Which of the following are main functions of mass communication? A. Detachment…

Concept

In mass-communication theory a function is a service that the communication system performs for the social system as a whole — something it does to keep a society informed, coordinated and continuous over time. Harold D. Lasswell (1948) set out three such functions: surveillance of the environment, correlation of the parts of society in responding to the environment, and transmission of the social heritage from one generation to the next. Charles R. Wright (1959) later added entertainment as a fourth.

Each of the three is defined by what it does for the society. Surveillance collects and distributes news of events, opportunities and threats, so that the society knows its surroundings. Correlation interprets that information and prescribes a response through editorial selection, commentary and persuasion, so that the separate parts of the society act in a coordinated way. Transmission of the social heritage carries norms, values, skills and culture across generations, which is the socialising and educative work of the media. Effects that pull a society apart, and practices that abandon its ethical standards, fall outside this list: they are studied as dysfunctions and as failures of media ethics, never as functions.

Application

Test each statement in the list against that definition:

• Detachment of individual from society — this describes the media weakening a person’s participation in social life. Lazarsfeld and Merton named it the narcotizing dysfunction: heavy exposure to information can substitute for action instead of leading to it. It is catalogued as an unintended negative consequence of mass communication, not as a service the media perform for a society.

• Indulge in message creation without worrying about moral consequences — this describes a breach of media ethics and of the social-responsibility expectation placed on communicators. It names a way the practice can go wrong, so no functional account of mass communication lists it among the tasks the media carry out for a society.

• Surveillance of environment — this is Lasswell’s first function: the news-gathering, watch-and-warn role through which a society learns about the events, opportunities and dangers around it.

• Transmission of social heritage — this is Lasswell’s third function: the socialising and educative role by which the accumulated norms, values and culture of a society are carried to the next generation.

• Correlating the parts of society in response to environment — this is Lasswell’s second function: interpretation and prescription, through which editorial selection, commentary and persuasion knit the separate parts of a society into a coordinated response to what surveillance has reported.

Cross-check

Setting each statement beside its place in the standard classification makes the boundary explicit:

Three of the five statements sit in the functions column, and they are exactly the three Lasswell listed; the other two describe a dysfunction and an ethical failure.

Result

The statements that name main functions of mass communication are surveillance of environment, transmission of social heritage, and correlating the parts of society in response to environment — that is, the selection C, D and E only.