chicago school, functionalism and community the first major american study of communication

Chicago School, Functionalism and Community The first major American study of Communication

Chicago School Loose conglomeration of significant social thinkers with some relation to the University of Chicago Concerned with the disintegration of traditional small town communities Saw mid-nineteenth century American small town as a sort of ideal community Democracy itself was only meaningful, workable within such a context

Chicago School Community was based in a shared sentiment among all its members Without a concern for fellow members of the community, there could be no democracy (Dewey)

Chicago School Massive social changes of the late nineteenth century had undermined the basic cornerstone of American democracy and societythe small town community No habit of intercommunication (separation into ethnic communities/no shared language), no shared ideals or religious faith

Social change: Industrialization Urbanization Immigration Class/economic differentiation Leads to breakdown of community: Anomie Self-interest Multiple, separate ethnic, class groups Social problems Breakdown of democracy

The social system is sick Social change has acted as a disease How to make the system well again? Reconstruct the small town on a grand scale build the Great Community (Dewey).

John Dewey One of the greatest intellectuals in American history Philosopher Educational psychologist Political theorist Social commentator

Dewey and communication study Though Dewey placed communication at the very heart of his philosophical and social concerns, his actual theoretical work on communication is fragmented and, at times, frustratingly difficult if not obscure Of all things, communication is most wonderful Society can be said not only to live by transmission, by communication, but in transmission, in communication.

Deweys idea of the role of communication in society Societies are based on shared sentiments, meanings, beliefs, norms, etc. For a society to exist, the members must have a feeling of communion with other members Shared self-interest, knowledge of the law, even agreement to rules of democracy are not enough Difference between the Great Society and the Great Community

The Great Community In any true community, individuals have a feeling of fellowship with all the other members Concern over the fate of all members, but especially those in greatest need, is a natural part of the community All members share equally in the feeling of fellowship even if material wealth, etc. is unequally distributed

The machinery of democracy is created to help carry out the natural policy of a true community It cannot create a community It cannot substitute for a community In the absence of a true community, the machinery of elections, universal suffrage, and on and on is simply an empty husk which will only forward the interests of the most powerful or adept at its manipulation Community can only be created through communication Of all things communication is the most wonderful

Communities small and large The ideal of community is the small town Like Deweys native Burlington, Vermont People know each other, develop bonds of affection and understanding, through their face-to-face communication, shared religious experience (communication), gossip, shared culture and all the other myriad ways they communicate and thus come to share a deep understanding supported by emotional bonds People take on as a personal goal the good of the community

How to recapture community? Political chicanery, social disintegration, immorality and economic abuse were largely due to a loss of the communitarian spirit that was part of true democracythe community Must construct a mass communitythe Great community that would replace the Great Society Because of the societys grand scale, communication would need to be on an equally grand scaleharness the mass media to provide communication widely and relatively uniformly to the differing groups that make up the nation (or the city) Thought News project (enlightened social intelligence)

One is socialized into humanity through communication To learn to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values. But this translation is never finished.

Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) Received a BA (1887) and a PhD (1894) in economics from the University of Michigan, where he taught beginning in 1892. Cooley used the term the "looking glass self" to convey the idea that the self concept reflects the evaluations of other people. In other words, we see ourselves as others see us. Works Human Nature and Social Order (1902) Social Organization (1909) Social Process (1918)

Four factors affecting efficiency of the mechanism of intercourse Expressiveness, or the range of ideas and feelings it is competent to carry. Permanence of record, or the overcoming of time. Swiftness, or the overcoming of space. Diffusion, or the access to all classes of men. Modern communication has had its greatest effect on swiftness and diffusion

It is not too much to say that these changes are the basis, from a mechanical standpoint, of nearly everything this is characteristic in the psychology of modern life. They make it possible for society to be organized more and more on the higher faculties of man, on intelligence and sympathy, rather than on authority, caste, and routine. They mean freedom, outlook, indefinite possibility. The public consciousness, instead of being confined as regards its more active phases to local groups, extends by even steps with that give-and-take of suggestions that the new intercourse makes possible, until wide nations, and finally the world itself, may be included in one lively mental whole.

Newspapers The essential function of the newspaper is, of course, to serve as a bulleting of important news and a medium for the interchange of ideas The bulk of its matter, however, is best described by the ph(r)ase organized gossip. This sort of intercourse that people formerly carried on at cross- road stores or over the back fence, has now attained the dignity of print and an imposing system.

Impacts of enlargement of gossip Promotes a widespread sociability and sense of community People across the country are laughing at same jokes, thrilling to same football games and absorb a conviction that they are good fellows much like ourselves Tends powerfully, through the fear of publicity, to enforce a popular, somewhat vulgar, but sound and human standard of morality.

Public opinion In politics communication makes possible public opinion, which, when organized, is democracy. The whole growth of this, and of the popular education and enlightenment that go with it, is immediately dependent upon the telegraph, the newspaper and the fast mail, for there can be no popular mind upon questions of the day, over wide areas, except as the people are promptly informed of such questions and are enabled to exchange their views regarding them. U.S. government was originally a representative republicnot intended to be a democracy Original colonies probably could not have remained together without the advent of modern communication

The enlargement affects not only thought but feeling, favoring the growth of a sense of common humanity, of moral unity, between nations, races and classes. Among members of a communicating whole feeling may not always be friendly, but it must be, in a sense, sympathetic, involving some consciousness of the others point of view. Even the animosities of modern nations are of a human and imaginative sort, not the blind animal hostility of a more primitive age. They are resentments, and resentment, as Charles Lamb says, is of the family of love.

Robert Park

Park Ecological (biotic) community An aggregate of individuals characterized by symbiosis, the division of labor and competitive cooperation Society A community of persons organized through communication, socialization and collective behavior

Park Social control is the central fact and the central problem of society Society is everywhere a control organization. Its function is to organize, integrate, and direct the energies resident in the individuals of which it is composed.

Park What does communication do and how does it function in the cultural process? It seems to do several different things. Communication creates, or makes possible at least, that consensus and understanding among the individual components of a social group which eventually gives it and them the character not merely of society but of a cultural unit.

It spins a web of custom and mutual expectation which binds together social entities as diverse as the family group, a labor organization, or the haggling participants in a village market. Communication maintains the concert necessary for them to function, each in its several ways.

Transmits tradition of any group over time and from generation to generation The function of communication seems to be to maintain the unity and integrity of the social group in two dimensionsspace and time

Park argues that the economic order in society seems to be very largely a by-product of competition

Human relations are to a large extent symbiotic rather than social Competition among human beings has brought about, or at any rate helped to bring about, not merely a territorial, but an occupational distribution of races and peoples. Incidentally, it has brought about that inevitable division of labor which is fundamental to every permanent form of society from the family to the nation.

Division of labor is limited by custom, and custom is a product of communication As a matter of fact, competition and communication operate everywhere within the same local habitat and within the same community, but in relative independence of each other. The area of competition is inevitably wider than that of communication

But the main point is that communication, where it exists, invariably modifies and qualifies competition, and the cultural order imposes limitations on the symbiotic.

Louis Wirth

Louis Wirths address (1948) Man had developed technical capabilities that outstripped his ability to control them through reason and consensus and this was a terribly dangerous state to be in. This condition made the study of sociology critically important so that mans ability to rule with reason could control the danger of nuclear holocaust. Social scientists cannot treat their topic in the abstract or use many of the methods of physical sciences. Wirth, Louis (1948). Consensus and mass communication. American Sociological Review. 13(1) 1-15.

Chose to discuss consensus because I believe it provides both an approach to the central problem of sociology and to the problems of the contemporary world. (2) Because the mark of any society is the capacity of its members to understand one another and to act in concert toward common objectives and under common norms, the analysis of consensus rightly constitutes the focus of sociological investigation. (2)

Compared to the Roman Empire modern mass societies are more integrated, with people participating in common life and in democratic societies participate in control of public policy.

Mass societies are a product of the modern age: Division of labor Mass communication More or less democratically achieved consensus

Characteristics of the mass Great numbers Aggregates of men widely dispersed over the face of the earth Heterogeneous members Anonymous individuals Does not constitute an organized group No common customs or tradition Open to suggestions Behavior is capricious and unpredictable Consists of unattached individuals Do not play roles in a group

Consensus Consensus is to society as mind is to the individual Consensus is the sign that such partial or complete understanding has been reached on a number of issues confronting the members of a group sufficient to entitle it to be called a society. Not imposed by coercion Not fixed by custom Therefore, always partial and developing and has constantly to be won (4) If men of diverse experiences and interests are to have ideas and ideals in common they must have the ability to communicate. It is precisely here, however, that we encounter a paradox. In order to communicate effectively with one another, we must have a common knowledge, but in a mass society it is through communication that we must obtain this common body of knowledge. (4-5)

Two major aspects of modern society Organized groups Detached masses held together, if at all, by the mass media of communication

Society has developed many ways of inducing consent Force and authority Leadership Common identification with great heroes or leaders Reinforced by: Propaganda and education mass communication lends itself particularly well to the dissemination of symbols and ideals on a scale hitherto thought impossible (6)

A common history, culture and set of traditions It is this basis of common social life as patterned by these traditions that makes it possible in the last analysis for any group to think of itself and to act as a society, to regard itself as a we group and to counterpose this we experience to all that is alien.

Public opinion formed in the course of living, acting and making decisions on issues (8) Individuals role is not determined by demographics. What counts, rather, is their power, prestige, strategic position, their resources, their articulateness, the effectiveness of the organization and leadership. (8) Decisive part of public opinion... is the organization of views on issues that exercise an impact upon those who are in a position to make decisions. Individuals affiliated with a variety of organized groups Another large mass of individuals unattached to any stable group unorganized masses, leave the decision-making to those who are organized

The fact that the instrumentalities of mass communication operate in situations already prepared for them may lead to the mistaken impression that they or the content and symbols which they disseminate do the trick. It is rather the consensual basis that already exists in society which lends to mass communication its effectiveness. (6-7)

Conditions that led to mass society have combined to disintegrate local cohesion and to bring hitherto disparate and parochial cultures into contact with each other. Out of this ferment has come the disenchantment of absolute faiths. (7) --skepticism toward all dogmas and ideologies --substitution of rational grounds for believing where reason fails, to seek legitimation for a belief in personal tastes, preferences and the right to choose Increasing public sophistication leads to increased sophistication of persuasion/propaganda

Democracies must resort to the art of compromise. democracies rest upon the ultimate agreement to disagree, which is the tolerance of a divergent view (8)

Consensus... is the established habit of intercommunication, or discussion, debate, negotiation and compromise, and the toleration of heresies, or even of indifference, up to the point of clear and present danger which threatens the life of the society itself. Rather than resting on unanimity, it rests upon a sense of group identification and participation in the life of society, upon the willingness to allow our representatives to speak for us even though they do not always faithfully represent our views, if indeed we have any views at all on many of the issues under discussion, and upon our disposition to fit ourselves into a program that our group has adopted and to acquiesce in group decisions unless the matter is fundamentally incompatible with our interests and integrity. (9-10)

Mass communication is rapidly becoming, if it is not already, the main framework of the web of social life. we live in an era when the control over these media constitutes perhaps the most important source of power in the social universe (10) Hitlers use of media

Development of a formal model of structural functionalism Talcott Parsons

James Carey

Carey Carey is reacting to the dominance of the structural functionalist/effects paradigm reflected in Lasswells and Lazarsfelds view of communication over that of the Chicago School Transmission view of communication imparting, sending, transmitting or giving information to others Metaphor of geography or transportation

The center of this idea of communication is the transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control. Derives from one of the most ancient of human dreams: the desire to increase the speed and effect of messages as they travel in space.

Religious roots Puritan movement to New World, etc. based on the belief that movement in space could itself be a redemptive act The moral meaning of transportation, then, was the establishment and extension of Gods kingdom on Earth. Converting heathens Produce a heavenly, though still terrestrial city Missionary uses of new transportation systems Bring Christians in every city together through the telegraph and telegraph, In effect almost bringing a nation together in one praying intercourse (Miller quoted in Carey)

Communication was viewed as a process and as a technology that would, sometimes for religious purposes, spread, transmit, and disseminate knowledge, ideas information further and faster with the end of controlling space and people. More secularized view over time, but continues to dominate our current thinking.

Ritual view of communication Older of the two views Sharing, participation, association, fellowship, and the possession of a common faith A ritual view of communication is not directed toward the extension of messages in space but the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs.

If the archetypal case of communication under a transmission view is the extension of messages across geography for the purpose of control, the archetypal case under a ritual view is the sacred ceremony which draws persons together in fellowship and commonality.

It does not see the original or highest manifestation of communication in the transmission of intelligent information but in the construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world which can serve as a control and container for human action.

This projection of community ideals and their embodiment in material formdance, plays, architecture, news stories, strings of speechcreates an artificial though nonetheless real symbolic order which operates not to provide information but confirmation, not to alter attitudes or change minds but to represent an underlying order of things, not to perform functions but to manifest an ongoing and fragile social process.

The model here is not that of information acquisition, though such acquisition occurs, but of dramatic action in which the reader joins a world of contending forces as an observer at play. Does not lead to questions of functions or effects a presentation of reality that gives to life an overall form, order, and tone

Under a ritual view, then, news is not information but drama: it does not describe the world but portrays an arena of dramatic forces and action; it exists solely in historical time; and it invites our participation on the basis of our assuming, often vicariously, social roles within it.

Definition of communication Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed. Reality is not given, not humanly existent, independent of language and towards which language stands as a pale refraction. Rather reality is brought into existence, is produced, by communication; that is, by the construction, apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms.

chicago school, functionalism and community the first major american study of communication

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