Page 148 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

individual autonomy in the process of exploiting individuality to
serve mass culture, according to Leo Lowenthal.
Dialogue is not merely compliance or agreement, but also a
confrontation of differences and an expansion of knowledge. Mass
communication in its traditional form of press or broadcasting, on
the other hand, rarely challenges the intellectual limits of its audi-
ences, but promotes ease and efficiency of comprehension. If lan-
guage is a dimension of life – or, following Ludwig Wittgenstein, if
the limits of language are the limits of the world – then life seems
to be a simple and straightforward matter, according to the perfor-
mances of mass communication. There is no desire on the part of
the media to improve words or images, or to teach – and therefore
introduce the complexities of life – by reconceptualizing the
media as educational institutions in society. On the contrary, Neil
Stephenson’s caustic comment in Snow Crash that eventually Amer-
icans will excel in only four practices, music, film, software, and fast
home delivery of pizza, also seems to foreshadow a shift in mass
communication that is characterized by a loss of dialogue and an
absence of ordinary language.This neglect, given the low quality of
formal education, may have disastrous consequences for the future
of a society in which an undereducated population is not only
unable to articulate its concerns, but is also highly susceptible to
mass persuasion – and therefore to control.
Since mass communication continues to accommodate special
interests, which prevail with the spread of more nonessential, frag-
mented, and simplified information rather than with relevant expla-
nations for their respective audiences, the task of clarification has
fallen to civic groups, frequently operating outside the commitment
of a media industry to business and politics.Yet, it remains difficult
for individual or collective ideas to reach the public sphere when
that sphere is described as a market and controlled by media orga-
nizations. The latter engage in defining the parameters of informa-
tion – as well as the world of fiction – with absolute certainty and
render the circulation of their factual or fictional materials effective.
The news item or the novel, the film or the song, are the work
of intellectual or creative activities that are coopted and commod-
ified to become subject to ideologically sensitive, commercial spe-

136