Standardizing Information Society?: A Comparative Study of Commercial Culture
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概要
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This paper has two objectives: to outline a theory of standardization in information society and to conduct an empirical test of it. The theory centers on convergence and divergence of specifiable sociocultural elements. The test is based on a common information medium—television commercials—in two post-industrial societies: Japan and the United States. From a pool of over 20,000 CMs, 3059 ads were theoretically sampled (1927 in Japan and 1132 in America). Content analysis revealed that almost one-fourth of all American ads possessed some standardization content. Japanese CMs contained less, yet, standardization was well represented. Overwhelmingly, convergence outdistanced divergence in both countries. Eight key findings have surfaced, which merit further investigation. They are: (1) at the level of society the two nations appeared headed toward greater convergence; (2) at the level of culture diversity is most prominent; (3) At least four types of information penetration were discerned: uni-directional flow, bi-directional third party flow, third party uni-directional flow, and specialized flow; (4) Convergence can be measured in terms of importation and exportation of six information elements: corporation, product, human resources, ideology, lifestyles, and situations; (5) divergence can be measured in terms of five information elements: values, practices, forms of social organization, social problems and common objects; (6) America was found to be non-economic inport-insular (or information inport conservative) and Japan was non-economic import-expansive (or information import liberal); (7) America and Japan were both non-economic, export expansive, but only vis-a-vis specific information elements; (8) Time-space distanciation (or feedback) reveals the relative strength of reproduction of or resistence to information in society and, therefore, serves as an important indicator of the direction of standardization.
- 東北大学の論文