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 SESSION A.2: TRAINER'S NOTES
 
MEDIA FUNCTIONALISM.
(An introduction to sociological analysis.)
 
Objective
·        To examine how the media create a reality.
·        To decide how community media should react to this idea.
 
If a tree falls in the forest, and the media is not there to report it, did the tree really fall?
I knew that!

A sociological analysis of the media allows us to examine how groups and institutions function as ways of patterning and organising social life. That is, the processes through which individuals are turned into members of society. Something is considered functional when it contributes to the maintenance and stability of whatever entity it is part of. And dysfunctional if it is a destabilising factor.

Part of our reflection on mediated reality should be to observe that media contents are carefully manufactured constructs with nothing left to chance. The media are not, by definition, 'real', although they attempt to imitate reality.

Thus the media can be considered functional in that they generally provide reinforcing information to people and stress status quo values. There are also intended function and unintended function in this process.

This may be either an unconscious or a conscious effect of news dissemination.

Many believe that the media generates a considerable amount of 'social teaching'. Some of this information dissemination can result in a latent function. Although media contents are not real, they can shape our attitudes, behaviour and ideas about the world.

A way for you to personalise this is to ask the participants to reflect on the following question:
 
* If we haven't had first hand experience with some person, place, thing or event, and yet feel that we know something about it, may even have formed an opinion about them, based on media information, then have the media constructed a reality for us?
 
Break group into sub-groups of about five each. Ask each group to list between them, ten examples of media effect on their consciousness. That is, items they would not, or could not know about, due to distance or time, or from their ordinary experiences, and could only have received from a mediated experience.

Return and discuss with main group.
 
Materials:
 
Writing paper, pens.
Flip chart, markers.

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