"The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society."

"[C]ommunication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed."

During this semester we have looked at the current mass media industries and at the instersection of mass media and society. As you have seen, scholars of the mass media are not of one mind concerning the relationship of mass media and society and, most particulary, the role of mass media IN society. The quotations above are each emblematic. Herman and Chomsky see media as serving the needs of political and economic control, while Carey sees media as a form of social ritual.