Communication (Neo-Liberalism) - Essay Example

Surveillance has become part of media and to some extent life too. Current communication policy is ruled by the technological discoveries and achievements. UNESCO's New World Information and Communication Order have sponsored various world summits to evolve and update communication policies based on the emerging neoliberalism and other connected theories. Neoliberal visions and revisions of the global communication policy are focused on the technical aspects of communication. Globalization, technical evolution and democratization are the forces that have introduced neoliberalism.

According to Andrejevik (2004), reality surveillance shows like Big Brother are not tremendously popular and is only viewed by spectators willing to enter into a virtual space; but this does not mean that it is not successful and its success is attributed to its democratic attitude, though considered to be a distorted version by others. He says this is mainly because of the emergence of a surveillance based economy gives authenticity to the reality shows and how the society is reacting to them without being obviously revolutionalised by them.

Also there is a genuine fear that the bad old days of police states, unlimited surveillance and authoritarian regimes are not far off, due to the communication and media technologies that are becoming more and more aggressive every day.In addition to this, sociologists are worried about the addictive shopping that might overtake all other priorities. Bennett, who gives historical and political background through Freudian concepts of psychoanalysis as a contributing factor, invoking Freud's penchant for economic explanations of the psyche, talks about getting motivated by the unconscious marketing and goes to the extent of sexualizing advertised products which will once again lead the unconscious buyers into compelling addictive shopping.

"Addictive shopping first entered the psychiatric textbooks in 1915; but it was only in the 1990s that it became the subject of a raft of psychological theories and therapies offering to explain and address the emotional needs and personality traits assumed to give rise to compulsive spending" Bennett (2005). No doubt, this is stating it in its extremity with 'utmost skepticism'; but the days of unlimited freedom, individuality and privacy seem to be very fast disappearing and this is a disturbing trend.

According to Williams tries to attach neoliberalism into Marxist theories and thinks it is necessary to understand both the dominant and the residual cultures. He argues that cultural emergence could be complex; but is of major importance, as the social order is changing and right now it is difficult to differentiate between the dominant and the secondary. Because the society under neoliberalism has not yet reached the changed perspective; instead, it is still going through the stage of pre-emergence of the final form.

"Again and again what we have to observe is in effect a pre-emergence, active and pressing, but not yet fully articulated, rather than the evident emergence which could be more confidently named. It is to understand more closely this condition of pre-emergence, as well as the more evident forms of the emergent, the residual, and the dominant, that we need to explore the concepts of struct6ures of feeling," Williams (1977). Neoliberalism is