There is a scene in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker is nervous about entering a cave beneath a tree in the Dagobah jungle. He asks Master Yoda, “What’s in there?” To which Yoda replies, “Only what you take with you.” And so it is with mass communication. What we find with mass communication research depends in large part on the theory base we take with us and the questions the theories suggest we pose. It’s not so much that different approaches to research give us different answers, as it is that they take us to different questions. In this section we look at several of the theoretical approaches to mass communication and the types of questions they raise.
If you haven’t seen the scene I’m talking about, here it is. If you’re impatient, the significant part starts about a minute-and-a-half into the video: