Daniel Lerner ( 1958 ) saw mass media as the main catalyst for social change
That a relationship between exposure to mass media, particularly news media, and attitudes exists has been supported by additional scholarship, particularly in the United States ( Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996 )
While mass media have been less studied, some theorists focused on the role that they play in modernization and argued that it was the key agent in bringing about development. Lerner argued that media exposed people who possess traditional values to the “modern” world, and that exposure in turn produced a desire to live in it. For him, media enabled the modernization process: “the importance of media in our theory is that it enlarges a person’s view of the world (‘opinion range’) and his capacity to imagine himself in new and strange situations (‘empathy’) in ways that will alter action” ( Lerner 1958, 96 ). This process, he suggested, fosters ideas of equality and tolerance through empathy; empathy induces action and thought that attempt to emulate modern life. A handful of empirical studies based on focus groups, interviews, or surveys of individuals in Latin America starting in the early1960s established an empirical link between media consumption and attitudes such as empathy and support for democracy, among others (e.g., McNelly 1966 ; Rogers 1965 ; Bishop 1973 ).
In terms of tolerance for homosexuality, research supports the existence of that relationship ( Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes 2006 ; Brewer 2008 ; Riggle 1996 ; Berggren and Nilsson 2015 )
Lerner’s arguments were expectedly later criticized. For some, they did not consider the fact that access to mass communication can be highly unequal in some countries in the global South.
Lire la suite