Media: Meaning, Characteristics and Functions

Why it matters to a lawyer, and this is the reason it earns its place. A great deal of what happens in a courtroom, in a police station and in a client interview is non-verbal: demeanour, hesitation, deference, who sits where and who is kept standing. Assessments of a witness's credibility rest heavily on it, and the sociological caution is that such assessments are culturally loaded: the demeanour read as evasive in one community is ordinary respect in another. Goffman's dramaturgy in [Symbolic Interactionism] is the analysis of exactly this, and [The Interview] applies it to research.

The characteristics of media

These are the characteristics of mass media specifically, since it is mass media that MU's topic is about and that the institution now consists of.

1. Reach. They address large audiences beyond any face-to-face limit.
2. A dispersed and heterogeneous audience, unknown individually to the communicator.
3. Simultaneity. Very large numbers receive the same content at the same time, which is what allows a whole society to attend to one thing at once.
4. Rapidity.
5. Impersonality. The communicator does not know the audience and cannot adjust to the individual.
6. In the classical model, communication is one way, from few to many, with limited feedback. Digital media have altered this fundamentally, which is the largest change in the field and is dealt with below.
7. Organised and institutional production, requiring capital, technical skill and a division of labour, so ownership matters.
8. Public rather than private communication, and therefore subject to regulation.
9. A commercial character, in most cases, with revenue from advertising and subscription, which shapes content.

The functions of media

The standard scheme is that of Harold Lasswell, with a fourth added by Charles Wright, and it is the tidiest way to organise this answer.

Surveillance of the environment. Collecting and distributing information about events: news. The society is informed of what it cannot see for itself, including warnings of danger.

Correlation of the parts of society in responding to the environment. Interpretation, comment and prescription: not only reporting an event but explaining its significance and suggesting a response. This is the editorial function, and it is where media influence is greatest.

Transmission of the social heritage. Socialisation: passing values, norms and culture from one generation to the next, a function shared with the family, school and religion, discussed in [Socialization].

Entertainment, added by Wright, which is quantitatively the largest use of media and is not sociologically trivial: entertainment carries values continuously and unobtrusively.

To these are usually added:

Agenda setting, the most important single concept in this chapter. The media may not determine what people think, but they substantially determine what people think about, by selecting what is reported and how prominently. This is the function with the clearest political consequence.

Mobilisation, promoting collective purposes.

Public sphere. Media provide the arena in which public opinion is formed and in which the state may be held to account, which is the function invoked by the description of the press as the fourth estate.

Advertising and the servicing of the economy.

Legitimation and status conferral. Attention itself confers standing: a person, cause or grievance that appears in the media becomes important by appearing.

The dysfunctions

Narcotising dysfunction, named by Lazarsfeld and Merton: large quantities of information may produce an informed but passive public that mistakes knowing about a problem for doing something about it.

Distortion and sensationalism, since attention is the commodity being sold.

Stereotyping of groups, with consequences discussed in [In-groups, Out-groups and Reference Groups].

Concentration of ownership, which narrows the range of what is said.

Invasion of privacy.

Media trial, the trying of a case in public before or alongside its trial in court, which is treated in [Mass Media and Its Impact].

Media in India

Give the shape of the institution, not statistics that cannot be attributed.

Scale and plurality. India has an unusually large newspaper industry publishing in many languages, an extensive television sector with a large number of channels including news channels in the major languages, radio, a very large film industry, and rapid growth in digital and mobile access. The linguistic plurality described in [The Pluralistic Nature of Indian Society] is reproduced exactly in its media.

The regulatory landscape, which is what a law student should be able to sketch.

• Constitutional basis. Freedom of speech and expression, from which the freedom of the press is derived, subject to the reasonable restrictions the Constitution itself specifies.
• Print is governed principally by the Press and Registration of Books Act 1867, with self-regulation through the Press Council of India constituted under the Press Council Act 1978.
• Broadcasting: the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 and the programme code under it; the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act 1990 for public broadcasting.
• Film is subject to certification under the Cinematograph Act 1952 by the Central Board of Film Certification, which makes cinema the most heavily pre-regulated medium in India.
• Digital: the Information Technology Act 2000, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, which extended a regulatory framework to digital news publishers and streaming services.
• Advertising is subject to self-regulation through the Advertising Standards Council of India, and to statutory provisions in particular fields.

The sociologically interesting feature of that list is that regulation is medium-specific: the same content is treated differently according to the channel it arrives through, which is a legacy of technologies that once had distinct characteristics and is increasingly hard to sustain when all of them arrive on one device.

The change digital media has made

The classical model of mass communication, few to many, one way, with professional gatekeepers, described the twentieth century. Four changes have altered it.

1. Anyone can publish. The gatekeeping function that editors performed, deciding what reached the public, has been substantially removed.
2. Communication is many to many, and the audience produces content.
3. Distribution is by algorithm, and what a person sees is selected for them by systems responding to their previous behaviour, which produces the phenomena described as filter bubbles and echo chambers.
4. The economics changed. Attention is sold directly and measured continuously, which rewards content that provokes reaction.

The consequence for the functions above is that surveillance and correlation are no longer performed by identifiable institutions with professional norms and legal accountability, which is precisely the problem to which the misinformation debate, and the regulation of intermediaries, are responses.

A worked example

A wall collapses in a Mumbai chawl and three people are injured.

Surveillance: it is reported, so people who were not there know of it.

Selection and agenda setting: whether it appears at all, and whether on an inside page or as a lead item, decides whether it becomes a public issue or a local misfortune. Nothing about the event itself decides this.

Correlation: the coverage frames it. Presented as an accident, it calls for compassion. Presented as the result of unenforced building regulation, it calls for accountability, and the second framing produces demands, questions and possibly an inquiry.

Status conferral: a residents' association that had campaigned unnoticed for two years is now sought for comment, and its standing changes because it appeared.

Mobilisation and the public sphere: coverage brings other residents forward, and the matter reaches a body with power to act.

The event was the same in every version. What differed was selection and framing, and that is what it means to say that media are an institution and not a window.

Quick revision

1. Media are channels of communication; mass media reach a large, dispersed, heterogeneous audience simultaneously. They are an institution, not a technology.
2. Characteristics: reach, dispersed and unknown audience, simultaneity, rapidity, impersonality, one-way in the classical model, organised production requiring capital, public character and therefore regulated, and commercial.
3. Lasswell's three functions: surveillance, correlation, transmission of the social heritage; Wright added entertainment.
4. Add: agenda setting (what people think about), mobilisation, the public sphere, advertising, and status conferral.
5. Dysfunctions: the narcotising dysfunction (Lazarsfeld and Merton), sensationalism, stereotyping, concentrated ownership, invasion of privacy, media trial.
6. Indian regulation is medium-specific: Press and Registration of Books Act 1867 and Press Council Act 1978; Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995; Prasar Bharati Act 1990; Cinematograph Act 1952 with the Central Board of Film Certification; Information Technology Act 2000 with the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules 2021.
7. Digital change: anyone can publish, many to many, algorithmic distribution, attention economics; gatekeeping and professional accountability weaken.

Test yourself

1. Why are media described as a social institution rather than a technology? Because the institution consists of more than the means of transmission: organisations that produce and distribute content, occupational roles with their own training, culture and ethics, professional and legal norms governing conduct, recognised functions performed for the society, and settled relations with the state, the economy and the political system. A printing press is a technology; the press, with its editors, codes, ownership and legal regulation, is an institution.

2. State the functions of mass media. Following Lasswell: surveillance of the environment, that is collecting and distributing news; correlation, that is interpreting events and prescribing responses; and transmission of the social heritage, which is socialisation. Wright added entertainment. To these are added agenda setting, mobilisation for collective purposes, the provision of a public sphere in which opinion is formed and power held to account, advertising, and status conferral, by which attention itself makes a person or cause important.

3. What is agenda setting, and why does it matter? The proposition that media may not determine what people think but do substantially determine what they think about, by selecting which events are reported and with what prominence. It matters because the selection is not dictated by the events: a matter that is not reported does not become a public issue at all, whatever its gravity, and one that is reported prominently acquires an importance that its intrinsic features did not give it.

4. What is the narcotising dysfunction? Lazarsfeld and Merton's observation that large quantities of information can produce a public that is well informed and inactive. Time spent reading and viewing substitutes for participation, and knowing about a problem in detail comes to feel like having done something about it, so that increased exposure to news may reduce rather than increase civic action.

5. Sketch the regulation of media in India and say what is odd about it. Freedom of speech and expression provides the constitutional basis, subject to the restrictions the Constitution specifies. Print is governed by the Press and Registration of Books Act 1867 with self-regulation through the Press Council constituted in 1978; cable television by the Act of 1995 and its programme code; public broadcasting by the Prasar Bharati Act 1990; film by pre-certification under the Cinematograph Act 1952; and digital media by the Information Technology Act 2000 with the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules 2021. What is odd is that regulation is medium-specific, so identical content is treated differently according to the channel it arrives through, which is increasingly hard to sustain when every channel reaches the same device.