AS PRESENTED BY
LEVEL 100 MASS COMMUNICATION CLASS GROUP SIX
MEMBERS
OSEI WIREKOAA IRENE……………BACJ2014062
MUSTAPHA SAFIA…………..BACP2014027
MPARE RITA OHENEWA ……..BACJ2014053
LANSAH SULLEY………………..BACP2014022
This presentation will take a look at the revolutionary media theory as well as the democratic participant theory, bringing out their nature and strengths.
Revolutionary concept is a normative theory describing a system in which media are used in the service of a revolution. A revolution is described as a popular uprising against an existing system. There have been revolutions all over the world and the type of media that served under such revolutions give credence to the revolutionary media theory. We will like establish the context that every media theory has a bearing of the political system under which it thrives therefore we proceed to give examples of revolutionary media theories and how they pan out with emphasis on the soviet communist theory.
The soviet –communist theory is an example of a revolutionary theory. To understand the nature of this media theory, one needs to understand soviet communism as a political system because of it’s influences on the media .
The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defined Communism as a theory advocating elimination of private property. It goes on further to explain a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the USSR. it is also important to explain Maxism.
Marxism was defined by the same source as the political, economic and social principles and policies advocated by Marx, especially a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society. Marxism-Leninism was defined as a theory and practice of Communism developed by Lenin from the doctrines of Marx.
With this system, the state is the authority that redistributes all resources equally for the citizens to benefits. Resources such as healthcare, education and information are all the preserve of the government.
In the former Soviet Union, a single political party controlled the government, which in turn controlled the goods and means of production, and thus distributed them to the proletariat, or community.
The person who used Marxs ideas to establish a state based on Communism was Vladimir Lenin. Lenin felt the working class could not bring about a revolution and thus needed a professional group of revolutionaries to guide it. Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Majorityists) came to power in 1917 and changed their name to the Communist Party. A dictatorship was established to convert the Soviet Union from Capitalism to Socialism (Britannica Online).
Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, forcibly accomplished the transition from Capitalism to Socialism through the nationalization of industry and the collectivization of agriculture. Stalin pushed rapid industrialization although it caused great material hardship. He also used police terror to suppress opposition (Britannica Online).
Communism spread after World War II, when the victorious Soviet Red Army liberated and sponsored the formation of Communist governments in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and North Korea. Other independent communist regimes were created in Yugoslavia and Albania. Stalinism, Stalin’s form of Communist rule, became the model for these newly formed Communist governments (Britannica Online).
This is the system under which the soviet communist media theory thrived. This theory is derived from the ideologies of Marx and Engel that "the ideas of the ruling classes are the ruling ideas". It was thought that the entire mass media was saturated with bourgeois ideology. Lenin thought of private ownership as being incompatible with freedom of press and that modern technological means of information must be controlled for enjoying effective freedom of press. The theory advocated that the sole purpose of mass media was to educate the great masses of workers and not to give out information. The public was encouraged to give feedback as it was the only way the media would be able to cater to its interests. Mickiewicz (1988) found that the media in the Soviet Union had distinctive and officially prescribed functions. The primary mission of the media, according to Mickiewicz, was the socialization of the person receiving the message. So, the media were educators, just as schools, the courts of law, the family and other institutions of education. In the Soviet Union, Mickiewicz found that education was the primary mission for all of these aforementioned institutions because they have a delegated authority from the state to socialize and educate according to the established criterion (p. 27). The source of this authority dates back to Lenin and his premature revolution according to orthodox Marxist theory. Marx believed the revolution would occur when the proletariat was in a state of commonality, when common social bonds united them, eliminating deviance, dissatisfaction, selfishness and acquisitiveness. Since Lenin’s revolution occurred before this state of commonality of the proletariat, Lenin believed the changes in the popular mentality had to be changed from a higher authority, and thus the imposition of a delegated authority to socialize and educate (Mickiewicz, p. 27).
The media had several functions in the USSR One function was to integrate the expansive, multi-lingual country that was to be the first socialist state. Overall, the medias task had two principal dimensions, according to Mickiewicz. First, the media had to change the ethical and moral outlook of the population. She said of this dimension: The psychological orientation underlying the society of the future, when full communism has been achieved, requires cooperation and collectivism and eschews selfishness, careerism, greed, and, in general, the development of an individual that might supersede the societal collective (p. 28). The second dimension of the medias task was to rouse the population to contribute to the economic goals of the state. Thus, mobilizing the population to meet production goals became a critical role of Soviet media (Mickiewicz, p. 28). The media were used to mobilize the public to achieve the goals of the state: Communism would only be met when the population’s internal value system had changed within a context of enhanced economic production.
In Soviet terms, newsworthiness was something very different from the Western concept of what is newsworthy. Many Western stories were considered inappropriate covering domestic natural disasters, accidents, crime or other sensational events were considered dwelling on negative events. Thus, portraying the underside of life would encourage or suggest the wrong behavior, undermining the positive role models the newspaper or television station must portray in terms of their role as educators of the population (Mickiewicz, p. 29).
Advertising is scarce in the Soviet media system, used only to supplement policy messages or to encourage buying patterns to compensate for holes in the economy (Mickiewicz, p. 29). Fast-breaking news also had another meaning. The importance or newsworthiness of fast-breaking news was evaluated in terms of its place in history, in Marxist-Leninist history. Therefore, since history was seen according to this doctrine, coverage of a numerically insignificant group of demonstrators opposing a bourgeois government may have been considered newsworthy because it was important in terms of Marxist-Leninist history theory (Mickiewicz, p. 30). In essence the soviet communist system has some semblance of the authoritarian press system but the unique thing is that there is no element of profit in its operation.
Any real revolution involves masses of people breaking with the general ideas they have been brought up with and adopting a new way of seeing both the world and their own role within it. Revolutionaries always begin as minorities attempting to propagate the new world view. And that involves, for long periods of time, not only hostility from the old ruling class, but also indifference from many of the members of the oppressed class. There is no way to avoid this period of unpopularity, since in any society the ruling class does dominate ideologically. Its ideas are indeed the ruling ideas.
Revolutionaries cannot begin to win this battle for ideas unless they find some way of connecting with the experiences of the mass of ‘ordinary’ ‘non-political’ people. They have to be able to show that the revolutionary view of the world better fits with at least some of these experiences in a better way than does the dominant ideology.
But revolutionaries are not interested simply in winning people to new ideas. They also have to be concerned with getting people to act on the basis of these, to say not merely what is wrong, but also, above all, what is to be done. That is where the media comes in
Talk of the media under the Jerry Rawlings regime, the Quadaffi regime, the Hugo Chavez regime, the French revolution and the like. They all have the same concepts. As such their advantages are binding.
ADVANTAGES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MEDIA THEORY
· THE MEDIA IS A STRONG RALLYING POINT TO EDUCATE THE MASSES
· THE GOVERNMENT EXERCISES CONTROL TO GET ITS MESSAGE TO THE MASSES THE WAY IT WANTS IT
· THE GOVERNMENT IS ABLE TO INSTILL CHANGE IN THE PEOPLE THROUGH THE MEDIA
· VALUES SUCH AS PATRIOTISM CAN EASILY BE INSTILLED IN THE MASSES FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.
· THE GOVERNMENT FINDS A WAY OF CURBING INTRUDING PROPAGANDA BECAUSE IT CONTROLS THE MEDIA CONTENT.
· THE MEDIA IS A MASSIVE TOOL FOR CAPACITY BUILDING AND DISSEMINATION OF GOVERNMENT POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION ESPECIALLY UNDER THE SOVIET COMMUNIST THEORY.
DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPANT MEDIA THEORY
Democratic-participant theory was proposed in recognition of new media developments and of increasing criticism of the dominance of the main mass media by private or public monopolies. From the 1960’s onwards call could be heard for alternative, grass-roots media, expressing the needs of citizens. The theory supports the right to relevant local information, the right to answer back and the right to use the new means of communication for interaction and social action in small-scale settings of community, interest groups or subculture. This theory challenged the necessity for and desirability of uniform, centralized, high-cost, commercialized, professionalized or state-controlled media. In their place should be encouraged multiple, small-scale, local, non-institutional, committed media which link senders to receivers and also favor horizontal patterns of interaction.
Practical expressions of the theory
The practical expressions of the theory are many and varied, including the underground or alternative press, community cable television, micro-media in rural settings, wall posters Media for women and ethnic minorities. The theory reflects the market as a suitable institutional form, as well as all top-down professional provision and control. Participation and interaction are key concepts.
Democratic-participant theory advocates media support for cultural pluralism at a grass-root level. Media are to be used to stimulate and empower pluralistic groups. Unlike social responsibility theory, which assumes that mass media can perform this function, democratic-participant theory call for development of innovative, ‘small’ media that can be directly controlled by group members. If they cannot afford such media, then government subsidies should be provided to them existing small media should by identified and funded. Training programs should be established to teach group members how to operate small media.
The democratic participant media is the type of media practiced in Ghana today with the freedom to the press. It is also very common for media outlets to make provision for their audience to have a say in their content through emailing phone-ins or articles. Media houses like TV3,Metro TV, The Graphic among others all operate in this way. The chief proponents of this theory however is the United states of America and The United Kingdom, the home of CNN and BBC
STRENGTHS OF DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPANT THEORY
· THE TARGET AUDIENCE HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE THEIR VIEWS HEARD
· THE TARGET AUDIENCE HAVE THE RIGHT TO ALTERNATIVE NEWS SOURCES
· IT ADDRESSES THE INADEQUACIES OF THE AUTHORITARIAN AND LIBERTARIAN THEORIES
· IT HELPS ELIMINATE MARGINALIZATION AS ALL PERSONS ARE GIVEN EQUAL ACCESS TO THE MEDIA.
· MEDIA IS THE INSTRUMENT TO CHAMPION DEMOCRACY
· IT PROMOTES SMALL GROUP MEDIA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Communism. Britannica Online [On-line], Available: http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/138/32.html
Communism Online [On-line], Available: http://wgel.com/CommunismOnline/MajorPlayers.htm.
Marxism. Britannica Online [On-line], Available: http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/379/14.html.
Mickeiwicz, E. (1988). Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union. New York: Oxford University Press.
http://www.slideshare.net/ArielForeman/normative-theory-2225358