Alternative Media Substituting Mainstream Media in Developed & Developing Countries - Essay Example

Alternative Media Substituting Mainstream Media in Developed & Developing Countries The role of media in disseminating messages of social and cultural awareness is difficult to undermine, especially in the context of developed countries. Developing countries, too, are fast becoming media-centric in their regular ways of public discourses. The traditional mainstream media in most countries around the world is being replaced with alternative means of mass communication in the past few decades. Subsequently, the concepts of dissident media and radical media have also come to the fore of media theories.

One of the main reasons behind the upsurge in alternative media in countries such as America and Canada is that these countries have a demographically variant populace with multiple and ‘competing public spheres’ (Howley 18). While such pluralism dissipates political subversions of free opinion, smaller countries with authoritative regimes at the helm of affairs do throttle traditional media mechanisms. The situation is even worse in nations where the capitalist mode of economy still persists.

As argued by critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, both microcosmic as well as macrocosmic social structures unleash equal amount of media propaganda in the guise of art. Maintaining this line of argument it can be inferred that technological boom has affected people’s cultural integrity and identity in a detrimental manner, resulting in generalization of opinions and conscious worldviews (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944). If we take the example of a developing nation like Turkey, or any other Middle-Eastern country for that matter, it would be clear that mainstream media has long resorted to alternative media agents in order to remain independent of state administered policies.

Instead of acting like a mere vehicle to voice the politically motivated manifesto of the State, media houses do adopt a neutral standpoint within a restricted religious ideal (Romano 147). It has to be underlined that consumer culture primarily driven by religious fundamentalism does very little to encourage semi-formalized notions of production and absorption of mass culture. Works Cited Adorno, Theodor, and Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.

” Marxists Internet Archive. Feb 2005. 6 January 2010 . Howley, Kevin. Understanding Community Media. California: SAGE, 2009. Romano, David. The Kurdish nationalist movement: opportunity, mobilization, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.