ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we look at forces that can infl uence media content starting at the social system level of analysis. The macro, most encompassing level is a broad and complex one that incorporates insights from all the other perspectives, asking in effect what they all “add up to.” This question, broadly speaking, involves exploring “meaning in the support of power,” ideas in the service of interests, and indeed we labeled this chapter in the 1991 and 1996 editions of Mediating the Message the “ideological” level for that reason. We broaden this perspective to the social system more generally, although ideology is still an important way of understanding its inner workings. In this book we treat the social system level as the structure of relationships among people and the institutions they create. When dealing with how such structures relate to media, a number of perspectives have been used, and inevitably they connect with larger theories of society. A comprehensive treatment is beyond our scope, but we introduce how these larger systems have been examined, the special issues that this level of analysis addresses, and review some of the major studies that have taken up these questions. Taking up the larger society, itself a system, we must fi rst distinguish among the more important subsystems that constitute it-ideological, economic, political, and cultural-before taking up the conceptual issues of power and control that directly involve media.
