A Study on the Role of the Media and Its Effect on the Identity of Muslims (Part 17)
The Viewpoints of Scientists About the Role of Mass Communication Tools in the Third World
The third world stands in contrast to the first and second worlds. The first world consists of democratic and advanced capitalist systems, while the second world comprises advanced communist industrial countries.
The term “Third World” was first used by **Alfred Sauvy** (not “Alfodosov”) to classify those countries that were outside the two political, military, and economic blocs of the time, namely, East and West. Subsequently, this term came to refer to many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which generally had weak economies and were often liberated from colonialism after World War II.
The term “third world” is one of the most widely recognized international titles to describe the various conditions governing our world and has garnered significant attention in recent years.
The historical background of the usage of the term “Third World” and its similar terms dates back to the Great French Revolution in 1789. Terms such as the “third estate” and the “third party,” widely used in that era, had meanings that, to the French people, were similar to the contemporary understanding of the “Third World.”
Before the French Revolution, the growing urban middle class (the bourgeoisie) was referred to as the “third estate,” in contrast to the two upper classes of that time (the aristocracy and the clergy). In the early years of the French Revolution, the revolutionary government that emerged from this class called itself the “third party” in opposition to the two previous ruling classes (the court and the church).
Currently, the Third World refers to a group of countries with a colonial and single-product history. Characteristics such as low incomes, weak foreign trade relations, social deprivation among significant segments of society, and lack of freedom are common among them.
Along with the term “Third World,” other titles and terms such as “backward,” “held back,” “developing,” “underdeveloped,” “poor,” “colonized,” “dependent,” “peripheral,” “East,” and “South” are also used. One common characteristic of third world countries is that nearly all of them have some history of colonial rule, although the manner and form of that rule varies.
In this article, we will discuss the role of the media as one of the most important institutions arising in the modern world, with a profound impact on society, and examine its situation in third world countries.
Mass communication, as a social institution, has exchange relations with other institutions in society. Undoubtedly, it plays a crucial role in the process of social change and economic growth. Communication generally reflects the political, economic, and cultural structures within a specific society. It is within these frameworks that social interaction and participation occur among people. In fact, one can say that the process of development has a stable relationship with the interaction among people and the active participation of different social groups.
This process cannot occur except within the framework of a comprehensive communication-information system, which can significantly contribute to resolving differences and contradictions in people’s values and behaviors, while also creating a favorable environment for national development. This phenomenon has given rise to similar issues and challenges in developing or underdeveloped societies due to the lack of indigenization and institutionalization of modern communication methods and their interaction with traditional means of communication as active social forces. Understanding the dimensions of this phenomenon has opened new avenues for communication researchers in recent decades. Therefore, we will review their findings here.
Among the research conducted on the role of mass communication tools in development, we can highlight the work of American researcher **Daniel Lerner** in his study titled “Transcending Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East.” Between 1950 and 1951, he conducted research in Middle Eastern countries under the auspices of the Institute of Social Research at Columbia University. In this study, he selected a sample of 1,600 individuals from Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan and formulated questions regarding their use of mass communication tools, particularly radio, cinema, and the press. The primary goal of this research was to demonstrate how the use of mass communication tools can influence people’s attitudes and opinions towards political, social, economic, and national development in these countries. The results indicated that there are two stages in the transformation of the Middle East:
1. Urbanization, literacy, education, and mass media expose the traditional peoples of the third world to various aspects of modern life based on new models of welfare and new tools for satisfying new needs.
2. These experiences bring about changes in the attitudes and norms of traditional peoples, raising their aspirations and expectations.
3. If a society in transition is unable to fulfill the wishes and expectations of its people, frustration, failure, instability, and dissatisfaction arise.
According to Lerner, the modernist pattern of transitioning from traditional to modern societies has always involved the transformation of traditional systems into modern ones, not the reverse. He posits that the significant difference between these two systems is that interpersonal and traditional communication reinforces traditional attitudes and customs: in contrast, collective communication fosters new skills, attitudes, and behaviors. Thus, mass media possess the capacity both to communicate and to facilitate change among their expanding audiences.
Lerner argues that there exists an interaction between the media’s indexes of modernity and the evolution of social institutions.
