“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.”

Source: Manufacturing Consent, with Noam Chomsky, 1988, p. 1.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function t…" by Edward S. Herman?
Edward S. Herman photo
Edward S. Herman 55
American journalist 1925–2017

Related quotes

Talcott Parsons photo

“The physical structures of organisms play only a minor and secondary role… The only requirement which physical structure must fulfill is that it allow the characteristic behaviors themselves to be manifested. Indeed, if this were not so, it would be impossible to understand how a class of systems as utterly diverse in physical structure as that which comprises biological organisms could be recognised as a unity at all.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Robert Rosen. "Anticipatory systems in retrospect and prospect," in: General Systems, Vol. 24 (1979), p. 12; AS cited in: Nadin, Mihai. " Anticipation and dynamics: Rosen's anticipation in the perspective of time http://www.nadin.ws/archives/966." International journal of general systems. 39.1 (2010): 3-33.

Tom Robbins photo

“Society in general maintains such a vested interest in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die – or kill – than entertain change.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: I'll say this much: virtually every advancement made by our species since civilization first peeked out of its nest of stone has been initiated by lone individuals, mavericks who more often than not were ignored, mocked, or viciously persecuted by society and its institutions. Society in general maintains such a vested interest in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die – or kill – than entertain change. Consider how threatened religious fundamentalists of all faiths remain to this day by science in general and Darwin in particular.
Cultural institutions by and large share one primary objective: herd control. Even when ostensibly benign, their propensity for manipulation, compartmentalization, standardization and suppression of potentially disruptive behavior or ideas, has served to freeze the evolution of consciousness practically in its tracks. In technological development, in production of material goods and creature comforts, we've challenged the very gods, but psychologically, emotionally, we're scarcely more than chimpanzees with bulldozers, baboons with big bombs.

“A genre is maintained by the conventions of a community, and in most cases serves specific functions within the system of practices of particular institutions of that community.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Lemke, J. (2005). "Multimedia genres and transversals." Folia Linguistica, 39(1-2): 45-56. p. 46

Eric Foner photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo
Reinhold Niebuhr photo

Related topics