The positive effects are as follows: ① The role of giving social status: Mass communication can give individuals, groups, social problems and social actions a prominent position through news reports and other forms, making them the focus of social attention. (2) Reaffirm the function of social norms: The mass media can publicize the behaviors that deviate from social norms, arouse widespread condemnation in society, and make violators feel the "institutional pressure" to maintain social norms, thus forcing them to abide by social norms.
Lazarsfeld and Merton also pointed out that "mass media is a powerful tool that can serve good and evil. If it is not properly controlled, it is more likely to be evil. " The negative function is as follows:
(1) the spirit of anesthesia-the long-term impact on the audience. Media provides a false environment and constructs media reality with symbols. Overindulge in superficial information and popular entertainment, indulge in illusory satisfaction, and lose social action. Mass media can easily confuse "real environment" with "virtual environment" (media environment). The masses rely too much on the media, and the facts brought by the media only partially reproduce life scenes and cannot represent a social trend. If they are used, there will be bad consequences.
② Obey the status quo. Ignore the key content. The influx of information causes information surplus, which makes people indifferent to information. It also advocates "social obedience", weakens the public's spirit of discrimination and criticism of society, and turns people into one-sided people who obey the status quo.
(3) reduce the aesthetic level and appreciation. Mass media should cater to the tastes of the public.
(4) The media occupy or deprive people of their free time at the same cost. Shi Lamu-The media is the thief of time. Let time disappear in recreation, entertainment and mediocrity.
⑤ alienation. Critical school, Marx. Pay attention to how people are alienated by commodities and media advertisements in a commercialized society.
⑥ A large number of violent, bloody and pornographic contents and scenes in the film and television network bring negative impacts on the society, affecting the physical and mental health of the audience, especially teenagers. A study of the positivist school in the 1920s and 1980s.
⑦ The survival of national culture and the crisis of cultural identity. The development of satellite live TV and network has brought about the national sovereignty in cross-cultural communication and posed a potential threat to the social system. It has an impact on the politics, economy, culture and society of third world countries. American cultural imperialism, cultural hegemony, discourse power.
Chen Shui-bian tried to use textbooks to emphasize the original culture of Taiwan's cultural history and try to separate it from the mainland.
After people rely too much on the indirect communication brought by the media, the social interaction between people gradually decreases and gradually alienates from social groups. "TV people" and "container people" refer to those who spend their leisure time entirely on mass media and associate their thoughts, feelings, joys and sorrows with media content. Their ideas and even their ways of action are all derived from television, which is extremely self-internalized and psychologically closed, unable to cope with the changes in the real world and has completely become a "container" for collecting media information.