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action between group members. Many roles,
however, are well established, such as the role of
police offi cer, and there are widely held expecta-
tions about how the roles should be performed.
We may have stereotypical images regarding
typical role occupants and the behaviour
expected of them. Some roles may be specifi c to
a particular social group whilst others, like the
role of teacher, may be found almost universally.
However, the behaviour expected in these
more universal roles may vary across time and
cultures.
Behaviour identifi ed with a role is not neces-
sarily rigidly prescribed. Through interaction
with others, individuals can change the expecta-
tions that determine a particular role. To some
extent roles can be negotiated within a social
context; within small, informal groups roles are
often arrived at through interaction alone. It is
therefore possible for an individual to choose a
persona through which they will play the role;
thus people can to some extent play the same
role diff erently whilst still keeping within the
core expectations.
Role expectations can influence our use of
language. slang might be appropriate when
talking with friends in the pub but not when
advising customers in a bank. For those who are
multi-lingual, moving from one role to another
may involve a change of language – for example,
English for talking with fellow students but Urdu
for talking with grandparents.
This multiplicity of roles tends to generate
problems of confl icting demands, known as role
strain. Th e individual may often have to adjust
his/her communication pattern, non-verbal as
well as verbal, to suit each particular role. Role
strain occurs when our communication patterns
cut across each other; when unexpected encoun-
ters take place between people from diff erent
role situations or, more seriously, when the role
is deeply unnatural to us – an apparent denial of
‘true’ self.
Th e concept of role is used not only to describe
the position of individuals within a social struc-
ture, but also that of groups or organizations.
In this sense commentators write of the role or
roles of the mass media in society; hence the role
of the press as watchdogs, defenders of the
public good. Roles played by media in society
vary according to who is defining such roles,
but regular classifications include definers of
reality, a nation’s conscience, public entertain-
ers, policers of deviance, defenders of tradition,
and guard dogs of hegemony. See eisenberg’s
model of communication and identity,agendas but which may also temper, or restrict,
the effectiveness of those agendas, such as
personal experience or what Rogers and Dearing
call ‘real world indicators’ of the importance of
an agenda issue. In this sense, reality remains
something other than what is constructed in the
media, or ‘fed to’ the public as reality by those
who promote the policy agenda.
One problem with the model is its linear-
ity, in that it does not suffi ciently indicate the
interactive nature of competing agendas. It also
presents the public agenda as being in the same
league, in terms of power, as the other agendas.
Lastly, the model could arguably have a fourth
agenda added to it, the corporate agenda, in
order to refl ect the increasingly dominant role
in all aspects of policy, public debate and media
operation, played by transnational companies on
the global stage.
Th e Dictionary’s authors would pose here a
modest alternative to Rogers and Dearing, which
emphasizes the interactive nature of the domi-
nant agendas while shifting the public agenda
into no less central a position, but one which is
by its nature less defi ned, inevitably more diff use
and thus more open to infl uence. See regula-
tory favours. See also topic guide under
communication models.
Rokker Radio See radio: rokker radio.
Roles A social role consists of the expected behav-
iour associated with a particular social position.
Th us the social position of a ‘journalist’ identifi es
a body of behaviours expected of a journalist,
that is the role of the journalist in society. ‘Role’
is a relational term: people play roles within a
context in which other people are also playing
roles, and these constitute the ‘role set’. Roles
within society or a social group carry with them
responsibilities, obligations and rights.
Most people play a variety of roles in everyday
life; for example a woman may play the roles of
daughter, surgeon, sister, niece, mother, aunt and
friend. Roles can be seen to constitute what Eric
M. Eisenberg, in his article entitled ‘Building a
mystery: toward a new theory of communica-
tion and identity’, published in the Journal of
Communication, September 2001, describes as
our ‘multiplicity of selves’ and they can infl uence
the way in which we choose to communicate in
a given situation. We may not always welcome
some of the roles that others assign to us but
play them anyway in order to remain within the
group.
Roles carry with them expectations about how
the role occupant should behave. In some cases
these expectations arise through everyday inter-