Global Media and the Social Construction of Reality

Global Media and the Social Construction of Reality

The notion of reality as a subjective phenomenon constructed by social interactions, signs and symbols implicates mass media as a key variable. If as McChesney (1997) says, the relatively new “global commercial media system is dominated by a small number of superpowerful U.S.-based transnational media corporations” (pg 1), then within the perspective of the social construction of reality this may have implications for the realities of peoples around the world. Interested in the question “does global mass media contribute to perceptions of social reality held by individuals around the world,” I undertook a review of recent (past five years) literature of studies dealing with the combined topic: social construction of reality (SCR) and global media.
Cleary “around the world” is a large audience to measure, but with the globalization and cultural hegemony debates at high volume over the past few years, my presumption was to find a handful of case studies gauging influence correlated to global media as relatively new actors within a society. I did not find this, nor did I find any work at all that dealt more than nominally with the individual and societal levels of SCR/global media. (Actually there are many articles dealing with “identity” and globalization of media. However, Manuel Castells (2003) defines identity as “the cultural construction of meaning by a social actor” (pg 67, emphasis added). As I am looking at the broader category of reality construction, I avoided works that focused only on identity. Still, it is related and therefore worth mentioning alongside a discussion of the dearth of research into my main question.)
This is not to say there is not research about SCR and global media. There is. However, the majority is focused on the media content construction aspect of the equation. In retrospect, this is not surprising. To deal with global questions, content analysis of media texts is the easier start point. They are important articles –asking and...

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