Mastersthesis,
Robert E. Park’s Theory of Newspapers and News
McGill University, Montreal, (1995)
Abstract
The essay examines Robert E. Park's theory of the role news and newspapers have in processes of social interaction, and of the role they consequently play in the constitution of society. Park's theoretical work is often cited for its appreciation of the dynamic aspects of social interaction. This perspective is evident in his analysis of news and newspapers. ln The Immigrant Press and its Control (1922), Park examined how immigrant groups responded to the experience of immigration and how their newspapers contributed to that response. Ethnic newspapers served to preserve traditions and solidarity, but at the same time insinuated American practices and values and advanced the assimilation of their readership. Park saw the papers as allowing immigrant groups to engage in a process of cultural reformation; they provided a means by which immigrant groups could bring their culture into accord with the society surrounding them. Park adopted fram American pragmatism a definition of pragmatic or 'rational' social interaction and applied it to interaction over news. Rationality in this sense is a capacity to understand others' motives or goals, and a capacity to speculate about the conditions and consequences of actions. It is primarily an attitude of detachment, where personal beliefs and interests are suspended. John Dewey contrasted pragmatic interaction to interaction clominated by adherence to tradition. For Park, attention ti newspapers and discussion of news tended not to favour adherence to tradition, but encouraged a pragmatic or rational attitude. In articles on news and public opinion written in the 1940's, Park saw attention to news as a potential threat to belief systems and as a source of social conflict. Challenges to fundamental values lead to blind, defensive reactions and the behavior proper to a crowd. ln his earlier wo
