John Thompson

John Brookshire Thompson is a British sociologist. He is a sociology professor at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College.

Education Thompson gained his first degree in philosophy, sociology and social anthropology at Keele University in 1975. His PhD was from the University of Cambridge, obtained in 1979.

Work Thompson has studied the influence of the media in the formation of modern societies, a subject on which he is one of the few social theorists to focus. One of the key themes of his work is the role of the media in the transformation of space and time in social life, and the creation of new forms of action and interaction beyond temporal and spatial frameworks. Influenced strongly by hermeneutics, he studies communication and its uses, and links it closely with social context. Other key concepts are the transformation of visibility, the media and tradition, and identity and the symbolic project.

His book Ideology and Modern Culture is a study of what the theory of ideology entails in modern society. William Outhwaite of the University of Sussex dubs it "a pathbreaking work which will undoubtedly become one of the fundamental texts in the theory of ideology." Thompson's essay "The New Visibility" is employed as the basis for the study of media at Rhodes University, while his tome Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age has been described by Amy Binder of Clemson University as "excellent". His work stands out for its recognition of the importance of the nature and development of mass communication.

Questioning 'mass communication' and its meaning In Thompson's The Media and Modernity, he breaks down the term mass communication and questions whether it is applicable to today's current media environment. He firstly highlights the use of the word 'mass' and claims that most of the media today are not produced for the masses, rather they are produced for niche markets. "The term 'mass' is especially misleading. It conjures up the image of a vast audience comprising many thousands, even millions of individuals. This may be an accurate image in the case of some media products, such as the most popular modern-day newspapers, films and television programmes; but it is hardly an accurate representation of the circumstance of most media products, past or present."(Thompson, 1995, p13) He also criticises use of the word 'mass' in how it categorises audiences into "undifferentiated individuals"(Thompson, 1995, p13).

Thompson, in The Media and Modernity offers five key characteristics to explain the term mass communication. Thompson's first characteristic is the technical and institutional means of production and diffusion, meaning that the "development of mass communication is inseparable from the development of the media industries". The fourth characteristic highlighted by Thompson is that mass communication extends the availability of symbolic forms in space and time, this examines the different contexts in which the message is produced and received. Which leads into Thompson's fifth characteristic of mass communication, which involves the public circulation of symbolic forms, this characteristic examines the availability and access of media forms to a plurality of media recipients and the blurring of the private and public domains.

Critical hermeneutics Thompson's theoretical approach "seeks to sketch the contours of a critical and rationally justified theory for the interpretation of action". He called his approach to sociological theory "critical hermeneutics ." Thompson is a Director of Polity Press.