Media and western society

Media and western society

There are many types of media nowadays. The written forms, such as newspapers, door to door advertising, weekly or monthly published magazines, letters, but also the audio-visual kinds such as radio, television and movies. All this seems like an overwhelming chorus of media already, but I have not even mentioned billboard, skywriting, commercials on company vehicles and last but certainly not least: the internet. Commercial websites, email, adds on your web mail, nothing is too radical to place yourself in the spotlight it seems.

Sometimes I wonder what purpose it all serves. There are so many media trying to get through to me that feel like I have shut down or something, no longer paying attention to the billboards in the streets and the commercials in between the tv shows. The reality of the matter is quite different of course. The reality is that with my bills and private letters I have already noticed the advertisement of a major toy company and some political propaganda, no doubt meant informatively.
The trouble is that political parties want their voters to know what they did in their name, or what their plans are to do in the future for their voters. All kinds of companies want people to know that they exist so that they will be thought of when the time comes to buy a type of product that they sell. In that sense there really is no difference between my private letters and my spam mail: somebody wants to be noticed by me, for being noticed is to be remembered when the time is right.

I think the question remains what sort of place the media take in our society. It is a medium which carries information from one place to another. Those places subsequently handle this information or (try to) ignore the information. Plato's state was a symbolization of the mind, the people would correlate with Freud's 'Es', the auxiliaries with the 'Über-Ich' and the leaders of state (philosophers) guide the two with reason and can be seen to correlate with the 'Ich'.

Comparing society to the mind we might compare the attempt of the media with the attempt to shape the thoughts people have with what Lacan calls 'le discours de l'Autre'. Commercial ads would fill in the place of superficial empirical information and talk shows can be understood as a rationalization of relations of certain events. Both are used to shape the thoughts we have, or to create new thoughts. Everyday the news is broadcast by the state to inform the people of the new events that have taken place in the world. Everyday we are informed of a selection of 'newsworthy' events that will shape our thoughts to a large extent.
Realizing this comparison is a strange thing to me because the question remains who selects the 'newsworthy' events and on the basis of what criteria this selection is made.

A mind that allows itself only to look at certain information has a very limited view. It may be called teleological, looking only in the direction it is going, but placing this idea in a society and the media as the 'discours' one must wonder if a limited image presented by the media constitutes fascism. A wide range of sources might constitute democracy in that sense. The fear of this happening is very justified I think, but fascism is defined as a merger of government and media. In (western) society this merger has not been established as such. While somebody is making the choices what will be presented in societies' 'discours' and indeed some of this is directly determined by the political parties, but there is a lot of diversity in the media. Many companies have equally many people in charge of the selection process. Bit still a remarkably narrow view is being presented. So, while it is unclear who decides what is presented in the 'discours' at least it is clear that a very onesided view is presented. The question remains if a 'discours' with a onesided view can constitute an open and free society.