SOCIETY, is understood in this context from Pettman’s (1979:17) perspective. That is, as referring to “a collection of people in some sense autonomous and internally organised with a place and history of their own, a common sense of their identity… and a shared style of life”, and recognised as a country. It refers to a national collectivity as opposed to ethnic groups or clans but may, occasionally, reflect the international community.
Every society has what its members regard as valuable; has its own  culture and traditions as symbols of identity. The idea of a society being an organised entity, suggests an hierarchical set up with distribution of functions. In other words, the concept of organisation as it relates to society, goes beyond its generic meaning and reflects the idea of a government. A government is seen as an expert in guiding the affairs of society toward the common goal — the good life. A government is a form of arrangement whereby people or groups are assigned specific responsibilities to ensure an orderly society. It is to be found in every historical epoch — in primitive and modern societies.
Modern societies need a government that is made up of the executive, the bureaucracy, the parliamentary assemblies, the military and police, the judiciary, and the mass media to carry out definite functions for the good of society. These units are identified as structures. As it becomes necessary, government creates other structures for the survival of society. This arrangement is what a social theory, known as functionalism seeks to explain. It personifies society as an organism. Just as an organism lives by the functions of its parts, functionalism posits society as a system of interdependent parts with most parts of the system serving functions which enable the system to survive.
A classic of this idea is offered in the relationship between the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the mass media, and the political parties in a liberal democracy. Services exchanged by these structures range from aggregation of interests articulated by the electorate, communication, rule making, rule application, to rule adjudication, all aimed at the common good.
It is important to identify other structures upon which society, also, is said to depend. These include institutions and organisations such as the family, the church, public corporations, the university, and so on. Through their activities, functionalism maintains, they contribute to the life of society as a whole and continuity is preserved. Therefore, every society is characterised by necessary functions that keep it in existence, namely, political organisation, economic activities, social control, education, and communication. Political organisation puts a government in place for the overall welfare and security of society; economic activities ensure the production and distribution of necessary goods and services for the health of society; social control ensures acceptable human conduct or behaviour through appropriate sanctions; while education is responsible for the production and preservation of knowledge — whether scientific, cultural, religious, technological, political, economic — and communication helps in the transmission and dissemination of information.
Of all these structures, communication is the greatest. None of the other structures can function without communication. They all depend on communication. So, it can be said that communication is to society, what a skeleton is to human body. After all, Williams (1976: 10) had earlier stated that “society is a form of communication through which experience is described, shared, modified, and perceived.”
The Mission of Communication
This presentation on communication and society, rests on the notion that all institutions in society, beliefs and morals are interrelated, and their coexistence with each other, provides the bond that keeps society together. But there is a problem of boundary delineation and maintenance in the allocation of functions to the different structures or institutions in society. This has always led to slags in performance, negligence or tension.
Society has certain needs it must impress on citizens from youth. A child learns from society the methods which most satisfy his needs and, undergoes a process of teaching in order to acquire the necessary skills. Besides, society has a responsibility of conditioning him to act in conformity with its precepts and making him to undergo a process of training in order to become socialised.
The speed with which socialisation occurs and the success of the conditioning process depends on two variables. First, the amount of conditioning which society in the form of parents, communication, teachers, and so on, injects on the individual. Second, the conditionality of the individual. That is, the speed with which he forms the conditioned responses required. Usually, middleclass children face more prolonged and intensive conditioning process because of their duration of formal education, and are likely to exhibit a higher degree of socialisation.
The question then is, how has communication fared in all these? By communication, it is meant “the institutions and forms in which ideas, information, and attitudes are transmitted and received” (Williams, 1976:9). Communication activity is one with a very high moral content and the structures affect man’s life, therefore, both content and structures must be judged on the question as to whether they affect people’s lives for the better or for worse. In this context, communication structures include all those institutions and technologies which serve as facilities for public and political communications.
Over the years, there had been popular demands for freedom of the Press for some reasons. Such reasons included the belief that the Press, incorporating all the mass media, would enhance the free flow of information in society, promote peace, freedom, wealth and truth, and end conflicts by the advance of reason, accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. This serves as the mission of communication in society. When broadcasting started in Britain, attention was considerably given to public interest. It started with a sense of social responsibility and a duty was imposed on the communicator to beware of the nature of the audience. This seems to be what many liberal societies expect of their communication structures. Liberalism is a term used to explain a government’s response to popular demands. A liberal government is expected to respond in proportion to the increase in the power of public opinion.
The mission of the communication enterprise should be what Horace Greeley, an editor of the New York Tribune is quoted to have advocated in 1841. According to Johnson (1997:104), this editor declared that his paper would not merely record congregational, domestic and foreign news but also whatever shall appear calculated to promote morality, maintain social order, extend the blessings of education, or in any way subserve the great cause of human progress in ultimate virtue, liberty and happiness.
Again, Noah Webster is said to have thought of the media as schools, and advocated that like schools, they should be considered as the auxiliaries of government and placed upon a respectable footing. They should be heralds of truth, the protectors of peace and good order (Johnson, 1997: 102).
In telling the truth, however, Johnson cautions that journalists must always be totting up moral balances, asking themselves: “What will legitimately inform, and what will needlessly inflame? What will warn — and what will corrupt?” (P.104). He sees the media in the last instance, as “Potentially, a great secular church, a system of evangelism for dispersing the darkness of ignorance, expelling error and establishing truth” (P.102). This is a great responsibility for the media in all ages.
Relationships
The field of communication is an open system. Communication practitioners interact with their internal environment, namely: their colleagues, management, working conditions, and so on. Also, they interact with their external environment and respond to it. These are important influences on the production of communication .Competitions or rivalry among colleagues or their attempts to protect one another’s interest can alter the course of communication. So can the nature of what they get out of the communication project as benefits, and the facilities available for the work. But, the greatest internal influence, is management. It recruits staff, pays, and provides the facilities. To the management, communication is business and “the mission of business is the production and distribution of goods and services” (Koontz, O’Donnell & Weihrich, 1980:104).