Page 13 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

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Mass Communication and the

Promise of Democracy

Mass communication is a primary force in the determination
of society, while the principle of mass production and consump-
tion remains an essential and prevailing influence on its deploy-
ment. Mass communication defines democracy and helps mold
the social character of the modern individual as a predictable, if
not anticipated, participant in the discourse of a capitalist society.
Institutions of mass communication – since their earliest incarna-
tion in Western civilization – are the defining channels of the cul-
tural, political, and economic discourse of society.Their articulations
shape the image of other social institutions and give them meaning;
they also help construct ways of seeing individuals as masses. Indeed,
contemporary society is unthinkable without the overwhelming
presence of the media, while the never-ending process of mass com-
munication generates a working reality that defines relations among
people and events. Both mass communication as a socially deter-
minant and politically significant process of meaning-making and its
increasingly powerful institutional presence in society constitute a
major challenge to understanding democracy in terms of individual
participation in the process of communication. Therefore, serious
understanding of the significance of mass communication in con-
temporary circumstances must begin with a critical examination of
its social, political, or economic foundations and the cultural con-
struction of its place in society with the goal of accommodating a
search for a more inclusive (or more democratic) social order. After