Communication, Stratification and International Affairs Information in a Developing Urban Society

McNelly, John T.; Molina, Julio Ramirez

doi:10.1177/107769907204900213

Cited by 13 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Almost everyone had access to radio, and a large percentage of those also had television (some 83% of the sample); fewer poor people read newspapers, and still smaller fractions had access to magazines and books. Within the higher income brackets, by contrast, a person's selection from among the community's rich media resources was unconstrained by socioeconomic factors, and correlations between the different media in use were rather low-which is the pattern typically found in affluent societies (see, for example, Greenberg and Kumata, 1968;McLeod, Rush, andFriederich, 1968-1969;McNelly and Molina, 1972; McNelly and lzcaray, 1973). We might consider, then, that we will be examining two quite distinctive societies, which differ greatly in socioeconomic resources, within one community.…”

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confidence: 97%

Mass Communication Functions in a Media-Rich Developing Society

Chaffee

Izcaray²

1975

Communication Research

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Several research models developed in recent years in postindustrial societies are applied to a field setting in Venezuela where mass media are highly advanced but the society remains highly stratified in education, income, and other socioeconomic hierarchies. Indices of functional uses and avoidances of the media show strong consistency across media and are good predictors of media use patterns. Simple exposure to the media, rather than motivations for use or avoidance, is the better type of predictor of knowledge gained from media, however. Evidence of a "correlation function" based on a common agenda of public issues set by the media is weak.Two dramatically different images of mass communication have emerged from research in postindustrial societies and in the developing nations of the Third World. I n predominantly agricultural countries, where mass media resources tend to be limited and a high proportion of the population poor and undereducated, the media have been pictured as exercising powerful constraints over people's knowledge and thinking, and at Bobst Library, New York University on June 21, 2015 crx.sagepub.com Downloaded from [368] in stimulating the diffusion of technical innovations. By contrast, research in the United States and Western Europe has become organized around models that emphasize the degree to which use of mass media is under the control of the audience; structural variation in media content might focus the attention of different elements of a modern society on a common problem, but there are too many sources of information available for the media to control the individual's opinions and behavior.Media planning decisions in developing nations will depend to a great extent on which of these general models of mass communication is assumed. There is presumably some stage in societal development at which the media-centered models of the underdeveloped world become obsolete, and the more audience-centered models of the postindustrial world should take their place in the design of communication policy.It is not at all clear at this point in the history of research on mass communication and development how we should identify that point of transition. Modernization of a society may take place in some sectors, such as urbanization, long before it is achieved in others, such as the correction of inequable distributions of wealth or political power. In this paper, we consider the applicability of several models of mass communication in a regional urban center of Venezuela, a nation that has many of the social attributes common among the more advanced developing countries, but an elaborate mass media system. MODELS FOR RESEARCHOf the many societal functions that have been ascribed to mass communication, the broadest are those Lasswell (1948) calls surveillance of the environment, correlation of the parts of the society in responding to the environment, and the transmission of the social heritage. Although Wright (1974) points out that these functions &dquo;might or might not be carried out as...

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confidence: 97%

Mass Communication Functions in a Media-Rich Developing Society

Chaffee

Izcaray²

1975

Communication Research

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“…Some correlational evidence of media effects was obtained in a survey of male heads of household in metropolitan Lima, Peru, in 1969 (10). They were given a test of international affairs knowledge including identification of world leaders such as President Nixon (a news photo of whom was correctly identified by 58 percent) and Mao Tse-tung (50 percent identification) and other questions.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Thus, the less privileged majority, with their limited access to informative media, were also relatively lacking in the kind of background knowledge associated with awareness of the day-to-day news from abroad. Yet these obstacles did not prevent the foreign news from reaching nearly one out of three members of the lower * These findings on news diffusion are hitherto unpublished; details on the settings, samples, and methodology are reported elsewhere (6,10). stratum in greater Lima.…”

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International News for Latin America

McNelly¹

1979

Journal of Communication

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“…Several studies of media flows show not a molding of Latin American and Jamaican audiences to imported programming but an adaptation of North American forms to suit the local audiences and their values ( 2 , 9, 27, 36). The effects of foreign media content depend on structural factors, social factors, and individual variables such as an audience member's education, sex, and age (16,23,24). Social change in developing countries often involves a complex interplay between mass media and interpersonal communication (31).…”

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confidence: 99%