Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

The particular social integration perspective which is to be introduced

here has a number of exponents, who, from varying and quite separate

moments in sociological theory, can all be written into the development of

a distinctive tradition. This framework can be vicariously observed in a

number of different intellectual movements: situational/interactionist

(Goffman; Thompson/Meyrowitz), phenomenological (C.H. Cooley/

G.H. Mead; Calhoun), and abstraction arguments (Durkheim/Sohn-Rethel;

Giddens/Sharp/Slevin).

Situational/interactionist perspectives

The work of Joshua Meyrowitz provides an invaluable resource for prob-

lematizing the significance of New Media. Meyrowitz’s writings are dis-

tinctive in the way they synthesize the media writings of McLuhan and

the sociological work of Erving Goffman. In his pre-Internet work No

Sense of Place, Meyrowitz (1985) was beginning to integrate communica-

tion theory and sociological accounts of everyday life in useful ways.

Meyrowitz’s use of Goffman is in taking up social role theory to

explain different levels of association. McLuhan’s notion of sense ratios is

abandoned in favour of ‘face-to-face’, ‘back region’ and ‘front region’. In this

view, there are many kinds of selves distributed across levels of public

and private ‘regions’.

In adopting this approach, Meyrowitz (1985) explores ‘a common

denominator that links the study of face-to-face interactions with the

study of media: the structure of “social situations”’ (4). The key premise

from which he conducts the analysis is that media have architectures

which shape social situations in profound ways. Media create environ-

ments and various forms of electronic assembly which can either cut

through spatial segregation or replace it with electronic versions.

Focusing mainly on the case of television broadcasting, Meyrowitz

primarily wants to show how electronic media can break down the

‘traditional association between physical setting and social situation’ and

teleport individuals into an electronic public sphere (7).

Imagine that many of the walls that separate rooms, offices, and houses in

our society were moved or removed and that many once distinct situations

were suddenly combined. Under such situations, the distinctions between

our private and public selves and between the different selves we project

in different situations might not entirely disappear, but they would certainly

change. We might still manage to act differently with different people, but

our ability to segregate encounters would be greatly diminished. We could

not play ver y different roles in different situations because the clear spatial

segregation of situations would no longer exist. (6)

All of the ‘backstage’ behaviours that are carried on in the cloistered

architecture of interaction would now be visible by larger audiences with

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