Are American Values Shaped by the Mass Media?

Upon first reading the title of the article I was sure that my blog response would be a no-brainer, however, these two points of view shared many new and interesting sides of the argument. I think that many people today would be willing to admit that the Mass Media does shape American Values. In years past this could have seemed to be the easy way out, now at least in my opinion many Americans would not be ashamed to say they have been too easily swayed by advertisements, news programming, and other forms of media to believe or trust in one thing or another. Professor Schiller creates a sound argument with an outline of why he is certain that the Mass Media takes on more of a role as a “Mind Manager”. James Carey however takes an opposite approach searching more deeply into the past and focuses more on the social aspect of the communication process in society. I have seen James Carey’s work in the past on the Transmission Model of Communication and the Ritual Model of Communication so I will refer to those later.




After reading the selected passages that Schiller and Carey had to offer I was not forced, yet eased into making my decision that, yes, indeed the Mass Media does shape American Values and this is why:



It is widespread knowledge that the news shows and personalities are competing to tell you the same information. Years back before the technology was so readily available it seemed more likely that these individuals and programs had to work harder to sell you what they wanted you to believe. In Schiller’s passage he mentions that, “the multichannel communications flow creates confidence in, and lends credibility to, the notion of free informational choice” (11). A great example of this in laymen’s terms is his reference to the selection of a variety of brands of aspirin at one drugstore. He is adamant that picking which news channel to watch just like when in comes to picking the jar of aspirin to buy, “there is no significant qualitative difference” (10). What you are getting is the same. Basically his argument is sound not only because he has spent much time describing the “five myths that structure media content and manipulate consciousness” but also because his case in the short passage comes closer to proving that the end result of the Mass Media is the “consolidation of the status quo” (11).



James Carey, although his article is more recent and he does have sound evidence when it comes to the ritual and transmission models of communication, it is my belief that his argument is misplaced in this issue. While the question, “Are American Values Shaped by the Mass Media,” has everything to do with communication, the end result does not. Basically what I am trying to say is that by the time the Mass Media has entered our lives in any way, which happens as soon as we become a part of this world, the way we communicate as a society has already been altered. The Transmission Model of Communication developed by Shannon and Weaver is a Linear Model of Communication and success is achieved in this model when the decoded message matches the encoded message. This is basically saying that on the other end of that communication interaction, the messages will match, therefore what I interpret to mean as the Mass Media making a statement that makes sense and is adopted by those in society.

If we look at the Ritual Model of Communication which was created by James Carey in 1989 we will find that it is a Dialogic Model and success is achieved when there has been a creation of a shared sense of community. This too is telling us that even with the ebb and flow of information back and forth, the end result should be Society and the Mass Media in agreement. All in all what I have been talking around the whole time is that yes, without a doubt, the Mass Media does shape American Values.