Communication and Race

Book excerpt: Communication and Race: A Structural Perspective explores the ways in which the mass media of communication influence and reflect the character of racial and ethnic identity, and the relations between individiuals and groups. A structural perspective is one which emhasizes the regularity inpatterns of behaviour, ideas, images, opinions, and relationships and argues that this regularity reflects the influence of structure. The structural perspective which is elaborated within this book describes structures as being dynamic and subject to change. Such change occurs primarily athistorical junctures we associate with critical events. Cognitive structures, market structures, and structures of representation of similarity and difference are shown to be related to each other in ways that change over time.