Page 52 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

to make each other’s conditions their own meant to be cognizant
of being part of a community.
His remarks reflect the centrality of the social group and its char-
acteristics and reiterate the importance of such notions as allegiance,
solidarity, and tradition, which have occupied the literature of many
ages, although he may not have anticipated that these values would
be reflected in the political rhetoric of the republic for the next
three centuries, or engage the imagination of writers, artists, and
social philosophers for many generations. Among them is Charles
Peirce, for whom the community becomes the vehicle of truth,
incompatible with the affirmation of the private self, and a suitable
environment for sharing ideas. Communication and making meaning
gain their significance in the context of addressing one’s thoughts
to the future thoughts of other individuals. Peirce suggested that, to
avoid negation, an individual as a conscious, intelligent being must
address the thoughts of a community of other thinkers. His argu-
ment implies an almost religious commitment to the community,
but it also suggests a connection to more contemporary conditions
of culture.
Similarly for Josiah Royce, democracy was a question of orga-
nizing a community which makes this possible, while George
Herbert Mead’s understanding of democracy rested on the values
of community. And then there is John Dewey, who insisted that the
idea of democracy was the idea of community life itself.These pro-
ponents and others, for whom the connection of communication
and community was the foundation of their social philosophies, also
emerged as critics of their social and economic environment. They
spoke up in the midst of celebrations of the spirit of individualism
in the growth of industrial capitalism.
With the expansion of the United States, in particular, and the
founding of hundreds of villages and small towns across the conti-
nent, began a struggle between those traditional values of commu-
nity and the challenges to the ideal of a separate or distinct existence
amidst social and economic change in rural America. A tidal wave
of urbanization and industrialization hit rural America between
1865 and 1917, with better road systems, the automobile, mail-order
houses, rural free delivery, telegraph, and telephone, but also with
metropolitan newspapers, magazines, and books.The privilege of the

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