TOWARD A CRITICAL SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF CARTOONS

Sociologists have tended to focus on the humor aspect of cartoons with little thought given to the nature of the cartoon as a media form with its own specific modes of production and consumption. Recent trends within critical media sociology have, however, pointed to the importance of understanding the communication process in terms of the social, economic and political conditions which inform both the encoding and decoding ends of the communication chain. The aim of this article is to develop a critical sociological framework for the analysis of cartoons which addresses both the nature of cultural production and the role that media plays in disseminating norms and values to a socially differentiated audience. It is suggested that sociologists interested in other forms of humor can modify this framework to analyze the specific nature of other genres such as television sitcoms and stand-up comedy. © 1995, Walter de Gruyter. All rights reserved.