The Transformation of the Social Sphere - Essay Example

The Transformation of the Social Sphere Mass media greatly influences the everyday lives of the modern society. Newspapers, television, film and other widely available forms of communication have affected and transformed the world as is obvious in a brief look at the history of media. Mass media first manifested in the form of a written press during the middle ages. The written press, invented in fifteenth century, facilitated the progression of civilization by providing a medium in which to express ideas to a wide audience and became a storage area for knowledge gained that allowed scholars to reflect on the created knowledge of others and helped them eliminate duplicity in investigative efforts (Nesmith, 1995, p. 113). It also kept the general population informed on current affairs, helped the educational system and provided literature to entertain the people. The next biggest invention that impacted mass media was the radio. The radio united humans by adding the cognitive element of being able to hear additional communicative elements such as vocal inflection as information traveled through radio waves into peoples’ homes. This influence was itself rendered nearly obsolete with the invention of film and television. The latest medium that surged at the end of the 20th century to rival the influence of the television has been the introduction of the desktop computer and widespread access to the internet. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect the mass media had on the temporal and spatial foundation of the social sphere. It is helpful to start with a common conception of what is meant when referring to the spatial and temporal foundations of the social sphere. The spatial dimension refers to the physical space that separates humans in different parts of the world in terms of geographical location. “Spatial structure is now seen not merely as an arena in which social life unfolds, but rather as a medium in which social relations are produced and reproduced” (Pries, 2002, p. 2), such as the virtual spaces of the television and the computer screen. Mass media also extends the space of experience because it provides a greater accessibility to a variety of information and places (Carpignano, 1997). In addition, it can bridge the gap of spatial linguistic barriers such as those that exist within the People’s Republic of China, where regional dialects prevent oral communication between regions. Because all literate Chinese share a similar written language, though, mass media enables these regions of China to communicate and share ideas which contributes not only to the development of the self, but, through this social interaction, with the growth of the community (Mead cited in “George Herbert Mead”, 2005). With the increased abilities of mass media, the communication distance between nations has been significantly reduced. What used to take literally months to communicate between England and the colonies of North America now takes mere seconds between the most inaccessible regions of Scotland and the desert wastes of Nevada, thus reducing the temporal distance between peoples as well as the geographic or spatial distances. According to the calculations of Goertzel et al (2000), temporal events refers to the concepts of “events with ordered links to other events”, suggesting that temporal dimensions of communication refers to the pre-established concept that it should take a longer period of time for an individual floating in a tropical bay to communicate with someone else living in the frozen tundra of Alaska. This set period of time is based upon our foundational conceptions of the social sphere. However, these concepts are shattered with new media formats that make this communication instantaneous, changing our conception of time and space together. Whether by bridging linguistic or other cultural divides, reducing the temporal space between the sending and receiving of messages or shortening the perception of geographical distance, mass media has a tremendous influence because it unites the nation and allows people to learn what is happening in other regions, thus enabling them to prepare for possible affects on their own community, to send aid to a floundering community or otherwise take action if they so choose. Yet it has also had the effect of changing the way in which we define ourselves and relate to others. The advent and development of mass communications has transformed the ritual dimensions of communication because of the paradox it presents. As it is understood within anthropological and sociologic spheres, “ritual is preeminently a form of communication” (Douglas, 1966, p. ). Through ritual, social relationships are established and reinforced within a given society, defining a cultural group in terms of what is considered acceptable behavior and what is not. “Many cultural theories of ritual implicitly or explicitly describe ritual as the means by which the cultural system and the social system are able to interact and harmonize with each other” (Bell, 1997, p. 61). While these lessons in propriety were once carried out through such mediums as dance and direct social interaction in a technology-free society of individuals, providing for a great deal of interactivity and give and take of ideas, these methods were then taken over by the relatively slow-to-respond yet much father reaching media of newspapers and television. While new ideas could be shared across great distances using these media as opposed to the traditional forms, they were also constrained by the inability to ask a question while reading and have the author provide an answer as had been possible when communication took place within a village gathering hall. The experience of television can be characterized in terms of monitoring a continuous space, a space that does not exist as an independent narrative sequence, a space that is not represented but presented, a space a person acquires through the technology that created the television set (Carpignano, 1997). Thus, the ritual is there and not there at one and the same time. It is presented, but cannot be shared, is shared, but cannot be questioned and is questioned but is not responsive. An important long term tendency which affects the path of human development is the growing global interconnections of human societies, a movement commonly referred to as globalization (Perlas & Strawe, 2007). The mass media helped facilitate this globalization movement by providing information about the cultures of other countries, facilitating cultural acceptance. The perceived distance that had previously kept countries apart was erased as communities became united behind the messages they received through the ritual symbols and paradigms received through the media. In its presentation of numerous ideas and programs and establishment of perceived relationships with its viewers, the television has emerged as a powerful tool of persuasion and deception. Thus, mass media is deemed a key institution of the public sphere that has contributed to an environment of control in Singapore (Jwee & Benjamin, 2007, p. 30) as well as other countries, such as the United States in President Bush’s marketing of the war in Iraq (Walsh & Barbara, 2006). This one-way communication method has thus played a significant role in transforming the social sphere as it is able to exert influence without becoming overly affected by those on whom it impacts through the phenomena of the para-social relationship. The public sphere is a social fabric within which spaces are generated and maintained (Aufderhelde, 1997). The television came into people’s homes and began functioning as a convenient and always available electronic babysitter for children. It has been proven that apart from sleeping the activity of watching television takes up the largest amount of time for children while they are in their homes (Nesmith, 1995, p. 114), proving the ubiquitous presence of this influence upon the minds of the populace. Television programming can be a very powerful element in a young person’s life. It exposes them to all types of social deviances such as violence, drugs and crime. A child quickly learns about the harsh realities of the outside world, sometimes at a premature age due to television programming and the virtual relationships they foster with their favorite characters in their daily or weekly shows which sometimes seem more real than real life. The monotonous act of watching television halts the mind and prohibits creative thinking. Television watching has a lot of negative characteristics which are similar to the symptoms of drug users. It is extremely addicting and can alter the way a brain functions. Prolonged TV viewing may alter the brain’s structure and functioning, making it a suspect in the increasing number of learning disabilities found in American children (Nesmith, 1995, p. 114). Today’s mass media affects society in many other ways thanks to the para-social relationships that can be developed with viewers and the use of ritual symbology to manipulate deep-seated cultural beliefs. The media survives off advertising revenue it receives from television commercials, printed ads, radio commercials and online marketing. The bombardment of advertising of products and services people receive from the mass media influences society and its values greatly.  In countries such as the United States and Great Britain, societies whose inhabitants spend a lot of time watching television, the people are very materialistic and suffer from a condition referred to as consumerism in which individuals measure their sense of self-worth upon the number and economic price-tag of their material possessions. A study with human subjects to determine the relationship between television watching and violence found that physical or verbal aggressive responses were selected by 45 percent of heavy television violence viewers compared to only 21 percent of light violence viewers (Murray, 2007). There have been numerous cases of mass media utilizing its influence to manipulate the system in order to achieve a particular strategic goal. By controlling information disseminated, the mass media can control what people think about a particular subject matter. The different economic eras the world has gone through have been instrumental in the development of society. The last three eras were the industrial age in which newspapers and then radio became the chief means of passing along information; the information age characterized by the proliferation of the television and the current internet age brought on by the widespread distribution of computers and easy accessibility to the World Wide Web. The internet age provided mass media with a new medium to realize business with an added twist in its availability to users of a means of participating in the process. This new era of interactivity is being called the broadband age or convergence age. The convergence are is characterized by the collapse of previously distinct media distribution channels of broadcast, cable, radio, print, online into one single media delivery chain (“Rise of Lifestyle Media”, 2006). Information now travels extremely fast and, to a certain extent, the population can not keep up with the messages sent to them via this mass communication stream. In this new electronic world, the behavior of the individual is changing as they are expected to take part in the communication process and the computer is displaying some of the characteristics of the television such as human beings utilizing the medium for prolonged periods of time. There are also new ways to communicate which will completely change the spatial and temporal dimensions of communication in the future. A technology called voice over internet protocol VoIP is now being utilized in increasing locations and ways to facilitate a return to more traditional methods of communication despite the stretch of distance between individuals. In January 2008, Sony in alliance with a software vendor will introduce to the world a module for the PlayStation Portable that will incorporate ViOP into the system. People around the world will be able to utilize the PSP to realize voice phone calls, instant messaging and video phones calls. Once this technology is widespread it will unite people more than ever by enabling them to see, hear and respond to the images of those with whom they are speaking, reducing the perception of distance to the space between the individual and the video screen. However, simply because the internet has provided individuals with the power to interact with their environment has not lessened the media’s ability to influence the social sphere through methods developed during the television age. The convergence age has allowed mass media to utilize other electronic mediums to get their message to the crowds. Now ads are sent directly into people’s cellular phones, there are ads inside video games and there are all sorts of online marketing activities sent from the mass media to members of society. Television viewing has also changed with new satellite and cable providers offering at times thousands of channels with plenty of selection for international program viewing. The multiple choices of international viewing enhance cultural diversity and expand the social sphere while also serving to define what these cultures are regardless of reality or individual perception. People are using the internet to watch videos not offered through the cable companies and companies such as CNN provide news video reports through their website. A new development of innovation from Microsoft Corporation which will be launched soon called Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is a full television programming platform which utilizes the high speed capabilities of broadband internet to provide television programming similar to cable television through the computer. It is to be seen if these new development end up being a fad or a social trend or if the individuals of society will step up to take a part in the overall social interaction. Mass media has changed the way people have perceived the world for the last 500 years. It has impacted the behavior of human beings through technological advances such as the television by altering their daily patterns of activity and the established means of communicating important cultural values and ideas among members of a society. However, with new technologies, some of the necessary interaction may return to these cultural interactions as they become more ‘real-time’ and enable individuals to not only hear the vocal inflections of the individual they are speaking with but also visualize their facial features and other symbols of a physical presence through the virtual medium of the video screen. Mass media has transformed traditional social spheres in both a temporal and spatial sense, developing new ways of interacting and identifying with others through such processes as para-social relationships and ritual presentation and seems to be on the verge of again bringing about significant change in the way we define ourselves. Works Cited Aufdelherde, P. “Public Television and the Public Sphere.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication. Vol. 8, N. 2, June 1991. Bell, Catherine M. Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 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