Social scientists who study the mass media share a widely held "ideal of

conservation" which assumes that face-to-face interpersonal communica-

tion is characterized by continuous feedback between participants, multi-
channel communication, spontaneous utterance, and egalitarian norms.
Compared to this image of what face-to-face conversation is like, com-
munication by mass media seems inferior. It is argued, however, that this
"ideal of conversation" does not correspond closely to most actual con-
versations. It is argued further that the rise of the mass media is itself
responsible for the development of an ideal of conversation and is respon-
sible for making ideal conversations more often realized in practice. The
contribution of the mass media to face-to-face conversation has been to
make conversation, particularly between men and women and between
adults and children, more egalitarian and to enlarge the possibility of
spontaneous conversation. It is suggested, finally, that research on the
mass media will be improved if it appraises the nature of conversation more
realistically.

THE IDEAL OF CONVERSATION

IN THE STUDY OF MASS MEDIA

MICHAEL SCHUDSON
University of Chicago

American social thinkers in the 1920s spoke with great sym-

pathy of the mass media. Dewey (1920: 686), Mead (1926: 382-
393), Park (1923: 273-289) all wrote of newspapers with con-
siderable affection. Social scientists and social philosophers since
then have praised the mass media or blamed the mass media but
rarely demonstrated anything we could call affection. They seem
to feel that the mass media have not provided new ways to com-
municate so much as interrupted the old way of face-to-face,
interpersonal conversation. It is a stock image in cartoons-the
husband at breakfast with his face buried in the newspaper while
his wife tries vainly to talk to him.’

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank Paul Hirsch, Susan Noakes, and
David Riesman for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

[320]
 [321]

The distinction between mass media and face-to-face com-

munication seems to be invidious. For instance, typical lists of the
characteristics of &dquo;interpersonal&dquo; channels of communication
and &dquo;mass media&dquo; channels emphasize that the &dquo;message flow&dquo;
in interpersonal channels is two-way, the message flow in the
mass media one-way. In interpersonal channels there is a high
amount of feedback readily available, while in mass media chan-
nels the amount is low. Given the cultural assumptions of a
democratic society, this contrast is necessarily to the disadvan-
tage of the mass media. Who could approve of one-way over two-
way message flow? Or low rather than high possibilities for im-
mediate feedback?
But while it is true that ordinarily messages in the mass media
move in one direction with little opportunity for feedback, it is not
.
true that ordinarily messages in face-to-face conversation move
in two directions with great opportunity for feedback. There is an
unspoken sense among students of the mass media that the
world of face-to-face communication is the world of rich and
complicated interaction that would be possible if the cartoon
husband put down his morning paper and talked to his cartoon
wife.
But what would that conversation actually be like? As an
example, take the opening scene in Pinter’s (1962) play, &dquo;A
Slight Ache.&dquo; Flora and Edward are at breakfast. As the scene
opens, Edward, as we might expect, is reading the paper, but
Flora manages to engage him in conversation:

Flora: Have you noticed the honeysuckle this morning?

Edward: The what?
Flora: The honeysuckle.
Edward: Honeysuckle? Where?
Flora: By the back gate, Edward.
Edward: Is that honeysuckle? I thought it was ... convolvulus, or
something.
Flora: But you know it’s honeysuckle.
Edward: I tell you I thought it was convolvulus.
[Pause.]
Flora: It’s in wonderful flower.
Edward: I must look.
Flora: The whole garden’s in flower in this morning. The clematis.
The convolvulus. Everything. I was out at seven. I stood by the
pool.
[322]

Edward: Did you say-that the convolvulus was in flower?

Flora: Yes.
Edward: But good God, you just denied there was any.
Flora: I was talking about the honeysuckle.
Edward: About the what?
Flora [calmly]: Edward-you know that shrub outside the tool-
shed ...

Edward: Yes, yes. _

Flora: That’s convolvulus.

Edward: That?
’ ’

Flora: Yes.
Edward: Oh.
[Pause.] .

I thought it was japonica..

’
Flora: Oh, good Lord no.
Edward: Pass the teapot, please;

And so on, for pages. Is this the communication the mass media
interfere with? Pinter’s dialogue has a touch of the cynical, even
the sinister, but there is no doubt that we recognize the speech he
captures.
Another culture, another breakfast. In a Tunisian village,
Nawa’s husband Muhammed comes into the room to eat. He says
to his wife, &dquo;May Allah grant you a long life, and may he let us
stay long .together.&dquo; Nawa and her daughter reply, &dquo;May light
shine upon your day.&dquo; Every morning the same words, and few
words if any beyond them. The sociologist Duvignaud writes:

No one attaches any importance to these words, but they must be

spoken. There would be a catch in the throat and an uncomfortable
feeling in the whole body if they were not mumbled every morning.
Actually Muhammed and Nawa have rarely said a word to each
other, since the time when the children were very small and one
or the other was ill. Now, except when they are harassed by an
unpaid debt, they have nothing to talk about [1970: 10].

This is common: first, that silence rather than conversation is

usual between people, even intimates in a family, and second,
that where silence is broken, it is broken by ritual or stereotypic
utterances. It is not only in Tunisian villages that children are
supposed to be seen and not heard or that women are supposed
to know their place. Our model of ideal conversation may be that
of two lovers or of husband and wife over coffee after the kids are
in bed. But in the Tunisian village, most conversation is segre-
 [323]

gated by sex-men talking to other men in front of the grocer’s

shop or women talking to women while they do the laundry. Our
own urban and corporate villages are different, but not so differ-
ent as we might like to imagine-at least, not before the advent of
the mass media.
When we criticize the reality of the mass media, we do so by
opposing it to an ideal of conversation which we are not inclined
to examine. We are not really interested in what face-to-face
communication is like; rather, we have developed a notion that
all communication should be like a certain model of conversation,
whether that model really exists or not. The &dquo;conversational
~
ideal&dquo; of communication, as I will call it, includes the following
characteristics.

(1) continuous feedback between two people in a face-to-face setting;

(2) multichannel communications: one not only hears the conver-
sational partner but sees and touches him or her;
(3) spontaneous utterance: the content of the conversation is unique
and created on the spot;
(4) the same person acts at once as sender and receiver of messages;
(5) the norms of the conversation are egalitarian: whatever rules of
speaking (like alternation of speakers) govern one govern the
.

other.

This ideal is not one concocted by social scientists. Rather, it

is a widely shared ideal in contemporary American culture which
social science has uncritically adopted. It is by no means an ideal
of universal significance. The ideal of conversation in contempo-
rary Antigua, for example, does not presume that the utterances
of different people in a conversation are or should be oriented
to one another and shaped as responses to what others have just
said-&dquo;continuous feedback&dquo; is not a criterion of good conversa-
tion. In Antigua, on the contrary, as anthropologist Reisman
(1974) suggests, there is &dquo;no sense of interruption, or need to fit
carefully into an ongoing pattern of conversation.&dquo; Reisman
(1974: 115) concludes that in Antigua &dquo;the impulse to speak is not
cued by the external situation but comes from within the
speaker.&dquo; Without the &dquo;norm of interruption&dquo; customary in our
own conversational ideal, it is quite acceptable in Antiguan
conversation for several people to speak simultaneously.
[324]

[T]he fact that one is not heard does not mean one has to stop.
One can go right on with perhaps one listener, or perhaps none. On
some occasions, perhaps more serious, or particularly in more
formal settings as part of an almost ritualized debate between sets
of conventions, someone will be told to &dquo;have some behavior&dquo; or
&dquo;let the man speak.&dquo; In many conversations, however, several
participants already involved may feel that the point they are
making is not receiving sufficient attention and will each of them
continue speaking, repeating the point they are making-so that
several people are speaking at once [1974: 114].

In any society, people try to abide by norms of conversational

practice and will feel disoriented when they are violated. In main-
stream American culture, when an element of the conversational
ideal described above is missing, people feel uncomfortable. It
can be distressing, for instance, to pass an acquaintance in the
street where there is opportunity only for a ritual exchange of
greetings rather than for a spontaneous conversation. It is equally
awkward when the same person is not sender and receiver-for
instance, one person will not stop talking (something that would
be taken as normal in Antigua) or else, when one person pauses
for the other person’s response, there is no response. Or suppose
a channel of communication has been cut off. Recently I talked to
a man whose face was altogether impassive-everything I said
sunk into it as if it were a black hole. This was most disconcert-
ing. Or take the familiar case where the rules of speaking do not
apply equally. When people who are unequal in status talk, there
are special rules-for instance, that the person of higher status
should be the one to signal the close of the conversation. In some
cases the person of inferior status, feeling disarmed in conversa-
tion with superiors, will choose where possible some less inti-
mate means of communication. A woman of my acquaintance
who does research in libraries in Europe prefers to have a call-
ing card to announce her appearance to a curator or librarian
because this puts her on a more equal footing with the official
than does her personal arrival in a world of men.
The characteristic of &dquo;spontaneous utterance&dquo; deserves fur-
ther comment. It suggests the expression of authentic or true
feelings. This is a modern view of conversation. If one looks in the
card catalog under &dquo;conversation,&dquo; what one finds are eighteenth
century guides to the &dquo;art of conversation&dquo; which had nothing
at all to do with authenticity. Conversation was a social grace for
 [325]

people of leisure, like playing the piano, and was cultivated as a

highly artificial pursuit (see Sennett, 1977: 82). We still recog-
nize that conversation can be artful or even artificial in the notion
of a &dquo;conversation piece&dquo; or in the gruding recognition of some
people who are especially skilled at cocktail-party talk.
Sometimes the ideal of conversation is violated and it does not
disturb us. It is as if we have some tacit understanding that talk
comes in different forms, each with their own rules. In the ideal
situation, conversation is a constantly evolving social contract
determined by the two parties and the two parties alone. But in
fact, there are ordinarily many constraints which direct or almost
determine the outcome, reducing the possibility of spontanenous
utterance. Talk with the store clerk or the bank teller is ordinarily
stereotypic-indeed, bank tellers can be replaced by computers,
candy store owners by vending machines, corner .newsstand
operators by newsboxes, and most interaction with sales people
by self-service stores. When we do talk to a sales person, the
stereotypic character of the talk may not disturb us-indeed, too
much spontaneity might. The dental hygienist will want to talk to
the patient in the chair to establish rapport, but if this leads the
two to get into a conversation-note how the ideal is presumed in
that phrase-the hygienist will withdraw to get on with the work.
We have, then, an ideal of what is the best kind of communica-
tion. We may not want to give it up, but we should be aware that it
is an ideal, one that most communication, including most con-
versation, rarely achieves. It is notable that we do not have a
separate ideal of what good mass communication might be. Not
that we do not have good examples of it: Shakespeare in theater,
Tolstoy in the novel, Bergman in film. There are outstanding in-
stances of newspaper correspondence. Television has had out-
standing moments, though there is not yet consensus on what
these have been. But implicit in studies of the mass media in the
social sciences is the old ideal of perfect communication in the
face-to-face conversation. By this standard, the mass media are
judged and found wanting.
One might conclude that for most decent human purposes the
mass media are inferior to conversation, but that is not something
to assume from the outset. Indeed, I would go further to suggest
that the conversational ideal we now subscribe to has developed
only in a world shaped by the mass media. Both the ideal of con-
[326]

versation, and its occasional realization, are in part a conse-

’

quence of mass media.

This is so in at least two respects. First, the mass media have
contributed to making the &dquo;egalitarian&dquo; criterion of ideal com-
munication more prominent and more possible to realize. In the
United States in the late nineteenth century, for instance, not only
were women agitating for formal access to the political system

through suffrage, but they were achieving a certain amount of

political competence through newspaper reading. Newspapers,
before the 1830s, were generally read only by males at offices or
clubs. Papers were more widely available thereafter. The major
increase in circulation after 1880, the heyday of newspaper
growth, came in evening papers the man read at home rather
than onthe way to work or at work-and so his wife read too.2
Television, even more than the evening paper, has made political
and cultural information available to large numbers of women as
never before. It seems reasonable to assume that this has changed
the possibilities for conversation between men and women
and, for that matter, between women and children. Sociologist
lwanska observed in her study of a rural community in Washing-
ton in the early 1950s that women had more time for television
than men and, thanks to the tube, gained more knowledge of the
outside world than their husbands. The result was significant: &dquo;it
is more likely today that a child will go to the mother than to the
father to ask about foreign countries or about the United Nations&dquo;
(Iwanska, 1958: 29).
The mass media helped democratize conversation between the
sexes. It has democratized conversation between different age

groups, as well. Film and television have made a common culture

available to children who partake of it as equals with adults.
Indeed, children are often well ahead of adults in their knowledge
of the culture of the mass media. This surely has hastened the
demise of the rule that children are to be seen and not heard.
Children are simply more competent than they once were to par-
ticipate in many of the conversations adults enjoy.3
The mass media have had a second effect in making the con-
versational ideal more frequently realizable. They have made
spontaneous utterance more possible. Of course, we are familiar
with the ways in which one can parrot a book or film or television
in conversation. But, even then, the mass media bring into con-
 [327]

versation a third party, a topic of discourse outside the immediacy

of what-I-did-today-what-did-you-do-today. This expands the
grammatical possibilities of discourse-not just the first and
second person but the third person is involved. This adds to the
complexity, the thickness of conversation.
But couldn’t the &dquo;third person&dquo; be, in fact, a third person? A
real human being rather than a mass media message? Certainly.
Nevertheless, the mass media have an advantage here. If one
person in the conversation recounts something a third person did
or said, the burden of putting the third person’s words or deeds
into some form, a story which can be communicated, is still on
the first person. However, if that person recounts something
heard or seen or read in the mass media, it is more likely that the
thing recounted will already have a form of its own. Of course,
the message from the mass media will also be selectively per-
ceived and retold in the conversationalist’s frame of reference,
.
but it will be relatively more resistant to distortion. The mass
media message has a better chance of being a genuinely &dquo;third
person&dquo; in the conversation than an actual third person.
This will not always be true. Research on the &dquo;two-step flow&dquo;
of communication suggests that mass media messages have
most power in influencing attitudes when they are mediated by a
person. Even that if is the case, there may still be another kind
of &dquo;two-step&dquo; in which another person’s message gains power
only when mediated or legitimated by the mass media. For in-
stance, a neighbor may tell us that he has traced his ancestry.
But will that message register? Will we take it seriously as a com-
munication to us rather than as an additional quirky item about
the neighbor? Very likely not-unless, of course, we have watched
or talked about the television series, &dquo;Roots.&dquo; Then the neighbor’s
quirk gains a context, a salience, a place in a wider realm of cul-
ture and meaning. We make meaning collectively, but we often
do not know &dquo;what to make of&dquo; the information around us until it
has a setting. The mass media, I think, will as often provide the
setting for a message from an acquaintance as the acquaintance
.

will offer an authoritative interpretation for a message from the

mass media.
None of this is meant to diminish the supreme importance of
talk in human’ life. Conversation holds a primary place in our lives
and our sense of reality which neither novels nor newspapers nor
[328]

film nor television can match. Dewey (1948: 2) wrote, with hunt-

ing and gathering societies in mind, &dquo;the conscious and truly

human experience of the chase comes when it is talked over and
re-enacted by the camp fire.&dquo; One can believe this and still admit
that the chase will often have been uneventful and the talk about
it trivial. Even around the camp fire, talk is likely to be of convol-
vulus and honeysuckle.4
There is nothing wrong with that. But to recognize it should
make us more realistic in what we expect from the mass media.
We should be more aware of the irony in condemning the mass
media for failing to live up to a standard, the conversational ideal,
which the mass media have helped make conceivable..

.. NOTES

1. Why it is always the husband and so rarely the wife who reads the morning
paper in this stock scene? The different patterns of both conversation and orien-
tation to the mass media of men and women is of a topic of great importance.I
think. It deserves more systematic attention. On conversation see Keenan (1974:
125-143).
2. On the rise of evening papers, see Emery (1972: 292); on the orientation of
newspapers in the 1880s to a female readership, see Juergens (1966) and
Schudson (1978).
3. The mass media also can democratize social relations by substituting for
conversation between people unequal in status. For instance, one study indicates
that college-educated parents rely more on direct personal contact with school
officials to learn about local schools, while parents without college education
prefer newspapers as a source of information. The study holds that "the mass
media seem to be relatively more useful channels for that large segment of the
citizenry that is less educated than are school personnel. One might even describe
the media as the least ’elitist’ of the several potential sources of public information
about schools" (Chaffee, 1967: 732).
4. Marshall, for instance, reports that the Kung bushmen are an especially
loquacious people—particularly the males. They talk frequently, generally about
food. They do not generally speak openly of sexual matters or of the gods. They do
not tell myths. They do not invent stories: "They said they had no interest in hearing
things that are not true and wonder why anybody has" (Marshall, 1968: 179-184).
 [329]

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Michael Schudson is Assistant Professor of sociology at the University of

Chicago. He has written on education, the professions, and the mass
media, and is author of the forthcoming book, Discovering the News: A
Social History of American Journalism (Basic Books, 1978).