The Role of Communication in Liberal Democracies - Essay Example

?The Role of Communication in Liberal Democracies Communication is a basic condition for humans to be socialized and is also essential for the progress of human society. It would not be an exaggeration if we said that humans will eventually only use communication as a means to interact. People use both speech and body language to communicate, but the media is a tool that provides a platform for better communication among people. The media does not only help society communicate more fluently, but also makes liberal democracy active through the spread of correct information, strict surveillance of power, and the function of instituting the public’s agenda. In contemporary times, the influence and responsibility of the media is expanding because of the development of information technology, which is producing new forms of mass media. According to McLuhan’s Technological Determinism theory, the media determines social and cultural changes in communication technology. Therefore, nowadays, the role of the media seems more important than ever before, and if it does not function properly then we cannot expect society to progress in an orderly fashion. Also, in order to become a more productive society, press freedom should be safe from harm, and additionally, critique of ideology should be allowed to function because the critique of ideology observes how appropriate the role of media is in providing answers for society. The critique of ideology also makes people judge misinformation and insists on demanding the truth. However, there is another way to communicate with society: through culture. According to Raymond William, culture can refer to high culture, folk culture, or, in terms of industrial societies, mass culture. As he mentions so often, culture contains human thought, art, and mentality. Culture is the most traditional and natural way of communication between people in society. Therefore, it is significant to study about ideology, and furthermore, what the critique of ideology accomplishes in a liberal democracy. Ideology has multiple meanings, as shown in Olivier Reboul’s classification of ideology. In a book called Language and Ideology, Olivier Reboul classifies ideology to the Napoleon meaning, Karl Heinrich Marx meaning, and sociology of knowledge meaning by Karl Mannheim (Reboul, 1994). First of all, for the Napoleon meaning, according to the document that his secretary kept, he defined it as a disturbance that blocks flexible ideas for hypocrites. He also described that it refers to a person who is abstract and an idealist. It is not used all that commonly, so it will just be treated as historical meaning. For the Karl Heinrich Marx meaning, Marx defined ideology as false consciousness, using the metaphor of a camera obscurer. False consciousness means only showing a portion of a concept, and this makes people misrepresent the idea; it does not show what the full picture is. This kind of fantasy intimates with religious and moral principles. In this case, the subject who makes an ideology is dominant, and the person who receives the distorted information is weak and receives unfair treatment. Over time, ideology is a system of awareness or notion that is made from the dominating party. The problem with this is that particular information is accepted as common knowledge to the receiver. The Napoleon meaning criticizes the existing rulers while the Marx meaning is trying to remedy society. However, the last ideology’s meaning is completely different from the above two meanings. This ideology comes from the Hungarian-born German sociologist Karl Mannheim, and is called the sociology of knowledge. This idea is based on neutrality and first appeared in the 20th century. He terms ideology as every image that can be seen in a certain group. He emphasized that the composition of a group helps the group to work together. This idea is less controversial than the other two and is a unique cultural idea; however, it’s true that this makes it more open to debate. How does ideology apply to cultural studies? The point where ideology and cultural studies meet is false consciousness ideology, which came from Marx. This idea conveys the issue of how false ideology shapes society; false consciousness ideology refers to notions made from powerful and influential people, and has now become an actual way of doing things. Marx made an issue: ideology is used as a means to dominate laborers, but in cultural studies, the stereotype of women, homosexuals, and African and religious minority groups becomes an issue. The typical stereotypes such as, “women are passive,” “Africans are lazy,” “homosexuals have a high chance of contracting AIDS,” and “Muslims are violent” were permeated as common sense. Culture doesn’t only deliver these kinds of stereotypes to society, but can also be a strong instrument to persuade people. Thus, cultural studies are important because they are directly connected to communication within a society. In cultural studies, specifically those related to ideology, there are two aims: criticizing hidden ideology, which is also known as false consciousness ideology, and by criticizing an ideology. Furthermore, new values are created from criticizing ideology. The first aim is the critique of culture and the second is the production of culture. The critique of culture must be precious enough to work with because it creates new value. This kind of work is for criticizing false consciousness ideology, which hides the truth, and furthermore, is trying to search for new values that can combat false consciousness ideology. Feminism, queer theory, and decolonialism could be examples of this type of work. How does critique ideology work in liberal democracies and why is it important? As it was mentioned earlier, communication is a natural instinct of human beings. Culture and mass media are simply methods used to communicate with people in society. These tools have powerful influence because they can make contact with people almost instantaneously and have the freedom to present information in whatever way they want. This can be considered dangerous as the responsibility to provide factual information relies solely on the media, which also produces the information in the first place. Because many people participate in culture and mass media, there is great deal of ideology. However, ideology is typically produced from powerful and influential people. These types of people have no intention of letting anyone else have their say, and therefore, do everything in their power to create a make believe society, in which everything blindly follows without question. Therefore, in order to fight against repression, the critique of ideology becomes an essential task. Once this is done, it will make culture becomes more open, and eventually, a free-flowing society will come to pass. Read More