MASS SOCIETY

Mass Society refers to a society with a mass culture and large-scale, impersonal, social institutions. Even the most complex and modern societies have lively primary group social relationships, so the concept of Mass Society can be thought of as an Ideal Type, since it does not exist in empirical reality. 'Mass Society' is intended to draw attention to the way in which life in complex societies, with great specialization and rationalized institutions, can become too anonymous and impersonal and fail to support adequate bonds between the individual and the community. In mass society, typically the structure of interaction is bureaucratically organized. The need for instrumental control of behavior to purposes divorced from the life process in capitalist society has lead to the bureaucracy as the major instrument of social control. Interaction in bureaucracy and other formal organizations is so brief, impersonal, and narrowly focussed that the development of a self-system is difficult. The concept of 'Mass Society' reflects the same concern in sociology, that is, loss of community that Ferdinand Tonnies expressed in his idea of Gesellschaft. In 1887 Ferdinand Tonnies introduced the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which have proved to be one of the discipline's most enduring and fruitful concepts for studying social change and mass society.

Mass Communication Mass Society refers to the distribution of entertainment and associated media. In mass society, typically the structure of interaction is bureaucratically organized. The need for instrumental control of behavior to purposes divorced from the life process in capitalist society has lead to the bureaucracy as the major instrument of social control. The study of leisure in a mass society requires the study of the mass media - perhaps the primary agent of 'massification.' We live in a society saturated by mass media. Virtually all forms of leisure have been affected by this increasingly powerful agent of socialization. Of all forms of mass media, television has emerged to become the most powerful media.

Globalization and Mass Society Theory. Raymond L. M. Lee. Nihilism was deeply implanted in mass society theory. On the other hand, globalization theory conveys the impression of a dynamic world driven by expanding networks of creativity, technology and knowledge.

Mass Society, Mass Culture, and Mass Communication: The Meaning of Mass
KURT LANG, GLADYS ENGEL LANG, University of Washington. The concept of mass goes back a long way to characterize a society that consists of people somehow connected by communication while, at the same time, also dispersed in space and essentially detached from one another. Mass has also been a pejorative for critics of modern capitalist society and its culture. In the years after World War II, this latter use of the term became the target of a broadside attack by several highly credentialed scholars, who questioned its value as an analytic tool. This paper, starting with Ferdinand Tönnies, offers a brief overview of both the origins of the concept of mass and its subsequent refinement by French, German, and American sociologists into the mid-1930s. Distinguishing between its ideological connotations and the analytic use of the term helps us to focus on the most general and persistent effects of mass communication: expanding the range of common experience and making people more responsive to distant events. This effect is magnified by the ubiquity of mass media; practically no one, not even those who scorn them, can altogether escape their influence.

Communication Problems in a Mass Society: Mass Audience, Mass Communication & Development. - Moemeka Andrew A.
Abstract: This paper examines the problem of how to reconcile the practical realities of the nature of the mass audience with the demands of personal and social development, particularly in Africa and other Third World Countries, where the demands of modernization have confronted traditional norms and values. After defining and clarifying key concepts such as development, communication, mass communication, mass society, mass audience, and types of audience participation, the paper explores the relationship between the mass media and the mass audience, and discusses the effects of the media in terms of conflict perspectives, social criticism, and the theories of ideological effects.

Global Mass Society
Michael Haas. Abstract: Economic globalization has resulted in corporations, unaccountable to states, making key decisions within an otherwise anarchic world order, rendering normal democratic functioning almost impossible. Global gridlock has resulted from the same issues that plague democracies today. Although transnational civil society has tried to achieve a degree of democratic global governance, the result mostly has been to reinforce the global power structure.