ABSTRACT
The voices in the mass media are more than distant communicators. For the radio announcer and listeners, the communication is primarily one-way. Most communication scholars assume that mass media are an increasingly important part of the modern world. Mass communicators are employed by organizations working with the mass media institution. Broadcasting is seen as a distinctive media institution because of a “high degree of regulation, control or licensing by public authority—initially out of technical necessity, later from a mixture of democratic choice, state self-interest, economic convenience, and sheer institutional custom.” Social theory may assist us in understanding the legal construction of broadcast indecency as a phenomenon that places the policy in a cultural context.
