Page 65 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

correct assessments or beliefs. In the long run, such practices may
well breed political detachment, if not indifference, among audiences
with civic ambitions but limited political power.
Mass communication in its present form matured and expanded
after the end of World War II and with the beginning of the Cold
War in the 1950s, when foreign markets were secured, often for
political reasons, but also for an expanding economy.Aside from the
export of media technologies – which created other dependencies
and confirmed the commonality of a scientific language – the
exportable content of mass communication ranged from informa-
tion to cultural products and practices.These included eating habits
(soft drinks and hamburgers), lifestyles (blue jeans and chewing
gum), and music ( jazz and rock ’n’ roll), which were most fre-
quently introduced with the export of Hollywood movies and, later,
television series, or through the global distribution techniques of
American record companies.
For instance, after the end of World War II, Americans and
Russians provided scores of movies for the entertainment of a de-
feated Germany to promote capitalism and socialism, respectively.
Both sides had quickly realized that with mass communication tech-
nologies one could reach almost anybody and create almost any illu-
sion to respond effectively to those who needed to dream of a better
life (in suburbia or on a collective farm). A generation later, the
spread of American movies and television dramas ensures a constant
presence of the American way of life around the world.
With it has spread a free-market ideology – throughout western
Europe and much of the postcolonial world – that inaugurated (or
duplicated) the model of legally protected private ownership of the
means of communication and opened new markets for the distrib-
ution of cultural goods. Mass communication packages the values
and visions of an American or Western lifestyle for unimpeded dis-
tribution under the mandate of a “free flow of information” to eco-
nomically weak nations. Executed in the spirit of friendship or good
will, it amounts to thinly disguised economic expansion. And it
works.
For instance, the idea of a “free flow of information” has been
a political objective – supported by UNESCO – that eases
unrestricted trade, including the flow of cultural goods through

53