Page 127 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

competing constructions of reality with the presence of a variety of
sources, including the internet. The social and political reality,
however, is that dominant meanings are determined by the discur-
sive practices of a handful of pervasive, and therefore politically
powerful, media channels. Their representations of the world coin-
cide frequently with dominant domestic and foreign policies and
reflect (or reinforce) the contiguousness of commercial and politi-
cal interests.

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The spatio-temporal framework that characterizes human existence
is also reflected in the workings of mass communication, where it
is a structural element not only of the process, but also of the dis-
course that yields the meanings of objects or events. It is charac-
terized by the dimensions of “before and after” (between two events,
for instance) and of “past–present–future” (as a historical perspec-
tive); both imply succession and change.The latter concept leads to
the idea of motion and therefore to notions of time and space; it
is embraced by communication – with the flow of words, the move-
ment of the eyes across the page – and the practices of mass com-
munication – with the linear design of books or the more complex
visual narratives of film or television.
The process of mass communication is also a reminder of the
time- and space-binding capacities of the media, and, more gener-
ally speaking, of the relationship between media and culture. Harold
Innis considers the political organization of (ancient) empires, for
instance, from the standpoint of time and space as inherent quali-
ties of a variety of media and their contribution to the survival of
a culture, and he suggests the importance of balance between space-
and time-binding media in particular. Equally important, however,
is the time-binding capacity of the individual, that is, the appropri-
ation of past experiences, which includes the ability to condense
history – and reality, in general – into a pattern of verbal or visual
symbols with cultural implications for the appropriation, into the
routines of daily existence, of space and time, which are codeter-
mined by the process of mass communication.

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