responses to them will be approximately the same.
The model proposed by this current is a modification of the original mechanistic theory E - R and constitutes a more descriptive than explanatory formula:
E → Determined regulatory guidelines → R
by social categories
Second slope. Studies on the social mediation that characterizes media consumption.
This aspect evolves around the Propaganda of the presidential campaigns. Their results are collected in a classic study carried out in 1940 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet: The People's Choice.
The study was designed to study the influence on voters of the campaign for president's election carried out that year with the intervention of the mass media and was carried out in Eric County, Ohio.
The initial interest of the authors was to study the selection that the media public based on their belonging to certain Social Categories, during the electoral campaign that had Wendell Willkie and Franklin Roosevelt as contenders.
The study used a sample of 600 subjects, who were interviewed repeatedly during the duration of the campaign. The objectives of the study were:
a) Know the way in which the subjects were interested in the campaign and looked for information about the candidates and problems.
b) Know how they came to the decision of who to vote for.
c) Study the effective attendance at the polls.
What results did you find? That the campaign had the following Effects:
• Activation effect: The campaign activates the predisposition existing in the subject.
• Reinforcement effect: Voting intention was reinforced by a continuous and partisan selection of additional material extracted from the media.
• Conversion effect: The existing interactions were abandoned and the campaign managed to change the decision of the voters.
Critical appraisal
Positive aspects or contributions:
The flow of communication in two stages and the importance of interpersonal relationships in the study of communication is one of the most significant contributions to the sociological study of mass media. With this, a change in scientific attitude was achieved in the face of the effects problem.
Negative aspects:
• Narrow, specialized character.
• Tendency to measure short-term effects.
The North American researcher Elihu Katz has stated that: “The investigative history of mass communication, we can call it a study of 'campaigns', that is, attempts to change in a short time, the ideas, opinion and way of acting of people."
Criticisms of this trend, according to Andreeva (1986), can be made of the entire North American empirical sociology:
- Accumulation and description of information but lack of generalizations. It is not aimed at understanding the essence of processes, their place in the general system of social relations. Research subordinated to client needs "intellectual administrations". Justification of existing relationships and renounce attempts to transform reality.
The functionalist theory of mass communication
The Uses and Rewards Hypothesis
In this case the conception of mass communications explicitly refers to a general theoretical paradigm: the sociological theory of Structural - Functionalism. Its most significant feature is the interest in focusing on the Functions of the media system.
The essential difference with the preceding theories is the fact that the underlying question is no longer about the Effects but about the Functions of the media in society. Thus the tour followed by the mediological research is completed:
MANIPULATION ↓ Hypodermic Theory
PERSUASION ↓ Psychological current - experimental
INFLUENCE ↓ Empirical studies
FUNCTIONS ↓ Functionalist theory
It can be said that an important conceptual shift occurs in this theory:
1. Abandonment of the idea of Intentional Effect, of a subjectively pursued objective of the communicative act to focus on the Objectively Demonstrable Consequences, of the action of the media on: the Society as a whole or on its Subsystems.
2. Previous theories focused on the study and analysis of “field” situations. Now we have as a reference another communicative context: the usual situation of daily production and dissemination of mass messages. It refers to the normal presence of the media in society.
Latin America
"In Latin America, due to the vividness of social change and communication transformations, the political implications of research on communication have appeared more clearly than in any other world context."
"The history of research in Latin America is completely embodied in the struggle for emancipation and / or in the achievements and difficulties of domination processes."
Miguel de Moragas
There are many periodizations about the main stages that the investigation goes through. For example Javier Esteinou Madrid, Mexican specialist (founder of TICOM), establishes the following:
1st Classical Phase - humanist 1900-1945
2nd Scientific Phase - theoretical 1945-1965
3rd Critical Phase - reflexive 1965-1984
“The production of scientific awareness about communication phenomena in Latin America has been a long, winding and unfinished path that Latin American thinkers and researchers have built inch by inch. The trajectory that this intellectual effort has followed to produce clarity on the cultural identity of the continent has oscillated from a theoretical extreme to a theoretical extreme, and in some phases, it has been strongly influenced by the rational patterns that have marked the investigation of communication in the countries. intellectual centers of the central countries ”.
We have considered, with the permission of those dedicated to these studies, that a scientific-revolutionary process is currently taking place in Latin America in the research and application of communication, given the process of integration and development of the region.
Given this criterion, we consider necessary the analysis of the Latin American stages and proposals in another comment.
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