Page 21 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

and imagination; the latter was initially conceived as an intermedi-
ary between perception and thought. Images became representations
of reality and, once passed through the mind, passed for reality.The
use of images soon became popular among politicians and others,
and not only for pedagogical reasons. In comprehending images one
“adheres to” what they represent, including the intent with which
they have been fashioned, according to Christian Jouhaud. This
process made the image a powerful tool of persuasion, recognized
long before its modern versions – in the form of photography, film,
and television – rekindled the debate.
The beginning of the eighteenth century marked a turn to the
modern phase of mass communication. It proceeded from an already
sophisticated understanding of the indispensable presence of news-
papers in politics and in an “orderly” world, according to Kaspar
Stieler’s remarkable observations in 1695. His comments about the
benefits of news are based on an expectation of truthful reporting
and its potential for enlightenment. His analysis also reflects
a sophisticated approach to what was then a revolutionary media
technology only a few years after the introduction of the printing
press in central Europe. There was an anticipated purpose to the
organization and operation of the press that foreshadows much
later hopes for a democratic model of mass communication. Since
then, an increasingly literate public has become more and more
reliant on the process of mass communication – that is, on the pro-
duction and dissemination of knowledge (through books and pam-
phlets) and information (or news) by journalists with expertise in
manufacturing items of interest for the enlightenment of a general
public.
Of course, the concept of mass communication took a more
clearly defined shape during subsequent centuries: which experi-
enced an improvement in communication technologies until the
end of the nineteenth century, when new media systems entered
the public arena to serve the specific needs of an industrialized,
urban society. McLuhan’s observation that every medium shapes and
controls the conditions of human association and action confirms a
technological determinism that yields fashionably narrow explana-
tions at the expense of a much broader cultural perspective on the
relations of technology and society, however.

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