Page 41 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

quered new social strata in European society, and new markets,
when the “barbarians” could read and enter the realm of the
privileged. The presence of a shared language – and the ability to
read and understand, with an increased use of the vernacular – not
only supplied a basis for establishing relations among people or
transmitting information in the interest of mass enlightenment, but
also provided opportunities for manipulation and the enforcement
of social control.
Thus, mass communication in its historical role advanced the
hope for inclusion – and certainly of participation – in the
ideational life of society. It also raised expectations of political lib-
eration from the authority of those in control of the printed word.
In fact, the printed word had been the foundation of an authori-
tarian rule of church and state as it delivered power over ignorance
and became the key to the contentment of social, cultural, and polit-
ical elites in their role of knowledge brokers. Literacy effectively
splits and controls societies, when priests and bureaucrats share in
the articulation of reality through word and print and compellingly
define and trade social knowledge.
But mass communication, however welcome as a means of
spreading the authoritarian ideologies of church and state, also
expanded the cause of literacy. On its course towards a vernacular
and cosmopolitan future, literacy destroyed the institutional hold on
knowledge and changed its relation to class.Accordingly, mass com-
munication offered mobility across class lines in the process of
sharing knowledge, and reinforced the natural curiosity of people
by providing insights into the social and political thoughts and prac-
tices of various elites.
There is a price to pay, however, for access to ideas when the
printed word turned into a new commodity. Consequently, texts
were efficiently manufactured and sold for a wide variety of pur-
poses – ranging from information or knowledge to organized dis-
traction or political manipulation – while they were protected like
property in their fictional or nonfictional combinations. The new
author, recently separated from the comforts of patronage or insti-
tutional affiliation, engaged in a new economic form of intellectual
work – although a free market for intellectual goods did not appear
until the eighteenth century (in England) or even later elsewhere.

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