The Role and Impacts of the Mass Media

Mass communication is the exchange of information via a mass medium (for instance radio, television, newspapers, and so forth) from one or a few indi­viduals to an audience of many. The scholarly field of mass communication centers on understanding the effects of mass media messages on individuals who are exposed to these messages. Intercultural communication scholars are particularly interested in whether the media help (1) to maintain an individual's culture or (2) to assimilate the individual into the broader society in which the individual is living.

Although newspapers and magazines had existed for several decades pre­viously, the first mass communication research began in the United States about the time that radio was introduced. From that point, the mass media increased exponentially. The first commercial radio station was founded in 1920 in Pittsburgh. Ten years later 46 percent of U.S. households owned radios; by 1940 this figure reached 82 percent. In the decade of the 1950s, television spread to most households in the United States. Today, the mass media of newspapers, radio, and television reach almost everyone every day, making the United States a media-saturated society.

In the years after World War I, the number of foreign-language newspa­pers decreased sharply. A primary factor in the decline was that the emphasis on assimilation at that time meant that the second generation offspring of immigrant parents rarely learned their parents' language. The newspapers effectively provided a transition between the two cultures, with an emphasis on providing newcomers with the information necessary to establish them­selves as members of their new culture. In order to avoid discrimination against them as strangers, immigrants learned the language and assumed the culture of the larger group.

As we already know, cultures must communicate their content to future generations if they are to survive. The socialization process works through society's institutions: the family, peer groups, schools, and religious institutions. The media are major players in communicating culture. They offer steady streams of information in appealing formats, cap­turing the attention of children over long periods of time—more time than is often spent with parents or teachers. Entertainment, including television, comic books, music, movies, and Internet chat groups, carries potent mes­sages about politics, economics, and social behavior.

Because culture is not stagnant, the means of communicating attitudes and values often create their own contributions to the culture. The media as an institution reinforce a culture's beliefs and values. As a powerful channel transmitting cultural norms, the media can also generate new attitudes that become part of the general culture. One small indication of the influence of television was its power to rearrange living room. When introduced in the 1950s, this artifact became a focal point and furniture was grouped accordingly. Television influenced nonverbal behavior, family inter­actions, and leisure patterns. In providing a range of cultural information to children, the electronic media also blurred the lines between childhood and adulthood that existed previously. Ease of use and the demands of program­ming to fill hours of broadcast time meant that multiple topics from which children had been shielded previously were available at the flip of a power button.

Most individuals rely on the mass media for perceptions of others with whom they do not have regular interpersonal contact. Thus the media play a major role in forming and maintaining stereotypes. If journalists do not share the cultures of the society whose news they report, then society will not see itself reflected accurately in the news. In an ideal world, the media would serve as mirrors of society, accurately conveying the reality of different cul­tures to their audience. This is not the current state of affairs.

Reports about certain nations like Japan, Germany, and England appear far more frequently in the U.S. media than their population or economic size would seem to justify. Other nations such as Mexico and Canada, which bor­der the United States and are very important trading partners, appear in the news only rarely. When the developing nations of Latin America, Africa, and Asia are covered by the U.S. media, the news is usually negative and mainly concerns wars, military coups, and disasters.

Although the growth of cable and satellite broadcasting has curtailed the monolithic power of the major networks that existed through the 1980s, the mainstream mass media still can counteract the effects of specialized media. The expansion of media outlets has allowed Univision, for example, to gain a strong foothold, but think of other cultures that do not have the same eco­nomic and political strength as the Latino population. Are they as well rep­resented? Are they represented at all? The bulk of U.S. advertising dollars still goes to programs and networks dominated by mainstream U.S. culture. In a media-saturated society, what are the effects of an endless stream of images on viewers and listeners? What are the prevalent images projected? What values are reflected? Imagine a Pakistani child watching television in Chicago, or a Navajo child in Gallup, or an Indonesian child in San Diego. Depending on the amount of time spent watching the media, the child will copy the speech mannerisms of television characters, adopt their clothing styles, and beg his/her parents for the toys, sweetened drinks, and other prod­ucts advertised on television. Even if the child's family members speak their own language at home, cook native recipes, and consider themselves to be Pakistani, Navajo, or Indonesian, their child is likely to grow up with a self-image as a European American. Such is the potent process of assimila­tion, driven in part by the ubiquitous nature of the dominant mass media.

Who gathers and produces the news and who appears in the mass media have an important impact on society. In an ideal world, people of color would be represented in the media in the same proportions as in the populations that the media serve. In the media of the United States, this ideal is far from being reached, although progress is being made in recent decades.

The underrepresentation of ethnic groups in the media is not in the eco­nomic interest of the media. The experience of the Los Angeles Times maps what may happen as demographics change. When the media do not have a workforce that reflects the audience that they seek to serve, news coverage is unbalanced and ethnic groups in the audience tune out.General newspapers have been particularly hard hit. With the growth of new media forms such as the Internet, and facing competition from evening tele­vision news, many of the general-circulation newspapers have disappeared, especially big-city afternoon newspapers. Few U.S. cities have more than one newspaper today. In the late 1990s, only 62 percent of adults in the United States read a daily newspaper, down from 75 percent 20 years previously. Some of the lost readership has been recovered by special-interest publica­tions.

The effects of the mass media on intercultural relations are not easy to characterize. The messages they communicate often depend on the percep­tions of the audience. Communities and societies are made up of forces that pull people together and forces that push them apart. In the 1930s, Her­bert Blumer viewed the broadcast media as the bulwark of social solidarity. From this view, the insistently omnipresent, standardizing influence of the media was a means to counteract disruptive forces. Today, new communication technologies support the creation of interest groups that often promote their own interests to the exclusion of all others. Both posi­tions can harm efforts to exchange culturally different views.

The contributions of the media to the assimilation process will continue to be a focus of intercultural communication researchers. The opportunities and risks inherent in the ability of the media to reach limitless audiences sup­ply rich veins to tap in the exploration of how culture is communicated. The remainder of this chapter looks at a unique group of people whose experi­ences clearly illustrate the pervasive influence of culture.

The Sojourner

A sojourner is an individual who visits another culture for a period of time but who retains his/her original culture. The sojourner typically is a visitor or traveler who only resides in the other culture for a relatively specific time, often a year or two, with the intention of returning home. Sojourners may be businesspeople, diplomats, students, military personnel, or guest workers. Many U.S. citizens experience sojourning:

1. Over two million people from the United States work overseas. The average company spends $250,000 per year for salary, benefits, and expenses to keep a U.S. employee and dependents overseas; some 25 percent of returnees leave their company within one year of coming home (many sojourning businesspeople expect that their experience in another culture will benefit their career and are disappointed when they find that it does not).

2. More than half a million U.S. military personnel and their dependents are stationed abroad.

3. Some 30,000 high school students and 75,000 university students study abroad each year.

Large numbers of sojourners come to the United States:

1. About 450,000 international students study in the United States. The majority come from China, Japan, Taiwan, and India.

2. Over 12 million international visitors come to the United States each year. Japan, Britain, and Germany are the leading nations from which these sojourners come.

Sojourners are a favorite topic of study by intercultural communication scholars. Sojourners represent a unique situation in which most everyday communication is intercultural. The sojourner is a particular type of stranger. While immigrants decide the degree to which they will become assimilated, sojourners know that their stay in the new culture is temporary. Regardless of their intent to learn the new culture, they will eventually return to their original culture. This "escape clause" can affect adjustment to the new culture. The sojourner is a stranger caught between two worlds. Past research shows that sojourning is a very difficult process, especially when an individual is sojourning for the first time. Sojourning threatens the self-worth of many individuals. The degree of culture shock that many indi­viduals experience tells us that culture is important and that intercultural adjustment is not easy, although it can be a valuable learning experience. Some individuals perceive the sojourning experience as negative and personally painful, at least during their sojourn. However, if one has the desire to under­stand a different culture, sojourning can be an exciting and wonderful event once the period of adjustment passes. Some sojourners thrive on the experi­ence. Sojourning can change one's life by giving a feel­ing of self-confidence and self-efficacy, a sense of controlling one's life and over­coming difficult situations. Many sojourners look back on their intercultural experience as something resembling a profound religious rebirth.