John Thompson (sociologist)

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

Thompson gained his first degree in philosophy, sociology and social anthropology at Keele University in 1975.

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.

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).

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