A Sociological Analysis On The Influence Of Transnational Media On The Social Integration Of The Rural Masses In South Asia (A Case Study In SRI Lanka)

The world that we are living in is saturated by Mass media. It stands for a section of media that is particularly devised to attain into a large audience. The term Mass Media was coined in 1920s with the dawn of nationwide radio net works, mass flow of news paper, and magazines. However, books, manuscripts etc that can be considered as some forms of mass media had already been in use for centuries.Mass media can be demarcated as traditional media (DharmaKeerthi,2010), Modern media (Television programs, feature films, magazines, Press, Radio, etc) and new media (digital, computerized or networkable information and communication that is emergence in the later of the 20th century). The public media can be identified as "media whose mission is to dish up or employ a public". Though the purposes of these media contribute for the similar contents, its degrees are varied according to the technological devices they deserve.√Advocacy - marketing, advertising, propaganda, etc.√Entertainment - music, sports, computer games, video etc.√Community service enouncements - public awareness campaign.The emergence of new digital technology has greatly altered and has made the revolution in telecommunication by providing new media for long expanse communication. It has provided the opportunity to masses for the interactive communication and for the speedy communication that help to deserve for the potential postmodern public sphere. Many traditional interpersonal media and mass media are potential to favor for the ONE-TO-MANY communication system. ie: television, cinema, radio, press etc. But new media allow for the large number of masses through new digital technology for the intense long distance exchanges and the result can be texted as from ONE-TO-MANY into the MANY-TO-MANY system (communication via e-mail, internet forums etc).Interpersonal media (one-to-one)→Mass media (one-to-many)→new media (many-to-many) The modern media and new media have allowed the people to express themselves make them busiest in their individual and social life. But interactive process of these media has become in different forms of different degrees though the interactivity become a central concept in the social process. Media evolution has paved the way for the less interactive practice. ie:Television. The modern media system (one-to- many) does not transform from the user's point of view and lack of interactive dimensions. But one of my arguments in this research is that the new media has well based for the new forms of interactive degrees in the global concern though the interactivity is not an inherent feature of new media technology.The result of the evolution of new media technologies has paved the way for the globalization. Globalization has shortened the distance between the people all over the world through the electronic digital media system (death of distance). This has been radically breaking up the ties between physical places and social places emphasizing the not as much of importance for the social relationship. As a result of this media saturation and the breaking up the ties of the social relationship, media has been capable enough to integrate the masses in and round the media all round the clock. Media has become an integral part of the daily life of the masses. Media hegemony on the masses is influential and questions the culture, power and the ideology in the periphery. They breed a great deal of popular interests and the debates with the central experience and put cultural pressure on the periphery masses.Revolutionary aspect of social process of the media can be directed into three main concepts that are varied from macro level to the micro aspects. They are internationalization, globalization and transnationalization of the media that can be contextualized as the evolutionary line of the media social behavior in the global process. Accordingly media has a rich and storied history that became in a widely used in rapid rate. Both the modern and new media has been used comprehensively by the social movements for the information, to share the cultural products, communicate, coalitions and other more advantages. The new media have created virtual realities in the mass consciousness and increasingly extended this process and created a second life for the masses. They are controlling more over this virtual world and become reality in their second life. Media revolution became continuously due to the constant modification of the innovative technology and the interactive treatments of the masses. Electronic media that based on satellite technology are an increasingly a complex system with national, regional, and global and has become a hindrance for the broad-based movements in the central and at the periphery and people became doldrums. The modern technology based media has been de-contextualizing and shaping collective consciousness and the bonds of the rural social structure at the periphery towards the central experiences.Much of the content of media has increasingly saturated the rural social context in wider range and implants an image composite of western central ideology in the rural mind. The ideology that streams through continuous programs would inevitably seep into rural consciousness through the stimulating of neuronal firing patterns. This image-conscious trend has produced a larger effect on the emotional and behavioral traditions of the masses. The hypnotic effects of media have glued the viewers to the screen and developed a highly seductive ubiquitous structure in the social life of the rural locale. Though this juxtaposition artificial stimulation dominates the super structural features of the rural social structure, it still observes slow impact on the conventional attitudes. But media saturation in the rural areas is high.The iconic memory built by the media, consciously perceives and has changed the consumption pattern of the masses towards the market consumption culture. But few aspects of the cultural, social and life pattern of the masses have been acculturated towards the global context. Media has supremacy enough to de-relate the rural family integration and has oriented their daily routine towards the global phenomenon. Social expectations of the masses have been structured into the declining rate but at the same time it is observed that the life expectations move into the increasing rate.But though they grasp the mass media at a considerably high rate, it still utilizes the traditional communicational patterns and the cultural codes in order to bring the incongruent elements into a congruous accumulation. It indicates the power of their own norms, values and other non-material elements which dominates all the behaviors of the masses. Accordingly, rural masses anonymously secure into their environment, social relations and practices of their own structural causes. The social structure of the periphery mostly represents the history of people's thoughts, actions and feelings. It acts on media effects just as they act on every other phases of the person's environment. Social structure, through their patterned, application of norms and values, facilitate the individual to conceive, annotate, efface or counteract the media messages mostly. Mass media has liberalized at present for the masses at the periphery to access according to their own respective gestures and to make relations with anonymous mass audience. The result is Hybrid social formation and hybrid man.Attitudes of the masses have married mostly into their traditional boundaries and moving indeed slowly towards the center experiences though they understood the dilemmas that derived from the fellow structural causes. As a result of this they are enmeshed in the net of rural cultural coercion. So, mass media that central to periphery are experiencing through their programs predominantly to de-integrate the ties (York and the fetters) to the past and to existing authority. Though the mass media has paved its respective techniques for the enormous changes of the rural villages, still the cultural landscape constantly redefines the programs that the mass media brings about.