Values in Mass Periodical Fiction, 1921-1940

Johns-Heine, Patricke; Gerth, Hans H.

doi:10.1086/266045

Cited by 29 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Perkins (1984) examined the presentation of values in print media over a 42-year period and concluded that religious matters were, at best, of marginal concern in popular magazines. Johns-Heine and Gerth (1949) report similar findings in a 29-year examination of religious topics in American mass periodical fiction. Overall, less than two percent of the stories, spanning 1921 through 1940, emphasized religious themes.…”

supporting

confidence: 68%

The Image of Christian Leaders in Fictional Television Programs

Skill

Robinson

1994

Sociology of Religion

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This investigation attempts to analyze how Christian leaders are portrayed on television by calculating their frequency of appearance, identifying the types of behaviors in which they engage, and establishing the dispositional traits of these characters in two contexts. The findings do not suggest that Christian leaclers are presented as pillars of goodness oras cloaked villains. Instead, Christian leaders are infrequently seen, but very often engaged in nonreligjous and frequently unlawful activities. While these predominately white, male and Catholic leaders are sincere and humble, they are not particularly loving, compassionate or caring. When contrasted with nonreli~ous characters, Christian leaders tend not to have personal lives filled with family and friends, and they lack richness in their occupational lives as well. It appears that Christian leaders are little more than a convenient mechanism for moving a story around other more interesting, attractive, ancl nonreli~ous characters.

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confidence: 68%

The Image of Christian Leaders in Fictional Television Programs

Skill

Robinson

1994

Sociology of Religion

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“…This trend in the scholarly discourse is exemplified by Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, published in 1954, which led to public outcry and Congressional inquiry resulted in the collapse of several entertainment periodicals and decades of self-censorship of American comics, enshrined by the Comics Code, irrespective of any direct evidence of harm from supposedly violent, lurid content (Lopes 2009). Numerous sociological studies of media content were published during this period (Auster 1954;Horton 1957;Horton and Strauss 1957;Johns-Heine and Gerth 1949). Cultivation theory (see Shanahan 2010), through classic studies of representations of violence on television starting in the 1970s, continued to infer a direct relationship between problematic content and discourse with social problems (Gerbner and Gross 1976).…”

Section: Media Communication and Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

The Field of American Media Sociology: Origins, Resurrection, and Consolidation

Brienza

Revers

2016

Sociology Compass

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This contribution is written against the backdrop of the historic dispersal of early American media sociology out from the core concerns of the discipline and into various importer academic disciplines (including communication, journalism, and media studies) and an ever‐growing pervasiveness of media in everyday life which is reflected by a resurgence of sociological scholarship in the United States since the early 2000s. The article divides the field in works that study media inwards – along the threefold dimensions of production and technologies, communication and discourse, reception and effects – and works that study media outwards. We argue that this latter perspective, examining broader theoretical, methodological, and substantive social implications of mass‐mediated communication, is the most promising one for a mature field of American media sociology. On this basis, we conclude with some suggestions regarding possible new, and as of yet understudied, lines of inquiry for future media sociologists.

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“…The content of mass media programming has been analyzed periodically in professional journals since the early 1940s. Whatever the medium, be it magazine stories (Johns-Heine and Gerth, 1949;Berelson and Salter, 1946), movie themes (Kracauer, 1949; Wolfenstein and Leites, 1950), popular songs, television serials (Arnheim, 1949), or comic strips (Auster, 1954), a single conclusion has emerged consistently: controversial subjects are avoided, and an idealized set of traditional values are reinforced.…”

Section: Content Analyses and The Functional Approach To The Mass Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociological Approaches to the Pop Music Phenomenon

Hirsch

1971

American Behavioral Scientist

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Social scientists have long theorized about &dquo;mass society&dquo; and &dquo;mass culture&dquo; and, generally, are appalled by the frightening images brought to mind by these concepts. A wide-ranging debate over their validity, a concern about the &dquo;functions&dquo; of the mass media in modern society, and their &dquo;effects&dquo; on the general public have been major subjects of mass communications research for the last two decades.1 Studies of popular entertainment too often are based exclusively on these concerns. American mass entertainment has undergone an extraordinary set of transformations in recent years. Several revolutions in communications technology, shifts in program content, altered audience composition, and public opinion have received widespread attention. A related transformation, less widely discussed, has occurred in the organization of mass entertainment. Today's entertainment industries bear little resemblance to their namesakes of twenty years ago. This paper will discuss four sociological approaches to the study of popular culture and relate each to a set of radical changes that have Author's Note: 7?!M pope~ M pay o~M o~o~ ~Md~ c/c/M~~ poptÃ uthor's Note: This paper is part of an ongoing study of changing popular song styles, adolescents' musical taste preferences, and the structure of the pop music industry conducted at

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Values in Mass Periodical Fiction, 1921-1940

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

The Image of Christian Leaders in Fictional Television Programs

The Image of Christian Leaders in Fictional Television Programs

The Field of American Media Sociology: Origins, Resurrection, and Consolidation

Sociological Approaches to the Pop Music Phenomenon

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