Mediated Sources of Public Confidence: Lazarsfeld and Merton Revisited
Journal of Communication, 49 (2):
109--122 (1999)Abstract
In this essay, I theorize communication and confidence by extending Lazarsfeld and Merton's status conferral function. Properly understood, confidence is a communal process, 'faith-together.' Though typically blamed for encouraging cynicism, mass media also have a very basic tendency to generate public confidence. Status conferral embeds the social objects portrayed by media in webs of value and thus recommends those objects as grounds for public confidence. At the same time, as empirical work has shown, some forms of news undo the work of status conferal and generate cynicism instead, I end by examining distinct structures of civil society that may determine the contours of mediated confidence and cynicism.