ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with aspects of the historical and theoretical frame of reference which seem to author to be a basic requirement for the study of mass communications and yet a blindspot in contemporary social science. Theology imagines that such horizontal segments constitute its research laboratory, and it seems to forget that the only social research laboratories that are properly admissible are historical situations. Before the naturalistic phase of social science set in, the phenomena of popular culture were treated as a social and historical whole. A product of popular culture has none of the features of genuine art, but in all its media popular culture proves to have its own genuine characteristics: standardization, stereotypy, conservatism, mendacity, manipulated consumer goods. Most students are of the opinion that the habit of advertisement is the main motivating force in creating receptivity to popular culture and that the products themselves eventually take on the character of advertising.
