4

Messages and meanings

JANET WOOLLACOTT

Ideology is the final connotation of the totality of connotations of the sign or the context of signs. (Umberto Eco, 1971, p. 83)

Interest in and discussion of the mass media has come from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary sources. Within these wide-ranging and sometimes contradictory approaches, the analysis of media messages has been seen as of varying importance. American concern with mass communications has tended to focus on a model of communication which stressed the relationships between the individuals involved. In this tradition the communication process was conceived of as a relationship between a sender of messages on the one hand and a receiver of messages on the other. The mass communication ...

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