Page 153 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

Consequently one must ask, what are the expectations for mass
communication to advance democratization and for how long?
What is the investment of economic capital in support of a politics
of equality and justice through cultural practices in a rapidly chang-
ing world and in an ideological environment with crumbling
borders? That is, what must be done, when the lines between demo-
cratic capitalism and fascism are obscured, and their goals become
indistinguishable, when mass communication aestheticizes politics by
creating myths of community and nation, and of harmony and the
stability of social values?
The dominant discourse of mass communication furnishes the
cultural capital for negotiating the construction of reality among
individuals or between individuals and institutions. These (rhetori-
cal) acts of individual or collective agency occur within the bound-
aries of mass communication, however, from where new instruments
of domination – in the form of persuasion and suppression –
emerge, to replace traditional (political or social) authorities of legit-
imation. As a result, words and images instead of police control
society, popular media instead of prisons confine individuals, and
media practices instead of personal communication determine the
nature of self and others; that is, hitherto fixed institutions of author-
ity are effectively replaced by movable (or easily adaptable) instru-
ments of control.
The idea of mass communication has come a long way in the
company of power relations surrounded by an enduring pursuit of
knowledge and hopes of liberation. Still, as a constituent element of
the historical process of public communication, including various
forms of public persuasion – such as propaganda, advertising, public
relations, and journalism – mass communication continues to rep-
resent the economic and political authority of the dominant order,
from where it creates the realities of self and society and dispenses
its myths for the masses as prescribed by the routines of the
spectacle.

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