Week 3-Community, Society & Communication

The “problem of community,” whether or not traditional patterns of social life are threatened or in a state of transformation, and what the role of communication is in that transformation or deterioration, has long concerned social philosophers. There appears to be consensus around Bender’s definition of community as being a “network of social relations marked by mutuality and emotional bonds” (1978, p.7) and that there are two forms of social interaction, community, which is family, neighborhoods, etc., and society, an artificial construction, such as the city. The debate is over how to define and explain the concept of the community-society continuum and what role communication plays in that dynamic. Modernization and urbanization were seen by Toonie and Wirth as disruptive social forces to this continuum that needed to be understood and corrected. Lewis and others found that the rise of one didn’t automatically mean the decline of the other and that community continued to exist despite what appears to be the relentless or apparent dominance of the “society.”
Communication must exist as community and society continues to change, but the form and content that the communication takes, also grows and changes as it reflects what is happening in society. So is communication predominantly a force of good, facilitating social interaction, or a force of evil, promoting gossip and false hopes as Jane Addams felt. De Tocqueville saw newspapers as not only guaranteeing liberty, but as also preserving civilization because he felt the rise of individualism was a menace. It was in the 20th century where the emerging mass media was both canonized and demonized. Does communication allow for the free flow of information and connect people of related interests across space or does it tend to isolate people? Either way observers have long recognized that if, media content is not consumed “it ceases to be an influence in the community” (Park, 1923, p. 98).
The relationship between community-society continuum continues to change and evolve which calls for ongoing research in to that transformative relationship and the role of communication. Does mass media cause community and society to change or do people use media to build community and shape society? Certainly in recent decades there have been extensive studies into mass media effects, but it was conducted within the context of the community-society continuum in place at that point in time. Perhaps too much focus has been on mass media and more research needs to be done on interpersonal communication networks. Sociologists, past and present, are enamored by new media, whether it is the newspaper or the internet, and have had a tendency to overlook or minimize the power and impact of the oral tradition or people’s interpersonal networks. Just as urban and rural senses of community can coexist in the same society, so can the oral form of communication and mass media play equally powerful roles and that interplay needs to be explored.
In recent years the new communication technologies, primarily the Internet, are continuing to influence and reshape the relationship between what is community and what is society. The emergence of the Internet has allowed for more interpersonal communication by providing what Park credited newspapers with doing in 1923, and that is connecting us to community and defining it by informing us. As a result, the traditional mass media is struggling, with newspaper readership declining 26% in the last few years. New forms of communication are facilitating social interaction on a large scale and at a distance and are redefining the social, cultural and political life and the economy at a global level. At the same time, the sheer multitude of communication channels has also added obstacles and created a lack of communication between people.

It was interesting as the number of communication channels increased and the scope of their reach grew, sociologists became more concerned about the effect of media. --Vicky Hildebrandt