The Pluralist View of Mass Media

The plurismist pluralism of the mass media believes that power is widely spread all over the world. This is a confidence that companies and powerful groups are competing, but it is within the scope of agreement and compromise. The concept of pluralism comes from functionalism. Functionalism is a socially structured view, and every institution in society fulfills a certain role and function. If one of the institutions breaks, it may affect the stability of the whole society.

Pluralists tend to define the role of mass media in democratic society in various ways. First of all, in an increasingly complex society, it is regarded as a major role of information providers. It is seen as an information service that enables people to understand political and economic development. Secondly, it provides a means to monitor, criticize, manage and reform powerful collective activities in modern society. Therefore, it is possible to compete with the power enjoyed by companies and politicians. Third, because the media is sufficient to represent the interests of "ordinary people", it fulfills social control functions. Therefore, the media allows the public to review the behavior of political parties, powerful companies and individuals (the media's theoretical approach).

Regarding the role of media in the current political situation, there are two main points. It is pluralism and Marxism. People who support pluralist views believe that the media will carry out two basic tasks: "(1) it inform the public, (2) it acts as a supervisor of power" (Edkins and Zehfuss 157). - Binding of the media: formation of television and movies and formation of society. "Hollywood, a great mythologist, tells people what to think about gays, and how gay people think about themselves." - Vito Russo Media is a society with the power to change our world It is a mirror of institutional and cultural values. Descriptions of different groups and identities in television and movies alleviate social phobia and hatred by ignorance

Marxist opinion, known as a toolist approach, advocates several arguments that pluralists such as James Whale (1997) ignore important facts and exaggerate the power of the media . Some of the main proposals are that the mass media owner can directly control the idea of ​​dissemination through the mass media, but the pluralists believe that not all owners are trying to manage the media content It is. They actually pointed out that there is evidence that top newspaper editors and owners are disputing the management of edited content.