Imagination brings pathways for sustainable disciplinary development. Photo: TUCHONG

Simply put, media sociology studies the relationship between communication and society. Although the perspectives within this field are diverse, they all aim to understand interaction and communication within a social context.

Social reality

The development of media sociology has closely paralleled that of sociology itself, which originated in Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Classic social theorists such as Karl Heinrich Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Sigmund Freud, and Robert Ezra Park have directly or indirectly addressed issues related to news, public opinion, and communication. Sociology flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, network sociology and media sociology emerged in response to social and academic trends. Network sociology and media sociology emphasize the importance of networks or media as elements of communication. These can be broadly considered as either variations or narrower interpretations of communication sociology, but may also represent a surrender of communication sociology to technocracy in another sense.

The growing disconnect between communication studies and social reality, as well as its break from sociological traditions, seems to have led to a situation where both “the  baby and the bathwater” have been thrown out. Hence, the research trends depicted and criticized in Charles Wright Mills’s The Sociological Imagination still prevail in the community of communication studies. First, Western theories still thrive. Second, methodism and technologism still persist. Third, there is a tendency to chase pragmatic goals using a bureaucratic approach.

A scientific philosophy appears to be buttressing the above-mentioned trends. Modelling the natural sciences, this philosophy seeks to establish a theoretical framework and a set of methodological procedures aimed at producing marketable “products” through an organized process. 

In Mills’s view, these trends are manifestations of the roles of researchers as slaves to rather than masters of theories and methods and a lack of sociological imagination. They transform real social problems into formalistic, abstract conceptual or operational technical problems. Instead of engaging with the realities of society, researchers attempt to address problems through the manipulation of concepts, the application of methods, and the innovation of techniques.

Rooted in the soil of social reality and social structure, a focus on communication issues within this context—connecting the individual with society, life with history, and the self with the world—can lead to more imaginative and meaningful research in media studies. By fully integrating, rather than simply discarding, the insights from classic social theories from the late 19th century, interdisciplinary communication research from the 1930s and 1940s, and the sociological heritage of communication from the 1950s and 1960s, researchers can augment communication research with the wings of sociological imagination.

Specifically, sociological imagination in communication research should strive to discover the position and role of communication within modern social structures, especially exploring the dynamics of how information or knowledge flows —or fails to flow—within these structures, explaining and addressing barriers to communication, and promoting better understanding and interaction between different segments of society and various social groups.

Traditional Chinese culture

Finally, it should be noted that Mills’s concept of sociological imagination is not without its flaws. One significant shortcoming may be its insufficient emphasis on culture, cultural mindsets, and their diversity. How can sociological imaginative communication research absorb cultural differences between China and the West and contribute to the development of Chinese media sociology? The rise of nativism may be a trend that distinguishes Chinese communication research from that of Europe and the United States. How traditional Chinese culture relates to contemporary communication issues and continues to influence contemporary social structures and practices is a subject of important research value.

Fortunately, pioneers like Sun Benwen and Fei Xiaotong have already laid a strong foundation for Chinese media sociology. Sun’s articles not only integrate different schools of thought but also highlight cultural psychology, advocating for both a Chinese cultural orientation and the integration of Western cultures. From the perspectives of cultural sociology and social psychology, he focused on exploring issues such as “communication.” Fei devoted his entire academic energy to studying the structural changes in Chinese society, from an agricultural society to an industrial and then an information society. Whether it was his early work on the “order of stratified closeness” to compare interpersonal relationship between China and the West, or his later concept of “cultural self-awareness” in response to intercultural communication issues, Fei laid the foundation for the imaginative sociology of communication in China. Both Sun and Fei understood communication issues within the context of China’s social structure and its changes, rather than simply emphasizing abstract theories, standardized methods, or media technologies. As Fei remarked in his later years, “It is certain that the information society can promote cultural exchanges, but it is still people who use information technology, and people live within different cultural or value systems.”

Wang Jiapeng is an associate professor from the School of Journalism and Communication at Nanjing University.

Edited by ZHAO YUAN