Las emotividades sociales y los medios de comunicación

Abstract

All societies impose normative standards and hierarchies of objects and behavior on their members, according to a scale that ranges from the material to the spiritual. However, for some time now, with the increase in consumption of the symbolic, cultural integration on the basis of nation states has been displaced by the mass media, which play a predominant role in building social consensus. The issues, information, stories, approaches or excerpts that appear in the mass media rearrange and give coherence to the world in which we live and describe-produce what is acceptable, how it is to be accepted and how it is to be communicated. In this article, the author explores the role of the mass media in building society’s emotions, which are at the root of its behavioral patterns. Based on an analysis of several studies, she urges reflection on the role of the mass media in constructing representations, meanings, frameworks of interpretation and tracing the social experience.