Page 147 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

needs for expression beyond the anticipated response to media
practices.
When Robert Hutchins concludes that the civilization of the
dialogue is the only civilization worth having and the only one in
which the whole world can unite, he suggests a strategy of com-
munication which is human and acknowledges the unending
significance of individuality. His approach also relegates mass com-
munication to a subordinate position in the realm of human prac-
tices. Dialogue is mutual and requires persistence in communication,
which is crucial for understanding the self and respecting differences
while finding common ground. And when Mikhail Bakhtin pro-
claims that to be means to communicate dialogically, he moves the
spirit of communication to the center of social existence. Thus, it
is the process of communicating with others that needs to be
addressed, particularly in efforts to help overcome the modern
experience of separateness, which is a source of anxiety, misunder-
standing, and ultimately of defeat.
Dialogue also assumes the presence of differences, but the process
of mass communication typically encourages conformity, particularly
in its information function, eliminates differences of taste or
opinion, often in the name of equality or democracy, and reinforces
institutional desires for social control. On the other hand, mass com-
munication, in the form of creative and philosophical practices, is
at its best, when it inspires dialogical relationships that retain and
strengthen individual identities and reject conformity as a sign of
equality. Dialogue becomes an expression of sociability and, there-
fore, helps restore the power of communication in the struggle for
survival in a conformist society; it also is a reminder of the impor-
tance of what George Herbert Mead has called the generalized
other in the development of the self.
The process of mass communication teaches, above all, that in-
dividuation is easily reduced to a working commercial or political
ideology rather than acknowledged as a presupposition for an
emerging dialogical existence. Indeed, dialogue is in decline as the
other has been replaced by the process of mass communication,
which rearticulates the idea of dialogue in terms of production and
consumption and annihilates the state of authentic being. Differently
expressed, mass communication relies on an ideological sanction of

135