大衆社会における大衆像(<特集>大衆社会論とジャーナリズム)

抄録

There has been a new trend in the study of Japanese society. It is to analyze the characteristics of society from the viewpoint of the "mass society." Taking into consideration the findings of such studies, the author attempts in this article to examine some new features which have not been discussed in the conventional theories of the mass society. In doing so, major transformations in two aspects will be examined ; the masses on the one hand, and the influence of mass media on the other hand. The twenty years during the 1960s and 1970s, when Japan was rapidly moving into an age of affluence driven by its high economic growth, are often characterized as the age of mass-production and uniformity. In every field of media, nation-wide newspapers, magazines, television and radio have focused on particular issues which were thought to be of interest to everybody and to which people have reached in a similar way. For the first time in history, the lifestyles of people from different regions and classes have become very much alike through exposure to standardized and widespread media. As a consequence, the image of a unified mass society, as if everybody were the same, was created among scholars and researchers. In the 1980s, however, it is no longer possible for the media to exercise their power of influence by holding such an image of the Japanese. Evidence was found in every part of society that the mass society had suddenly fractionalized into many different groups of people, with different values and tastes. "Decomposition of the mass" has become a topic of discussion and some have even argued that Japanese society was not a mass society. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the images of the Japanese people, both old and new, are the result of oversimplification caused by the careless usage of the "mass." What has been made clear through the author's observation is that what has been taking place in this society is not the "decomposition of the mass." Instead this society is beginning to show strong signs of the "mass society." It should also be pointed out that inadequate images of the people have then led to an oversimplification of the influence of the media and the environment they create. For further continuation of the study it remains to be proved how the mass media has structuralized the information environment, and how man-media-relations, characteristic of modern society, have been formed. These are the keys to understanding how and why the new "mass society" has been formulated.