Effects of Mass Media on Mass Culture - Coursework Example

For postmodernists, the debate on whether the mass media has created a mass culture is no longer tenable. Evaluate this claim. Mass Media and Mass Culture Our world since its origination has been a ‘hotbed’ of continuous activity. Continuous activity in the sense, people all over the world has been indulging in various physical and mental activities to achieve advancement. Importantly, these activities have been carried out in an organized form under different structures. That is, humans have organized or segregated into different structures like countries, communities, cultures etc, and carried on with their activities. Among these different structures, the activities of people belonging to specific cultures are unique because they practice certain activities, which are distinct in a defined geographical area. However, in this globalised world, these geographical lines have blurred due to the far reaching media. That is, omnipresent media reaches various territories cutting across geographical lines and covers the activities of specific cultures and broadcasts or reports in a certain way, so that culture becomes a mass culture. In today’s age of technology and information, media influences every aspect of human life. The thinking and the attitude of the people towards a particular issue is shaped by the media or shaped by how the media shows or broadcasts or reports. The manner in which cultures are represented in media has a major impact on the way people look and imbue that culture. The mainstream mass media in the form of television, movies, newspapers, internet, etc has the ability to dominate the airwaves as well as the ‘mind waves’ of the spectators or audience, ‘injecting’ their view as our view. This form of injecting their view as our view mainly leads to the creation of mass culture. From earlier centuries, it is a common knowledge that for a nation to reach the top echelons, its armed forces has to be strong. But, now along with the armed power or “hard power”, the concept of “Soft Power” or mass media is turning out to be one of the vital factors for a nation’s development and importantly for the development of mass culture. With media entering majority of the homes and thereby minds of majority of the world population, it is used by nations, organizations and many other entities to optimally tune the people’s mind, making many of them exhibit specific behaviours, thereby leading to the formation of a mass culture. Thus, mass media is playing a major and influencing role in the creation of mass culture and this notion has found favour among majority of the Postmodernist thinkers. Arguments of Famous Post moderns theorists Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist and a leading postmodernist thinker, was well known for his media related theory of “hyperreality” and “Simulation”. According to Baudrillard, because of hyperreality created by the media, people are not able to tell what is reality? what is fiction or what is created? It is a “theory that modern man can no longer tell what reality is because he has become lost in a world of "simulacra", images and signs created and presented as "real" by the mass media” (telegraph.co.uk, 2007). Baudrillard further argues that mass media has taken the role of God and thereby shows ‘its favourable images’ and controls the minds of the people, even modifying their culture. He denotes the mass media in USA as the one which is creating hyperreality and thus making the American people as well as the world people believe in its stimulated images as the real one. “…his contention being that if we live in a Disneyesque world in which our understanding is shaped by media-driven signs, and the tools of historical intelligibility have disappeared, how can we tell what is real.” (telegraph.co.uk, 2007). Baudrillard particularly focuses on the 1991 Gulf War arguing that with neither country claiming victory and with no major political changes in Iraq, the war was largely ‘staged’ by US media companies particularly CNN. Thus, Baudrillards view mass media has the creator of “hyperreality” and “simulation”, which shapes the people’s mind and thereby their living styles and culture based on non-real, made up images, videos and news content. Zygmunt Bauman Adorno, Polish sociologist, came up with many post-modernistic thoughts on how globalization has expanded the role of mass media in shaping human thought processes as well as their culture. Globalization has impacted many countries and has enabled businesses to make an entry into various countries. Along with conventional businesses, foreign media has also entered or entering into other countries, thereby shaping the views of the people in those countries with their created images. So, according to Bauman, “Whatever we do or refrain from doing affects the lives of people who live in places well never visit.” (Bauman qtd by Bentley and Jones, 2001, p.1).Bauman has also stated how development of technology in the form of video content has started having a great impact on the minds of the viewers all over the world. “…hearing about human misery is, however, much less potent in arousing compassion than the misery we see: the pictures, the spectacles of human suffering.” (Bauman qtd by Bentley and Jones, 2001, p.1). Although, the viewers may be thousands of miles away from sufferings and could not take any direct actions to stop that human suffering, they could do something in their sphere that too using media forms like writing in internet forums, sending emails to the concerned countries’ official machineries, etc. This way, the ubiquitous media makes true impact on the way we act and think, leading to changes in mass culture. Marxist critical theory related to media had its origins in Europe in 1960’s, when neo-Marxist approaches or thoughts were common amongst media theorists. The basic platform on which this theory was built was that mass media mainly tends to further the already existing views of their developers, promoters, supporters, who might be in the form of nation, private companies, etc. “Marxist theorists tend to emphasize the role of the mass media in the reproduction of the status quo, in contrast to liberal pluralists who emphasize the role of the media in promoting freedom of speech.” (Chandler, 2000, p.1). As a further extension, Marxist theorists on the basis of their post-modernistic thoughts state that mass media mainly and simply disseminate the opinions, ideas and world views of the ruling class, without giving opportunities for the alternative classes. In Marxist media analysis, media institutions are regarded as being locked into the power structure, and consequently as acting largely in tandem with the dominant institutions in society. (Curran et al., 1982, p.16). This perspective is visible from the time the media made its entry and is continuing even now, with many Western media outlets slotted under this category. That is, Western media outlets like CNN, Hollywood movies, etc, etc showcase only the views and lives of their people, and importantly impose those views and lives on world people, as a form of mass culture. Hegemony theory or Cultural Hegemony theory, the philosophical and sociological concept, was developed by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci based on his reading of the dominative Mussolini rule before the Second World War. His interpretation was that a diverse society practising mass culture can be ruled or dominated by one of its social classes and people from all classes will be made to support that arrangement. Likewise, in the mass media, hegemony refers to the ways in which the media encourage people to consent to the status quo power structures. That is, according to Gramsci, media mainly ‘teaches’ people (or broadcasts content which tunes or teaches the people) to carry out things as part of their everyday routine, which directly supports the power structures. Below is one of the examples of how media ‘pushes’ the people to support the power structure, thereby having an impact in the reorientation of their culture. A news report featuring the views of the people strongly supporting a controversial foreign policy decision (although it might have featured only the views of supporters, avoiding even a single view of the opposer) can be said to hegemonically support the government. (Rockler-Gladen, 2008) The Frankfurt School and its associated concepts refer to a school of neo-Marxist ideas in the tradition of critical theory, which got originated in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. That is, in that University, group of German-American theorists came up with powerful thoughts or theories about the changes that were happening in the Western capitalist societies including the changes in the media’s role and its functioning. Technological and dominant media and the resultant mass culture habituated individuals to conform to the dominant patterns of thought and behavior, and thus provided powerful instruments of social control and domination. (Kellner). This concept got an American perspective, when members of the Frankfurt school, while in exile in America, understood that American “popular culture” had a lot of ideological basis and mainly promoted the interests of American capitalism. Controlled by giant corporations, the media industry including the TV and the films mass-produced products that generated a highly commercial system of culture which in turn sold the values, life-styles, and institutions of "the American way of life” to the entire world, thereby promoting American culture as the mass culture of the world. (Kellner). Effect mass media have on contemporary culture and how it operated to stop the proletariat from revolting against their dominated positions The physical separateness between the countries and culture has become a thing of past, with entire world and the various cultures turning into a homogeneous entity, with industrialisation, globalization and its by-product media playing the role of the integrator as well as the developer of mass culture. Mass Culture Theory claims that society has been transformed by industrialisation - with large-scale and mechanised types of production. People are given a ‘front row seat’ to all the happenings with the aid of media. All the media tools by crossing boundaries are making an impact on the cultures of various countries and thereby on mass culture. The best examples are the role by played by the American media forms, and as clearly validated by the Frankfurt School. “American popular culture has become a globalized popular culture. American movies, television shows, music and books dominate foreign markets.” (Spiro, 2008, p.44). American TV channels, movies, etc are entering foreign territories and impacting the local culture, and thereby impacting mass culture in both positive as well as in negative direction. American popular culture is vilified as the embodiment of all that is wrong with modern culture. American media including TV, film, internet content, music, etc, etc has expanded its reach. American TV shows are broadcasted through their subsidiaries such as HBO Asia, Fox Channel, CNN International, CNBC Europe, etc. As American films and Television shows dominate the airwaves and ‘enter’ the minds of people all over the world in a continuous way, it is interacting with the local culture thereby stressing its prominence over the local culture. That is, from Hollywood films to News channels, many forms of media mostly reflect the American government’s viewpoints and foreign policies in a positive manner, imbuing those in the minds of the people. This fulfilment of the Marxist as well as Hegemony theory was validated through the words of a former French foreign minister who observed that the Americans are powerful because they can "inspire the dreams and desires of others thanks to the mastery of global images through film and television". (Nye, 2004, p.8). So, the main point is that, America is dominating and influencing the world, its people and their opinion through ‘stimulated’ media images with video chipping in. CNN during First and the Second Iraq War does not ‘sit on the fence’ covering both the sides and giving the visuals for the viewers to decide. Instead its reports seem to be fixated exclusively on the advancement of the American and British forces, and the success of their mission, excluding details about the death of many innocent civilians. This way, Mass culture also endangers "high culture" with the intellectual elite being sidelines. So, from this analysis, it clear that mass media has always intentionally or unintentionally has created or creating mass culture. References Bentley, T and Jones, DS. (2001). The Moral Universe: Whatever happened to Compassion. London: Creative Commons. Chandler, D. (2000). Marxist Media Theory. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism01.html Curran, J, Gurevitch, M and Woollacott, J. (1982): The study of the media: theoretical approaches. In M. Gurevitch, T. Bennett, J. Curran & Janet Woollacott (editors) Culture, society and the media, pp. 11-29. New York: Metheun. Kellner, D. The Frankfurt School. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/fs.htm Nye, J. (2004). Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. PublicAffairs. Rockler-Gladen, N. (2008). Hegemony and Media Studies: Antonio Gramscis Theory of the Hegemonic Media. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://medialiteracy.suite101.com/article.cfm/hegemony_and_media_studies telegraph.co.uk. (2007). Jean Baudrillard. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1544846/Jean-Baudrillard.html Sipro, PJ. (2008). Beyond citizenship: American identity after globalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More