Expanding the Search for Media Evidence of Institutional Anomie

• In Event: Identity, Media and Culture

Abstract

This paper explores the distribution of Economic, Educational, Family, and Political stories across Reader’s Digest Magazine covers during the past 60 decades. Messner and Rosenfeld’s Institutional Anomie theory asserts that the social influence of key institutions (Education, Family, and Politics) is eroding while the American Dream continues to bolster the importance of Economy. As a means of testing this shift in institutional relevance this paper expands on prior data collected from Time magazine covers by examining a similar sample of Reader’s Digest Magazine cover stories between 1950 and 2010 to determine if the economy is indeed the central focus and whether or not other institutions are marginalized by comparison.

Author

• Bryan K. Robinson, University of Mount Union