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TWO

THEORIES OF BROADCAST MEDIA

It is not possible to understand the central dynamics of network
communication, or why the second media age thesis has become an
orthodoxy, without understanding the nature of broadcast as a medium. In
fact, as we shall see, the two communicative forms can be argued to be, in
the contemporary period, mutually constitutive. That is, I argue, they are
mutually related in their practical reality and are also related therefore in
how we should understand them.
Understanding broadcast and network as distinct communicative
architectures also entails making some fundamental distinctions
about the kinds of communication effects which are internal to them.
The distinction between ‘transmission’ versus ‘ritual’ communication is
one which provides a useful way of classifying the different kinds of
perspectives on broadcast media which emerged in the twentieth
century. These perspectives correspond to qualitatively different kinds
of communicative processes which are evident in the mass media, and
which broadly correspond to content versus form, respectively. The
transmission view is by far the predominant one, and is only recently
being criticized from the point of view of its overstatement.
Instructively, the impetus of this rebuttal is not to be found in the large
1
body of critical writings but can be found in the rise of new kinds of
communicational realities which expose transmission views of broad-
cast as inadequate. The critical literature on ‘transmission’ views of
community has been led in recent decades by a number of French
theorists, exemplified by the work of Jacques Derrida, discussed in
detail in Chapter 5.
What this and the next chapter aim to do is to introduce the main per-
spectives on broadcast and network cultures of communication respec-
tively before going on to look at the way in which the perspectives on
broadcast need to be critically reassessed. This will mean that shortcom-
ings of instrumental perspectives will become apparent in light of an
understanding of network communication, but, in later chapters, we shall
also see how broadcast can be seen to carry very important forms of reci-
procity and community, contra the claims of many of the second media
age thinkers.