The Change Of Media And Society

Joshua Meyrowitz is a media theoretician of the second generation in 1980's, U.S.A., following McLuhan, Innes. Meyrowitz's theory is novel and unique, he has very deep realistic meanings to the subject research of "media and social relationships". But in our country, Meyrowitz's introduction and studying is still simply and elementarily, mostly only quote some views of its early "situation theory of media" in 1985, have not described systematically. The one that regretted is, Meyrowitz's key theory in 1985 and representative works fail to introduce our country, cause us to be unable to have a taste of this master's intelligence brilliant rays in a totally new way. This text uses the survey law of documents, determines the nature mainly such methods as the analytic approach, comparative analysis ,etc, comb and summarize to the Meyrowitz's cultural theories of two stages.Meyrowitz's media cultural theory system is perfect. He thinks the mechanism which influence the social behavior: Electronic media recombinates the situation, which has caused the production of the new situation, and the change of the situation leads to the change of the social role's behavior. From Meyrowitz's point of view, the media linguistic context has produced two influence on the civil order: the microcosm is that its various circulation way makes people's psychological experience cut apart as well as unified; the microscope is that it reshape the social structure and social role. Meyrowitz points out that post-modern electronic media spread, solved the world of "generalized elsewhere" of the traditional society at the same time, cause"glocalities" (namely the homogeneity and diverse) to become the important characteristic of our times. Moreover, Meyrowitz makes three metaphors, which is container, grammar , media or environment, to explain the characteristic of "media". The coal is lain between, and the three are compatible. Between media hegemony and democracy, Meyrowitz thought the two have dialectical eternity. The summing-up is that Meyrowitz is the most clear "media theory" advocate in the present age.