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Mass Communication and the Climate for Modernization in Latin America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

John T. McNelly
John T. McNelly*
Affiliation:
College of Communication Arts, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
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Extract

Amounting number of studies have shown striking relationships between mass communication development and various economic, political and social aspects of national growth. Although these studies generally have been based on available data from countries throughout the world, similar relationships also can be found within regional groups of countries. Among the twenty Latin American countries, we find newspaper circulation per capita correlated .89 with urbanization, .82 with literacy, .80 with per capital income, and a negative .88 with percentage of population employed in agriculture.

Such studies, of course, do not establish causal relations. Is mass communication merely a reflection of other more basic factors of development such as urbanization and industrialization, literacy and political participation? Or does mass communication play a functional role in the development process: can the communication of facts and opinions through the mass media actually influence people to move to the cities, take up new skills, learn to read and write, and become involved in politics?

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 1966 , pp. 345 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1966

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Footnotes

*

The author acknowledges the support of the International Communication Institute of Michigan State University for the preparation of this article and some of the research upon which it is based. Some of the other research cited was done with support from Michigan State University International Programs—Ford Foundation grants and from the Programa Interamericano de Información Popular, San José, Costa Rica. This article is based in part on a paper presented at the 1964 convention of the Association for Education in Journalism at the University of Texas.

References

1 Among the relevant studies are: Lerner, Daniel, “Communication Systems and Social Systems: a Statistical Exploration in History and Policy,” Behavioral Science, II (October 1957), 266–275 Google Scholar; Nixon, Raymond B., “Factors Related to Freedom in National Press Systems,” Journalism Quarterly, XXXVII (Winter 1960), 13–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fagen, Richard R., “Relation of Communication Growth to National Political Systems in Less Developed Countries,” Journalism Quarterly, XLI (Winter 1964), 87–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deutschmann, Paul J. and McNelly, John T., “Factor Analysis of Characteristics of Latin-American Countries,” American Behavioral Scientist, VIII (September 1964), 25–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cutright, Phillips, “National Political Development: Measurement and Analysis,” American Sociological Review, XXVIII No. 2 (April 1963), 253–264 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hagen, Everett E., “A Framework for Analyzing Economic and Political Change,” in Asher, Robert E., et al., Development of the Emerging Countries (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1962), 1–38 Google Scholar; Schramm, Wilbur, Mass Media and National Development (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Simpson, Dick, “The Congruence of the Political, Social, and Economic Aspects of Development,” International Development Review, VI, No. 2 (June 1964), 21–25.Google Scholar

2 Deutschmann and McNelly, op. cit.

3 UNESCO, Los medios de información en América Latina (Paris: UNESCO, 1961).Google Scholar For views of a variety of social scientists on the development role of the media see Pye, Lucian W. (Ed.), Communications and Political Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and Schramm, Mass Media and National Development.

4 UNESCO, Mass Media in the Developing Countries (Paris: UNESCO, 1961), pp. 24–28.Google ScholarPubMed The minimum UNESCO target for the developing countries per 100 inhabitants is 10 newspapers, 5 radio receivers, 2 cinema seats and 2 television receivers.

5 Markham, James W., “Foreign News in the United States and South American Press,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXV (Summer 1961), 249–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Carter, Roy E. Jr., and Sepúlveda, Orlando, “Some Patterns of Mass Media Use in Santiago de Chile,” Journalism Quarterly, XLI (Spring 1964), 216–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Report cited in note (b) of Table 1.

8 Deutschmann, McNelly and Ellingsworth study cited in note (d) of Table 1.

9 Mass Media, p. 53.

10 Quoted in Schramm, , op. cit., p. 56 Google Scholar, from Holmberg, Allan R., “Changing Community Attitudes and Values in Peru: A Case Study in Guided Change,” in Council on Foreign Relations, Social Change in Latin America Today (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), p. 105.Google Scholar

11 Spector, Paul et. al., Communication and Motivation in Community Development: An Experiment (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Services, November 1963).Google Scholar

12 Ibid, p. iii.

13 Deutschmann, Paul J., “The Mass Media in an Underdeveloped Village,” Journalism Quarterly, XL (Winter 1963), 27–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Rogers, Everett M., “Mass Media Exposure and Modernization among Colombian Peasants,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXIX, No. 4 (Winter 1965-66), 614–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Deutschmann, Paul J. and Alfredo, Méndez D., “Adoption of New Foods and Drugs in Choleña: A Preliminary Report,” San José, Costa Rica: Programa Interamericano de Información Popular, 1962.Google Scholar

16 F. B. Waisanen and William R. Lassey, study to be published in forthcoming monograph by Programa Interamericano de Información Popular, San José, Costa Rica.

17 Deutschmann, McNelly and Ellingsworth, op. cit. in Table I. Further data on mass media use and the attitudes and technical change activities of these people will be included in a book manuscript now in preparation.

18 Hagen, , op. cit. in note 1, pp. 2–6.Google Scholar

19 See note 13.

20 See note 14.

21 Study cited in footnote (c) of Table 1.

22 Cited in footnote (e) of Table 1.

23 On the basis of his review of the diffusion literature, Rogers has suggested that perhaps change agents should seek to alter their client systems' norms on innovativeness in general, rather than to promote single innovations. Rogers, Everett M., Diffusion of Innovations (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), pp. 279–281.Google ScholarPubMed

24 Hyman, Herbert, “Mass Media and Political Socialization: The Role of Patterns of Communication,” in Pye, (Ed.), Communications and Political Development, pp. 128–129.Google Scholar

25 Hyman has noted that social scientists greeted the two-step flow hypothesis with enthusiasm because it “reinstated the human factor in what at first appeared to be too impersonal and mechanical a process of communication.” But he goes on to question the easy assumption that mass communication can be defined as impersonal. He points out that the apparent disadvantage of the mass medium when not combined with interpersonal links “may be simply an illusion fostered by our own analytical distinctions.” In traditional cultures, he says, and for that matter even in our own, a mass medium may well take on human features and be seen as the “vital embodiment” of Some well-known entertainment personality or well-known writer. Op. cit., pp. 144-146. Judging from what the present writer was told in Ecuador by staff members of the previously mentioned study of the introduction of health practices, (Spector et al, op. cit. in n. 11), radio became a personal medium there in just such a sense. Some of the programs were in the form of serialized dramas, in which leading characters achieved considerable local fame as they acted out health lessons. The villagers were reported to have taken keen personal and even emotional interest in the radio project.

26 A Dutch researcher, on the basis of a recent study of three farming communities in the Netherlands, suggests replacing the two-step hypothesis by a more complicated set of hypotheses—in which both opinion leaders and followers are said to be influenced by the mass media as well as by other people, but at different stages of the adoption process. Van Den Ban, A. W., “A Revision of the Two-Step Flow of Communications Hypothesis,” Gazette, X (1964), 237–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar