The Perception of Media in the Modern Society - Essay Example

? Media In the modern world media penetrated all the spheres. The new media has gained popularity and is successfully used by the politicians. Left as well as Right use it for their purposes. It became important to take into account the necessity in alternative media and in finding out the benefits of its usage. The alternative of mass media is the Internet. The work of Habermas “Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” (1989) emphasized the importance of people’s ability to influence the existing media or creating alternative methods. It is understandable that politics and media are the spheres, which are able to interconnect with each other and thus depend on each other. In the article “New media, counter publicity and the public sphere” the authors provide the overview of the work of Habermas and his main ideas. In the works of Habermas, where he depicts the ups and downs of the public sphere, the special attention is paid to the special place of the public that criticizes media. He noticed that because of some changes, which happened due to the development of mass media, the public sphere had to change as well. It is unacceptable to allow media to create certain pattern of the vision that is imposed on the society. Moreover, the horizontal communication was changed to the vertical one. Dawney and Fenton state that “in other words, horizontal communication between citizens is increasingly replaced by vertical communication between mass media, greatly influenced by both the state and capital, and consumers. The space for participatory communication is severely constricted” (Dawney and Fenton 2003:185). Habermas would like to preserve the rational essence from becoming the ideological one. The public sphere is the unique field for citizens to communicate equally and it is the direct way to form the democratic society. Habermas presented his own vision of the public sphere of the 20th century. He attacks bourgeois public field and separates the proletarian field. The author notices that proletarian public field is the shadow of the bourgeois one. Moreover, it exists as a branch of the main dominated culture. In this context it should be noticed that alternative public field can influence and in some way change the sphere that dominate (Therborn 1996). In the modern society media actively communicates with people. We can see that non-mass media has been developing in different forms. Habermas raises important issue in his work trying to find the answer to the question, whether the independent public fields are able to create a debate with the help of mass media. He also notices that such independent public fields influence the mass media in general, but only in special conditions. According to Dawney and Fenton, “Habermas recognizes not only the existence of alternative public spheres but also their capacity for challenging domination. While he maintains that his analysis of the public sphere infrastructure still pertains to a mass media largely subordinate to the interests of capital on the one hand, and the state on the other, he has in the meantime revised his pessimistic opinion of the public.”(Dawney and Fenton 2003:187) It has become clear that we are going through the crisis and need to find the solution. It was mentioned above that Internet provides a great variety of opportunities making necessary information accessible (Sunstein, 2001). World web makes its possible to find any information very quickly and represents a perfect platform for advertising. It represents a perfect tool for communication and information exchange. However, despite all the pluses, the word web has it minuses Pluralism is one of them. It is essential to remember that Internet can be used in different purposes and it can be used by everybody. The fact that modern society is created by the mass media and not vice versa is the most dangerous (Verstraeten, 1995). It should be said that the political public fields arising as a part of the independent public fields can cause the fragmentations in the society. The author defines two concepts: civil society and public sphere. It is important to understand the meaning of each concept and try to understand the difference between them. In general, the public society is a room for independent organizations that can operate both in the state and among citizens. In this field many questions for discussions arise. Every democratic society should have the field where the citizens and the state can communicate. Dawney and Fenton point out: “civil society and public sphere are not interchangeable concepts. Economic conditions affect the public sphere and help to shape civil society, but they are not synonymous. When the terms ‘civil society’ and ‘public sphere’ are taken up for theoretical use it is crucial to keep them distinct and analyse the relationship between social institutions and discourse. Collapsing one into the other not only makes both vague, it blocks attention to certain issues” (Dawney and Fenton 2003:189). Speaking about the public sphere as a concept, it is essential to mention that it tries to give an explanations to the foundations of the democracy from the social side. The understanding of the difference between these similar concepts will allow to find anti-democratic social organizations in the counter-public sphere and it is clear that they can be found (Fraser, 1992). In the civil society we can see the advocacy groups, which can be noticed in different levels such as international, local etc. Such groups have different forms and grade of transparency (Gibson, 2000). Here the next definition of civil society appears and it is simplified to the pluralism that can stop the appearance of monopoly in different aspects. The great variety of the public organization allows to influence the both political and social spheres in different way. Dawney and Fenton argue: “can autonomous public spheres bring conflicts from the periphery to the centre of public life via the mass media in order to generate critical debate amongst a wider public? Here, Habermas has moved away considerably from structural transformation work and wishes to maintain that autonomous public spheres can acquire influence in the mass media public sphere under certain circumstances.” (Dawney and Fenton 2003:188) Family relations, language, homogeneity etc are the parts of the community. The whole society can be judged by the language and it can serve as a crucial force in the aspect of the transformative politics (Gellner, 1996). The success of using the language depends on rhetoric. As we can see, the alternative media has the both pluses and minuses (Seligman 1997). Nevertheless, the alternative media should be taken seriously as it is the powerful tool in the civil society. Despite that fact that there are many websites, which belong to the radical organizations, create the closed societies and are the methods of communication, the internet also provides people with the perfect opportunity to use it for their benefits. Dawney and Fenton state: “we might argue, following Habermas, that a political public sphere is successful when it provides for a discourse about shared societal concerns that is both rational–critical and influential. When the ethical framework of a political public sphere is undermined or deliberately overturned it is likely that a counter-public sphere will cease to be rational and/or critical and become anti-democratic.” (Dawney and Fenton 2003:191). As an example it is essential to take the website McSpotligh. It appeared in the 1996 with the purpose of supporting two activists, which were lampooned by McDonalds. The history shows that this website has gained more than 1 million hits every month. The number of hits means that the alternative media has constantly grown and gained the success among users. Thus, the possibility of creating web sites, which are extreme-oriented, is high. And this practice is not innovative. By means of the internet many radical groups gather and plan their actions, organize propaganda and call for doings. The Constitutional Court has even made some attempts to close or minimize the websites, the content of which is too radical. Thus, the problem of ethic and democratic culture is very relevant (Walch, 1999). The conclusion can be made that media plays significant role in the life of the state, society and every citizen. Nowadays politicians widely use it as a powerful tool for communication with the citizens. This tool is proved to be very helpful in providing opportunities for people to take part in the political life of the state. Every democratic state should base it laws on the people’s preferences and priorities to preserve democracy. The process of lawmaking should be closely connected with the process of communication with people to avoid misunderstandings (Garnham,1992). Internet provides much opportunities and a perfect platform for the communication of people and the government. Thus, more attention should be paid to the alternative sources, alternative media in order to provide people with the opportunities to communicate with the government. Certainly, we are not talking about extremes but in general alternative media is a chance to form the attitude and view of the world. The main thing is not to allow media to create the vision or the pattern of thinking for people. References Dawney J and Fenton N 2003, New media, counter publicity and the public sphere. SAGE Publications Fraser, N 1992, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere – a Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, pp. 109–41. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Garnham, N 1992, ‘The Media and the Public Sphere’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, pp. 359–76. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gellner, E 1996, ‘Return of a Native’, Political Quarterly 67(1): 4–13. Gibson, R. and Ward S 2000, Reinvigorating Democracy? British Politics and the Internet. Aldershot: Ashgate. Seligman, A 1997, The Problem of Trust. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sunstein, C 2001, republic.com. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Therborn, G 1996, ‘European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies 1945–2000’, British Journal of Sociology 4: 738–9. Verstraeten, H 1995, ‘The Media and the Transformation of the Public Sphere’, paper presented to the European Sociological Association, Budapest Hungary, August/ September. Walch, J 1999, In the Net: An Internet Guide for Activists. London: Zed Books. Read More