Raymond Williams' Thoughts on Mass Communication

Raymond Williams is a famous British Marxist theoretician. When studying mass communication, he emphasizes that it is impossible to discuss communication without in the end coming to discuss power in the end. He looks at three types of control systems which affect the way the institutions of mass communication operate: the authoritarian, the paternal and the commercial. He also puts forth a fourth possibility, the democratic system. At the same time, he criticizes technological determinism, and emphasizes the social and political environment in which technology is developed.