ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates a thematic content analysis in which theme prevalence is examined—in this case, during 100 years of front page news in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The disappearance of references to individuals from the flow of frontpage symbols may be due to a growing tendency of the media to observe society from the point of view of single persons but from the point of view of groups or “publics”, “masses” or other collective entities such as “consumers”, “viewers”, “voters.” The Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft formulation is rich, and it has provided one of the most enduring interpretations of the direction and character of social change in the modern world. As H. D. Lasswell, D. Lerner, and I. de Sola Pool would have expected, the flow of symbols through time does seem to reflect real social change. The flow of front-page symbols depicts a decrease in emphasis on the individual and an increase in emphasis on the group.
