Chapter 15 Science and Mass Media

   Anyone could find it hard to find a similarity between science and mass media, yet they do have some things in common with each other. Science, the pursuit of knowledge through systematic methods, is a central feature for all industrialized countries and works as a social institution. Mass media are instruments of communication that reach large audiences with no personal contact from the person sending the information to those that are receiving it, mass media is also considered a social institution. Both these social institutions have developed with time and have become much more common in the past few centuries. Probably the most important aspect of these two concepts up until now is the fact that both are considered to be social institutions.

  The sociology of science, the sociological investigation of how scientific knowledge develops, sociology of science is what gives us the perspective to see science as a social institution, in other words, to understand how science can be a social institution we first need to understand the main sociology of science. A very important and known aspect of science is the scientific method, an objective and systematic way of collecting information and arriving at conclusions, scientists often use this method instead of implying philosophical speculations. Like every social institution, science must have norms.Organized skepticism is also a norm, no scientific finding or theory is exempt from questioning. Organized skepticism is not always a norm scientists believe should be followed all the time, Thomas Kuhn, a historian of science, coined the term paradigm to describe the set of shared concepts, methods, and assumptions that make up scientific reality at any point in time. Communalism, all scientific knowledge should be made available to everyone in the scientific community. Another main norms the one of disinterestedness, which states that scientists should seek truth, not personal gain, of course that all these norms are not laws, and therefore some scientists fail to fulfill them. A natural social phenomenon that occurs within the science social institution is the Matthew Effect, we can observe this phenomenon when we see how honors and recognition tend to go to those scientists who have already achieved recognition, on the other hand, they tend to be withheld from scientists who have not yet made their mark.

Different types of mass media in our daily life.

   Mass media usually plays biggest roles in information societies, such as the United States, were the exchange of information is the main social and economic activity. Developing technologies have led to the creation of many new mass media instruments such as TVs and radios, some sociologists believe that these new technologies will cause mass media to merge together into something they call media convergence, the merging of media technologies. The conflict perspective, which mainly bases its thoughts on Marxist ideology in which violence between people and groups is pretty much the cause of most social instability, believes to have found a pattern, which happens thanks to mass media on the society, within every society. The knowledge-gap hypothesis states that as new information enters society, wealthy and better-educated members acquire it at a faster rate than poor and less educated people. Conflict theorists believe this phenomenon might be occurring because of the digital gap(gap between those with access to new technologies and those without) getting wider and wider every day. Many sociologists believe that mass media has led to a decrease in the social capita. Social capita refers to social networks and the reciprocal norms associated with these networks that encourage people to do things for each other. Many people complain about mass media for a simple reason, they argue that the media sets the boundaries of public debate by deciding which issues will receive coverage and which will not, a process known as agenda setting. Agenda setting is undertaken by gatekeepers-media executives, editors or reporters who can open or close the “gate” on a particular news story.

   Both mass media and science are very complex social institutions, yet simple to understand. Giving it some thought, we might as well come to realize that society today is the way it is partly thanks to science and mass media. Both these social institutions play big roles in our society today. We are exposed to mass media and to science a major part of our day, in some cases affecting the way we think and behave, for this reason, many sociologists including myself believe mass media and science have major roles in the social behavior of individuals.