Page 51 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

part of the cultural context, in which individuals participate,
involved with each other in the public affairs of their respective
localities. Such participation has been reinforced and promoted by
local media, typically the local newspaper (or, later, local radio),
which specializes in hometown events and in local people, with little
regard for the outside world. The weekly newspaper, a surviving
American institution – although now changing under markedly dif-
ferent economic conditions – has become the public forum for its
editor, as chronicler and speaker for the community, and its readers,
as participants in the weekly narratives about their world. The fact
that the local press has turned into a confessional form with com-
munal participation, according to McLuhan, adds to its popularity
as a source of human interest material.
Mass communication in early America – in its technical sense of
reaching large numbers of people – occurred under these circum-
stances as a form of communal conversation.When editors and jour-
nalists of the weekly press are joined by their readers, they interpret
a world they all understand, because their encounters are for the
most part immediate and collective. Readers have firsthand knowl-
edge of facts or truths, and their familiarity with the territory of
the journalistic narrative gives them expert standing not only in the
community, but also in the eyes of country editors. Likewise, nov-
elists, as chroniclers of people and events and participants in the life
of the community, reveal the secrets they know, raise moral ques-
tions, and predict the future within the boundaries of the culture.
All of them, readers and writers, are, in fact, expert participants in
the process of mass communication.
Through times of urbanization, alienation, and loss of identity, the
notion of community has maintained its symbolic power, as an
anxiety-ridden society recalled the value of tradition and authority
in its quest for moral certainty.The idealization of communal life –
focused on harmony, including harmony with nature, and informed
by a belief in order and perfection – included communication as
the process of achieving understanding and agreement regarding
issues of coexistence, mutual support, and survival vis-à-vis external
forces. In fact, John Winthrop, aboard the Arbell bound for New
England in 1630, identified these features of a communal existence
when he urged his fellow travelers that to delight in each other and

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