Page 152 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

destabilize the boundaries between continuity and discontinuity of
social, political, or economic conditions.Yet the media go on cre-
ating myths that are compatible with the desire for stability, includ-
ing the permanence of the political or economic control of the
dominant class.
Under these circumstances the gaze of the critical observer must
shift to the destabilized relations between communication and mass
communication, whose boundaries collapsed some time ago with
the rise of modern media, when the conditions of community were
replaced by the practice of consumerism, or when the milieu of
mass communication embraced the lifeworld of the individual. Most
recently, this milieu has extended into a virtual reality, where the
autonomy of communication through dialogue is further under-
mined by the desire for soliloquies in the confines of a virtual space.
A lack of authentic communication is the result of the art of
chatter, to use Martin Heidegger’s phrase, which is represented by
mass communication and reflects the deterioration of Dasein as a
condition of being with others. Indeed, existence is defined by an
ability to remain in communication not only with others, but also
with oneself as a source of genuine feeling for one’s environment.
The blurring of distinctions between communication and mass
communication not only redefines and confirms the role of media
as the other, but reduces the self to a representation of an anony-
mous and alienated existence in the grasp of mass communication.
Thus, the struggle over regaining access to communication is a
struggle for selfhood and for relations with others, freed from both
the isolation of the self and the embrace of organized mass
communication.
Furthermore, media reality as a preeminent and dynamic social
milieu raises questions about its relations to other (political and eco-
nomic) forms of domination – including relations between com-
mercial intent and political will and authorship and control of its
ideological substance – and reinforces inquiries about the political
economy of the means of mass communication. This is especially
true under the changing circumstances of a postmodern existence,
in which temporary contracts are supplanting permanent institutions
in the realm of professional, cultural, political, and international
affairs, according to Jean-François Lyotard.

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