Communication and community

1. What has been the main paradigm of researching community, and what is the problem of the paradigm? As an alternative, from what perspective can we define ‘community?’ What makes community possible in the first place? The four readings of this week, broadly speaking, is the answer to those questions. According to Bender, researches on community conducted by Louis Wirth and Talcott Parsons, the major figures in this field, rest on Toennies’s concept of the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft distinction. Toennis’s original usage of the distinction implied two patterns of social relations that can be coexisted, and yet Wirth and Parsons misunderstood Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft as there existed time order between the two modes of society. This misunderstanding results from the fact that Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are understood as places: in fact, “they were forms of human interaction.” (Bender, p.33) Based on this argument, Bender insists that community is a “social network” (p.11) first and foremost, and research on community should be an “overview of the simultaneous polarity and reciprocity of these two patterns of human interaction,” (p.43) going beyond ahistorical, structural functionalistic and linear model of Wirth and Parsons. In community as such, according to Chicago school, what makes community possible is communication as the medium of social interaction (Park and Burgess), specifically, press (Addams), publicity (Park and Burgess), new means of communication such as fast mails, telegraphs (Cooley). This reflects their views that human identity is formed in interaction between self and society. Here, what humans exchange in society is symbols, and their concept of ‘symbolic interaction’ comes from the premise just mentioned. Tocqueville’s observation exemplifies the role of media in formation of the community.

2. These arguments seem significant in a sense that they give normative directions to mass communication studies. If we accept the argument of Chicago school – media forms community – research on media may well lead to contribution to the formation of community. Without this type of normative necessity, mass communication research might remain as a neuter discipline in a vacuum situation in which methodological validity becomes everything.

3. Chicago sociology seems to stand on ‘social determinism by technology (media).’ In this view, social development is determined by technology in a broader sense, by media in a narrower sense. Thus, it was press that formed society, not vice versa. When social changes are needed, those who follow ‘social determinism through technology’ tend to consider introduction of ‘new technology’ (or new social engineering) first. When Mahatma Gandhi began the revolution, he did only sit down and started spinning. This is worth thinking about.