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Theories of Communication and Theories of Society

Article  in  Communication Research · July 1978

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 THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION
AND THEORIES OF SOCIETY
PETER GOLDING
GRAHAM MURDOCK
University of Leicester

Mass communication research has grown into a vast academic

enterprise. Our current conventions are testimony to its emer-
. gence as a fully fledged occupation, replete with the institutional
apparatus of a mature discipline. University departments and
schools of mass communications, journals devoted to com-
munications, mass communications, human communication, and
the media constantly spring up as the field grows, becomes
specialised and differentiated. In our view this growth has be-
come confused, and it is not surprising that the history of mass
communications studies is punctuated by frequently expressed
concern at the direction and shape scholarship in the field is

taking. This concern has normally addressed two questions. First,

there is the problem of defining the subject matter of study.
Journals in the field often attempt to explain their existence by
virtue of a set of common interests suggested by their title. The
Journal of Communication, for example, is interested in &dquo;the
study of communication theory, practice, and policy&dquo; and &dquo;signifi-
cant problems and issues in communications.&dquo; Communication
Research is &dquo;concerned with the study of communication pro-
cesses at all levels&dquo; especially &dquo;explication and testing of models
that explain the processes and outcomes of communication.&dquo;
Human Communication Research &dquo;is devoted to advancing
knowledge and understanding about human symbolic trans-
actions&dquo; ; and so on. Laudably cross disciplinary, awesomely broad
in intellectual sweep, these concerns embrace a staggering and
often unbounded range of interests and topics. In wondering at

[339]

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[340]

this heterogeneity, scholars have occasionally perceived a unity

which can be made secure by constructing a single theory for the
field. This view we believe to be false, and we will look carefully
at it below.
The second question which has caused disquiet is not what to
study, but how? Which methods are best able to cope with those
aspects of human life we define as our concern? From which
disciplinary base is it best to approach problems of mass com-
munications ? We wish to argue that these two frequently ex-
pressed misgivings have promoted a search for a false solution, a
holy grail of unified theory and disciplinary order which repre-
sents a misleading objective. We will argue first that attempts of
this kind are based in false assumptions about the power of
theories of comunication and mass communications, and in
confused linkages between the concepts of communications and
culture. Second, we will suggest that we do not need a theory of
mass communications but a theory of society to generate guiding
propositions and research in the areas in which we are interested.
In brief, we argue that the answer to the question &dquo;Where are we
going and how do we get there?&dquo; is that we cannot get there from
where we are.

THE CRITIQUE

In reviewing the many critiques of communication studies that

have appeared over the years one theme emerges as central to all
°

of them; the neglect of theory and the underdevelopment of a

conceptual framework to guide research. This criticism comes
from a number of directions. First there have been those com-
mentators who note the apparently aimless refinement of re-
search methods by researchers developing more and more sophisti- .

cated empirical techniques and statistical constructs, while ,

seeming to lose sight of the broader implications of their research

or its theoretical significance. Nordenstreng, critically appraising
American mass communication research in 1968, concluded that
&dquo;the field concentrates on being correct in the technical methods
at the expense of being loose on the conceptual level&dquo; (Norden-
streng, 1968: 208).’

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 [341]

The obsession with methods is diagnosed as symptomatic of a

theoretical vacuum in which the paucity of ideas is masked by a
dazzling display of empirical ingenuity.
.

A slightly different line of attack was taken by critics who

noted not so much a lack of theory, but a lack of theorists. Berel-
son’s famous and deliberately challenging post-mortem, delivered
at the 1958 Conference of the American Association for Public
Opinion Research, concluded that the field was exhausted, or in
his own metaphor &dquo;as for communication research, the state is
withering away&dquo; (Berelson, 1959: 1). He argued that the main
reason was the desertion of the seminal thinkers to newer, more
.

’
exciting, arenas, and he cites, in particular, Hovland, Lasswell,
and Lazarsfeld, as well as the late Kurt Lewin. The resulting con-
ceptual stagnation Berelson believed had prevented further
development of existing lines of inquiry. This verdict did not go
unchallenged, and spirited replies pointed out the important
contributions of students of these major figures and the con-
tinuing vigour of many areas of communication studies. But the
force of Berelson’s verdict continued to trouble observers puzzled
by the dearth of theory in the field.
In looking at the evolution of mass communications studies, a
third line of argument traced the problem to the practical begin-
nings and pragmatic intentions of the discipline’s forbears. The
need of the American commercial radio industry to chart its
audience, and the demands of war-time propaganda research
were important determinants of the directions studies took.
Hovland headed the research branch of the U.S. Army Information
and Education Division. War-time food consumption patterns
were the focus and stimulus to the communication studies of
Lewin and his students, and of course the commissioned market
research at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia
produced many influential studies of media consumption in the
New York area. The practical concerns with manipulation, effects,
and influence were not without a theoretical yield, especially at
the level of social psychology. But later observers came to see
these interests as administratively rather than theoretically
guided, and as inviting elaboration of quantitative techniques to
measure effects rather than more general elucidation of com-
munications theory. Not least among such observers, incidentally,

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[342]

was Lazarsfeld himself, the key figure at Columbia, who as early

as 1941 was constrasting critical with administrative research
(Lazarsfeld, 1972). The professional association of communica-
tions studies with schools of journalism was seen to enhance this
concern with the quantification of effects and the lack of inde-
pendent theorization (Brown, 1970; Gans, 1972).
Finally, theoretical retardment was related to the fragmenta-
tion of the field of study. Merton, for example, contrasted Ameri-
can mass communication research with European wissensociolo-

gie. In the former &dquo;the strong concern with empirical test leads
prematurely to a curbing of imaginative hypotheses: the nose is
held soclose to the empirical grindstone that one cannot look up to
see beyond the limits of the immediate task&dquo; (Merton, 1957: 443).
Further, such research deals with separate problems in the short-
term, applying an array of research techniques to the solution of
pragmatic problems in market and military research as they arise,
with little attempt to accumulate a body of relevant theory in an
academic context. Others have noted how this scatter of interests
guided by professional, commercial or political requirements has
remained too diverse to respond to or promote a unity of theory.
In these different ways, then, mass communications studies
have been attacked for theoretical immaturity. It is important,
however, to put these evaluations in perspective. It is too often
assumed that mass communications research has steadily ad-
vanced from conceptual infancy to its present fully fledged vigour.
We are assumed to have spotted the gaps ignored by earlier
pioneers and become more aware of the limitations of their vision.
From a concentration on &dquo;with what effects?&dquo; we are deemed to
have gradually moved on to the other links in Lasswell’s famous
paradigm. This optimistic view ignores two factors. First, critical
awareness was not altogether absent among early researchers. In
1941, for example, Lazersfeld was arguing for critical com-
munications research, and calling for analysis of organisations
and control, and for a reformulation of effects and content studies
in a broader social context (Lazarsfeld, 1972). The second, and
related factor, is that mass communications, like other disciplines,
has not had a linear development from the simple to the subtle,
the limited to the comprehensive. If ,we historically situate the
perspectives and interests that have successively dominated the

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 [343]

field, we find not a sequence but a set of contending perspectives.

The lack of theory, in other words, has been more apparent than
real. Before looking at the implicit theories that did guide
American mass communications research, we can note in pass-
ing two orientations that failed to gain a secure foothold. One was
the traditions of European literary criticism and the sociology of
knowledge, predominantly Marxist in approach, whose character-
istics Merton’s essay brought out so well. The second was the
interest shown by sociology, particularly at Chicago, in journalism
by such writers as Robert Park, himself for some years a reporter,
Park’s student, Helen Hughes, and later Chicago sociologists like
Janowitz and the Langs. Significantly, however, these writers
came to an interest in the media from broader based sociological
concerns with crowd behaviour, urban ecology, or ethnic minor-
ities. Thus, these were~comparatively isolated studies and never
developed as central to mass communication research. Indeed, it
was the very fact that their roots were in broader sociological
fields that prevented such a development.
In arguing that mass communications research was never lack-
ing in theory, we are referring to the general guiding perspectives
from which social structures were viewed by researchers, which
led them to formulate problems and findings as they did. The first
major perspective of this kind was the theory of mass society.
Social structure was seen as an amorphous mass surmounted by
a dominant elite. Inequality was conceived as organised around
an uneven distribution of power, not of property, and the mass as

inhabiting an urbanised, industrialised world in which primary

social ties were weakened and individuals had become sus-
ceptible, manipulable, and &dquo;atomised.&dquo; With this picture of urban
America researchers concentrated on the vulnerability to elite
manipulation of the masses by the new and powerful tools of the
modern media. Many such researchers were themselves refu-
gees from the formative and traumatic experience of such a situa-
tion in Nazi Germany, and translated this experience into their
observation of America. Research concentrated first on propa-
ganda, persuasion, attitude change; second on &dquo;mass culture&dquo;
and the threat of brutalisation of high culture by the imposed
mediocrity produced by commercial media for the masses.

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[344]

The second such guiding theory implicit in mass communica-

tion research was functionalism, or in its political science form,
pluralism. In the stable growth of postwar America, observers
saw the good society in the making, a stable effective democracy
in which major inequalities had been eradicated and the social
structure could be seen as a series of parallel institutions, requir-
ing possibly minor reform, but fundamentally in good order. For
the sociologists functionalism led to the search for stabilising
relationships between the institutions: the family, education,
industry, religion, culture, and so on. For political scientists the
quest was for the mechanisms of checks and balances by which
competing centres of power were equalled out to provide the
stable order and relative equality they saw around them. By the
time Klapper came to write his influential summary of mass com-
munications research in 1960 this perspective was predominant,
and in his presidential address to the American Association for
Public Opinion Research in 1963, he was able to assert the
primacy of functionalism (Klapper, 1963). In investigating the
functions of the media, researchers thus concentrated on the
integrative effect of mass communications. Rather than consider
cultural stratification, functionalists would seek the ways in
which the media convey values from one generation to the next;
that is, the media are conceived as a functional institution of
socialisation, not as part of a legitimising apparatus in an egali-
tarian social order. In providing a functionalist textbook on mass
communications, Wright explained that &dquo;Transmission of culture
focusses on the communicating of information values and social
norms from one generation to another&dquo; (Wright, 1959: 16).
The functionalist approach thus redefined &dquo;effects&dquo; studies, by
starting from a social result-an integrated, nonstratified ordered,
and stable society-and then querying how the media contributed
to this result. It invited studies which, at a sociological level, in-
vestigated the media and institution x, y or z with no particular
priority among them; while at a psychological level researchers
sought the gratifications derived by individuals from media output.
Theories, then, were indeed to be found in mass communica-
tions research, but as implicit presuppositions lather than as
explicit expositions. Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs led to
the search for theory, a quest for a unifying body of ideas which

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 [345]

would reclaim mass communications studies for academic

respectability.

THE QUEST FOR A THEORY

The first such overarching framework was sought in a theory of

communication. If all human relationships involved communica-
tion in some form, and the distinctive characteristic of human
society was the centrality of symbolic interchange, then clearly, it
was assumed, a theory of communication was the ideal location
for propositions about mass communications in particular. The
whole range of human action could be subsumed by it. As Lerner
(1973: 541) has recently put it: &dquo;Since communication is an
integral dimension of all social relations, studies of communica-
tions range, in the wise words of Edward Sapir, ’from the glance
of a pair of lovers to debates in the League of Nations’.&dquo; As an
added attraction, mathematicians and cyberneticians were pro-
ducing formulae which suggested parallels for the investigation of
human behaviour. Grasping at clues distributed by linguists,
mathematicians, and information theorists, scholars in media
studies began to explore the idea of &dquo;communication theory.&dquo; By
1973 Lin (pp. vii, 212) was writing confidently that communi-
cation research has gradually evolved into a major research dis-
cipline over the last 20 years&dquo; and that &dquo;human communication is
becoming an integrated scientific discipline.&dquo;
Several writers were more cautious, however, and pointed to
the fallacious assumption of homogeneity entailed in taking the
communications element in different spheres as subject to
equivalent generalisations. Cherry, for example, wrote of his
concern that

an awareness of certain unity ofa group of studies is growing,

originally diverse and disconnected, but all related to our communi-
cative activities. The movement is rapidly becoming &dquo;popular,&dquo; so
great is the desire for unification, and this popularity carries with it
a certain danger.... Awareness of the universal nature of &dquo;com-
munication&dquo; has existed for a very long time, in a somewhat vague
and empirical way, but recently the mathematical developments
which come under the heading of the &dquo;Theory of Communication&dquo;
have brought matters to a head, and many there are who regard
this work as a panacea.... At the time of writing ~he various

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[346]

aspects of communication ... by no means form a unified study:

there is a certain common ground which shows promise of fertility,
nothing more (1966: 2; emphasis in original].

The mereverbal accident of the concept of communication

appearing in so many diverse fields suggested a common ground,
whereas this was merely an artifact of the immense semantic
elasticity of the word. Even some enthusiasts have conceded the
lack of unity at the level of theory. Gordon, for example, author of
a book subtitled &dquo;constructing a cross discipline,&dquo; warns that

[T]he only element that does, as a matter of fact, consistently

distinguish studies in communication from other disciplines is
subject matter, one of the weakest glues on the market today in the
delineation of areas of human inquiry.... The subject matter of
communication, taken alone, is therefore probably among the least
productive-and possibly the most futile-starting point for the
.
delineation of appropriate areas of inquiry into human interaction ’

or the process it involves [1975: 45-46].

We certainly would not wish to argue against the obvious

desirability of
cross-disciplinary intercourse and a flexibility of
subject matter. At the same time, however, it is important to
remain wary of going beyond the dissolution of existing intel-
lectual boundaries to the construction of new ones in the false
belief that a new and better organising principle has been un-
earthed. As well as seducing constructors of curricula into
absurdly ambitious and formless amalgams of quite disparate
interests, communications theory has a more serious deficiency.
This weakness is the idealism inherent in the idea of communica-
tions as the stuff of human relations. This is most clearly ex-
pressed by Duncan, who, working in the symbolistic interactionist
tradition, argues that &dquo;We must return the study of man in society
to a study of communication, for how we communicate deter-
mines how we ’relate as human beings&dquo; (Duncan, 1968: 438).
Elsewhere he has argued that social hierarchy is determined by
the symbols we have available to us (see e.g., Duncan, 1967). This
view together with its popular variant expressed in the ubiquitous
formula that &dquo;it’s a problem of communication,&dquo; evacuates from
analysis the key problems of power -and inequality in structural
relations without which social theory is barren.

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 [347]

The second, slightly more limited, attempt at theory construc-

tion has been the often expressed desire for a theory of mass
communications. At the simplest level it has been identified with
model construction, in which a few key concepts are connected by
vague generalisations, normally expressed diagrammatically.
How many chain diagrams linking sender-message-receiver have
been presented as insightful theories, with the occasional addi-
tion of a loop going in the opposite direction called &dquo;feedback&dquo; as
a sophisticated refinement? The more advanced of these &dquo;models&dquo;
have a dotted line round the edge called &dquo;social context.&dquo; Model
building is not theory building, and banal sketches of this kind are
not even adequate as models.
But, again, there are more serious weaknesses in the attempt
to arrive at a theory of mass communication. Williams has casti-
gated such a construct as &dquo;scraps of applied psychology and
linguistics&dquo; (Williams, 1958: 301). But it is not merely the eclecti-
cism of mass communication theory that is worrying but its
inductive tendencies. Berelson, for example, has suggested that a
theory will emerge &dquo;if we get a solid body of important empirical
propositions documented on communication behaviour. When
you put these together and, so to speak, add them up, that’s it&dquo;
(quoted in Nordenstreng, 1968: 210). Yet it was just such a
directionless hunt for fragmented &dquo;findings&dquo; that prompted the
search for theory in the first place. Expecting a theory of mass
communications to emerge presupposes first that we know what
we are looking for, second that we are not already working with
the kind of implicit theory we have earlier described.
A theory of mass communication is further indicated by its
mistaken location of the mass media at the centre of social life.
Pool argues that we now have &dquo;societies organised around mass
media systems&dquo; (Pool, 1965). Thus we can study whole societies
by concentrating on their mass media. This is an obvious over-
statement. Nonetheless, versions of this same vision have
tempted eminent practitioners such as de Fleur (1966: xiii) to
announce the emergence of mass communications studies, &dquo;as a
new academic discipline in its own right.&dquo; Media determinism, in
its arbitrary allocation of an unwarranted and unsupportable
significance to the subject matter at hand, distorts beyond re-
prieve a balanced view of social structure and process. As

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 [348]

Schramm (1959: 8-9) shrewdly noted, some years ago, in replying

to Berelson: &dquo;We sometimes forget that communication research
is a field, not a discipline. In the study of man it is one of the great
crossroads where many pass but few tarry.... Therefore we must
not look for the unique theory in communication which we are
accustomed to see in disciplines.&dquo; Similarly, McQuail has recently
reminded us that the media are not the only organisations in-
volved in the manufacture and distribution of values, nor are they
independent of the forces exerted by other institutional spheres.
As he notes (1972: 12), &dquo;if the media are more acted upon than
acting, it has profound implications for the kinds of questions one
asks.&dquo; A theory of mass communications, whether in McLu-
hanesque or some other form, would present a picture of social
structure incompatible with empirical reality, based more in the
accidents of academic departmentalisation than on a coherent
view of society.
A third attempt at a solution, the &dquo;cultural studies&dquo; approach,
focuses on the general relations between the social order of a
society and the totality of symbolic forms through which its mean-
ing is explicated and expressed-in short its culture. Whilst they
acknowledge the centrality of the mass media in relaying social
meanings in modern societies therefore, supporters of this ap-
proach stress the need to situate the media in the context of the
culture as a whole. Hence, in addition to analysing mass com-
munications, cultural studies also deals with the traditional forms
of symbolisation embedded in art, literature, and religion, and with
everyday expressive forms such as conversation, clothing, and
bodily gestures. In a field where people are still apt to regard
contemporary culture as more or less synonymous with television
programming, this contextualisation represents a considerable
gain in breadth. As such it is to be welcomed. However, in ap-
proaching the analysis of culture, the cultural studies approach
poses severe problems of method.
’
Proponents of cultural studies start from the incontestable fact
that all cultural forms contain traces of the processes and as-
sumptions involved in their creation and offer interpretive guide-
lines to would-be consumers. Hence, they argue, a careful analy-
sis of particular artifacts &dquo;can yield evidence about the whole
organisation within which it is embedded&dquo; (Williams, 1961: 46).

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 [349]

As Carey has pointed out, &dquo;This is a process of making large

claims for small matters: studying particular plays, conversations,
songs, dances ... and gingerly reaching out to the full relations
within a total way of life&dquo; (Carey, 1975: 190). Media artifacts are
therefore regarded as texts, and the process of analysis consists
of &dquo;reading off&dquo; the layers of social meaning they contain, and
then extrapolating outwards to the social relations involved in
their production and use. This basic approach has been developed
in a number of different directions, and to do justice to this diver-
sity would require at least another paper, if not a book. Here, we
will offer some brief illustrations beginning with Burgelin’s
manifesto for a semiotic approach to mass communications.
For Burgelin, the study of mass communications is practically
coextensive with the analysis of media messages. Certainly he
sees the explication of the meanings relayed by the media as the
&dquo;prime object of interest for research in this area&dquo; (Burgelin,
1972: 314). To accomplish this, he argues, it is necessary for the
analyst &dquo;to take into account only the internal relations of the
system, and exclude all those between the system and society&dquo;
(1972: 314). Only after the structure of the message has been
exhaustively mapped can the researcher begin to trace its rela-
tions to contexts of production and reception. However, this
second stage is very much an afterthought, a secondary activity
which relies primarily on inferences from the first stage supple-
mented by general contextual material. With rare exceptions, the
kind of semiotic analysis proposed by Burgelin does not seek to
analyse the processes of creation and consumption independ-
ently. The result is a highly asymmetric analysis in which an
elaborate anatomy of symbolic forms sits alongside a schematic
and incomplete account of social processes. So long as the
primary aim is the explication of meaning, this imbalance does not
matter too much. However, as soon as textural analysis is used as
a basis for statements about social processes, severe problems of
inference present themselves, as Roland Barthes’ seminal essay,
&dquo;Myth Today,&dquo; illustrates.
The essay revolves around an analysis of a news photo of a
. Negro soldier saluting the French flag which Barthes argues
signifies &dquo;that France is a great Empire and that there is no
...

better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the

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[350]

zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors&dquo;

(Barthes, 1973: 116). It is one of an almost infinite series of press
representations-&dquo;a nun hands a cup of tea to a bedridden Arab,
a white. schoolmaster teaches attentive piccaninnies&dquo;-all of
which conceal the exploitation and racism of French imperialism
and portray the empire as simultaneously natural and just. These
images in turn are part of a wider system of symbolisation
through which the ruling class conceals the brute facts of in-
equality and class domination and presents the existing social
order as inevitable and full of opportunity. This dominant ideology
permeates and determines every aspect of symbolisation. &dquo;Every-
thing,&dquo; Barthes argues, &dquo;our films, our pulp literature, our con-
versations, the cooking we dream of, the garments we wear is
dependent on the representation which the bourgeoisie has and
makes us have of the relations between man and the world&dquo;
(Barthes, 1973: 140). By this point in the argument, however, a
subtle sleight of hand has taken place. What began as an interpre-
tation of particular cultural forms is suddenly being presented as
though it were an analysis of the social dynamics of class domina-
tion. In point of fact it is nothing of the sort. While he offers a
fruitful elaboration of Marx’s famous dictum that &dquo;the ideas of the
ruling class are the ruling ideas,&dquo; Barthes certainly does not
demonstrate how this ideological domination is created and sus-
tained. To say that the mass media are saturated with bourgeois
ideology is simply to pose a series of questions for investigation.
To begin to answer them, however, it is necessary to go on to
show how this hegemony is actually reproduced through the con-
crete activities of the media personnel and the interpretive
procedures of consumers. This requires detailed and direct analy-
sis of the social contexts of production and reception and their
relations to the central institutions and processes of class socie-
ties. Extrapolations from cultural texts, no matter how subtle and
elaborate, are no substitute.
Many prominent exponents of cultural studies have, however,
recognised the difficulties inherent in the attempt to synthesise
textual and social analyses and have attempted to work these
problems through in their writings. Without doubt, the most
interesting and influential of the recent attempts is to be found in
the work of Raymond Williams.

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 [351]

More than anyone else, Williams has been responsible for

putting cultural studies on the English academic map. For over
twenty years he has worked away at the edges of adjacent disci-
plines looking for points of contact and cross-fertilization between
literary criticism, sociology, social history, and latterly, Marxism.
The promise of intellectual integration held out by this project is
immensely attractive but at the same time problematic, as
Williams himself is the first to recognise.
Since he starts by acknowledging that &dquo;Questions about forms
in communications are also questions about institutions and
.
about the organisation of social relationships&dquo; (Williams, 1974b:
23), he is immediately confronted with the problem of relating
textual and social analysis, criticism, and sociology, and deciding
on their relative priorities. In his earlier works, such as The Long
Revolution, he attempted to side-step the issue by insisting that
both types of analysis were equally indispensable. It was, he
argued, &dquo;an error to suppose that social explanation is deter-
mining.&dquo; Consequently, it was not a question of relating cultural
forms to social formations, but of studying &dquo;their interrelations
without any concession of priority to any one&dquo; (Williams, 1961:
45). Subsequently, however, his increasing commitment to a ver-
sion of the Marxist model of base and superstructure has forced
him to reassess this position. In particular, he has increasingly
acknowledged that textual and sociological analyses are rooted
in fundamentally opposed approaches to the study of culture and
that eventually a choice must be made between the two. As he
put it in a recent paper, &dquo;The true crisis of cultural theory, in our
own time, is between the view of the work of art as object and the
alternative view of art as a practice&dquo; (Wiliams, 1973: 15). Later on
in the same paper, he endorses the latter, more sociological
alternative. &dquo;We have,&dquo; he argued, &dquo;to break from the notion of
isolating the object and then discovering its components. On the
contrary, we have to discover the nature of a practice and then its
conditions&dquo; (Williams, 1973: 16). As he recognises, to adopt this
approach is to recognise the primacy of social analysis and the
prior need to ground this analysis in a coherent model of the over-
all social structure. In his recent book on television, for example,
he strongly criticises conventional research approaches to mass
communications for the self-enclosure and lack of articulation to
broader social theories.

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[352]

To say that television is now a factor in socialisation, or that its

controllers and communicators are exercising a particular social
function, is to say very little until the forms of the society which
determine any particular socialisation and which allocate the func-
tion of control and communication have been precisely specified
[Williams, 1974a: 120; my emphasis]. _

Unfortunately, in his actual analysis he draws away from the

implications of this critique. The result is the familiar asymmetry.
The meat of the television book, for example, consists of a detailed
analysis of the forms and flow of television programming sand-
wiched between a relatively brief account of the evolution of .

Britain’s broadcasting structures and suggestions for their modifi-

cation and change.
Hence, while we would support the general thrust of Williams’
recent arguments, we would also insist on the need to follow their

logic through into the practice of research. We begin, then, by

preserving cultural studies’ focus on the relation between culture
and society while reversing its conventional priorities. In our view,
the primary task of mass communications research is not to
explore the meanings of media messages, but to analyse the
social processes through which they are constructed and inter-
preted and the contexts and pressures that shape and constrain
these constructions. To accomplish this we certainly require more
adequate theories and conceptual schema, but they need to be
themes of social structure and social process not themes of
communications.

TOWARDS A RELEVANT THEORETICAL CONTEXT

To call for more social theory now is to enter an academic brawl

in which there are almost as many contending theories on offer as
there are combatants. Even so, having spent most of the paper
criticising the eff6rts of others, we feel some obligation to at least
suggest the basic outlines of an alternative. What follows is a bald
sketch of an orientation which is still in the process of formation.
It has emerged gradually out of our continuing attempt to grapple
with the problems and potentialities presented by the various
research projects that we have been involved in. More particu-
larly, it represents an effort to develop an integrative framework

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 [353]

capable of relating the various levels of the mass communications

process, both to each other and to the central dimensions of social
structure and social process.
Our basic departure point is the recognition that social rela-
tions within and between modern societies are radically, though
variably, inegalitarian. And leading on from this our focus is on
the relations between the unequal distribution of control over
systems of communications and wider patterns of inequality in
the distribution of wealth and power. In the context of the ad-
vanced societies of both East and West, this entails exploring the
relations between communications systems and systems of
economic and social stratification. In particular, it focuses atten-
tion on the relations between the mass media and the central axis
of stratification-the class structure. At the broader level of the
international system, our formulation’ focuses on the unequal
exchanges between advanced and developing nations and on the
various dimensions of imperialism.
These systems of internal and international stratification are
by no means self-sustaining, however. On the contrary, they must
be constantly maintained and reproduced. Hence our second
main concern is with the processes of legitimation through which
the prevailing structures of advantage and inequality are pre-
sented as natural and inevitable. This entails exploring the rela-
tions between communication systems and the other agencies
through which disadvantaged groups are incorporated into the
existing social order, and, in particular, education systems and
other agencies involved in the distribution of social knowledge
and cultural competence. These processes of incorporation and
legitimation do not work in an entirely smooth and uninterrupted
manner, however. On the contrary, gaps and contradictions are
constantly appearing between what is supposed to be happening
and what is actually taking place between what has been prom-
ised and what has been delivered. Into these cracks and fissures
flow currents of criticism and movements of contestation. Our
third and final starting point, then, is with the sources of social
dissent and political struggle, and with the dialectical relations
between challenge and incorporation.
Despite the fact that this approach is still both tentative and
provisional, we would argue that it offers several advantages.

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[354]

First, it provides coherent framework within which to relate the

a
various levels of the mass communications process to each other
and to central dimensions of social structure and social process.
As such, it provides a useful basis from which to begin construct-
ing a comprehensive and integrated social analysis of mass com-
munications systems. Second, by focusing on the relations
between symbol systems and stratification, it not only opens up a
series of important areas for further investigation but also directs
attention to currents of social theory that have so far been
largely untapped by mass communications researchers.
By now, however, some may be beginning to feel a little uneasy
and may have begun to ask themselves whether this isn’t just a
cleverly concealed bid for the ascendency of sociology in general
and our particular brand in particular. When it comes right down
to it, aren’t we simply saying that the only work worth doing in
mass communications research is sociological analysis? The
answer is no. Admittedly, it is a possible reading of our argument
but it is a misreading all the same. ’

Although sociologists have been centrally concerned with the

problems of stratification and social reproduction, they have not
had the field entirely to themselves. Indeed, many people, our-
selves included, would argue that many of the most fruitful con-
tributions have come from elsewhere, from radical economics,
from social history, from social psychology, and from Marxist
scholarship and practice. What we are calling for, then; is not a ’

commitment to the discipline of sociology as currently institu-

tionalised within academia, but a commitment to the basic
questions that provided its original impetus; questions about the
relations between cultural systems and economics and social
formations, questions about the dynamics of social and cultural
reproduction, and questions about the sources of change and
contestation. As Bernstein (1974: 158) has recently put it, our
main task is to show how the prevailing distributions of property
and power and the dominant principles of control &dquo;shape the
structure of symbolic arrangements, how they enter into our
experience as interpretative procedures and the conditions of
their repetition and change.&dquo; And to accomplish this success-
fully, we need to ground our work more solidly and consistently
than we have done up until now in general social theory.

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 [355]

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Peter Golding is Research Officer and Graham Murdock Research Fellow in

the Center for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester. The
authors have a forthcoming book for Routledge & Kegan Paul, Cultural
Capitalism: The Political Economy of Mass Communication.

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