ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the more traditional communication science paradigm with what communication theorist Denis McQuail has called the “alternative paradigm” of interpretive and critical views of the way media institutions and content affect society and culture. It shows some of the key terms and concepts used in this area of inquiry, such as ideology, hegemony, and institutional reinforcement of the elite power structure. The chapter describes how these different approaches to media study require different research methods and techniques for formulating theory. It provides some of the most popular approaches within this paradigm, including political economy, the Frankfurt and Birmingham schools of thought, post-modernism and Marshall McLuhan’s technological determinism. The prevailing theme in this branch of communication inquiry is that knowledge is a form of power, and groups within a society use media institutions to help them exercise and maintain power. This happens through mass media promoting a set of ideas associated with a society’s powerful interest’s non-mainstream ideas.
