Mass media images in popular music: An examination of media images in student music collections and student attitudes toward media performance

Article: Popular Music: Harbinger of Social Change? Symbolic interactionists Kenneth Burke 1 and Hugh Duncan 2 have stressed that social interaction is not a process, but a dramatic expression, an enactment of roles by individuals who seek to identify with each other in the search to create a social scheme. A community presents itself through art or popular culture, which in turn determines society. The master symbols through which the world is viewed (and in terms of which its citizens act) are created and manipulated through popular culture. Pitirim Sorokin 3 argued that changes in popular culture foreshadow changes in society. Since music is one aspect of popular culture it seems only reasonable to conclude that attitudes expressed musically may have emotionally strengthened and politically meaningful effects.