Mediarchy

Yves Citton, Andrew Brown

• Editorial: Polity
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781509533411
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Sozialwissenschaften
• Categoría: Medienwissenschaften

We think that we live in democracies: in fact, we live in mediarchies. Our political regimes are based less on nations or citizens than on audiences shaped by the media. We assume that our social and political destinies are shaped by the will of the people without realizing that 'the people' are always produced, both as individuals and as aggregates, by the media: we are all embedded in mediated publics, 'intra-structured' by the apparatuses of communication that govern our interactions. In this major book, Yves Citton maps out the new regime of experience, media and power that he designates by the term 'mediarchy'. To understand mediarchy, we need to look both at the effects that the media have on us and also at the new forms of being and experience that they induce in us. We can never entirely escape from the effects of the mediarchies that operate through us but by becoming more aware of their conditioning, we can develop the new forms of political analysis and practice which are essential if we are to rise to the unprecedented challenges of our time. This comprehensive and far-reaching book will be essential reading for students and scholars in media and communications, politics and sociology, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the multiple and complex ways that the media – from newspapers and TV to social media and the internet – shape our social, political and personal lives today.

Part I
Media

1
NAMING MEDIARCHY

We have trouble seeing the media for the very good reason that they have been made so as not to be seen. ‘Our media call for critique or systematic analysis insofar as they function effectively only by being forgotten.’¹ When we sit in front of a page in a book or at a computer screen, we do not look at the page or the screen themselves, but at the words or images represented on them. In the normal mode of communication, we do not pay attention to small defects in the paper or little bits of dirt sticking to the surface of the screen: we read a text or watch a video – directing our attention to the meaning to be drawn from them rather than to the observation of the medium.

However, in today’s French culture, this deeply entrenched habit of not seeing the medium is compounded by a certain confusion due to the vague and restrictive use of reference to the ‘mass media’. In addition to the effects of transparency inherent in our use of the media, we must begin by questioning and readjusting the vocabulary we use to designate what is happening by means of them. A comparative detour via various neighbouring cultures and languages will give us the necessary distance for this terminological readjustment.

The Critique of the Mass Media

In our common consciousness, the first associations aroused by the reference to ‘mass media’ are the television news, the major daily newspapers, the work of journalists, the fabrication of celebrities – in short, the channels through which our societies project a public representation of themselves that is more or less shared by the majority of their population. But a certain largely justified discredit attaches to the usual discourse on the ‘media’. As illustrated by a famous Banksy graffiti, TV sets seem designed to be thrown out the window, since intellectuals seem to hold TV in such low esteem. The opinions of intellectuals about TV do not, however, seem to be worth much more.

In the first case, we indistinctly merge all media together in a critique that is also partially justified, but lacks nuance and does not have any effective purchase on reality. For example, emphasis is laid on the various collusions between the ‘press’ and the financial world (which buys up that press and keeps it afloat), between television and advertising (which provides it with a large part of its revenue) and between journalists and politicians (who often sleep in the same bed). But all that this creates is a vague feeling of a general MANIPULATION to which we are all subjected by special interests that abuse their power so as to prevent us from seeing reality as it is. This suspicion certainly has a basis in truth, aptly highlighted by associations with a critical agenda, such as ACRIMED in France or FAIR in the United States.² The general denunciation of manipulation or bias in the media remains largely futile, however, unless we take the trouble – as these associations do – to analyse more precisely and concretely how, to what degree and under what pressure an individual press organ, programme or media format produces a certain type of distortion in relation to what we might consider a more adequate representation of this or that aspect of our realities. In the enormous mass of discourse about the ‘mass media’, cases where the opinions expressed are based on such an effort of analysis are relatively few and far between.

One effect of this indiscriminate denunciation of the ‘mass media’ is to contribute to a fairly widespread discredit of them, frequently documented in various opinion polls. But paradoxically, such denunciation can at the same time encourage a form of self-congratulation on the part of the people or institutions that seem perfectly ready and willing to face directly the suspicion of which they are the object. The MEDIA CRITICISM OF THE ‘MASS MEDIA’ is indeed the best way of strengthening the grip of those same media: it gives those who practise such a critique boundless material for creating a sense of the goodwill of those who work in this field, and of the external constraints they sometimes manage to identify quite lucidly; but in particular, it points to the remarkable stability of a system that everyone knows will see the same people continuing to do the same job in the same place tomorrow, whatever the difficulties or distortions they recognize exist today.

In the second case, other discourses on the ‘mass media’, this time academic in nature, take the trouble to perform the labour of empirical analysis mentioned above. They rely on collections of statistics and robust surveys which sometimes document how the ‘mass media’ affect our lives and our thoughts. For several decades, the SCIENCES OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION have accumulated data and analyses, giving a much more nuanced and differentiated view of the important but limited influence that various types of ‘mass media’ have on various types of audience. What comprises the virtue of this kind of research – its empirical humility, its ‘applied’ character and its ‘measured’ conclusions – does, however, often make it rather frustrating for those who wish to understand more generally what the media are and what they do as specific modes of human interaction.

On the one hand, therefore, denunciatory discourse tends towards becoming an abstract condemnation of the ‘mass media’, citing the potential for manipulation to which their undeniable influence subjects us. On the other hand, a collection of particular investigations documents certain specific mechanisms, but their authors often limit themselves to cautiously measuring their observable effects, even if these effects are hardly surprising in themselves and even if their measurements ultimately merely confirm what might have been expected before the survey was made. In both cases, whether we stay on the level of generalities or immerse ourselves in particularities, it is difficult to take a step back from the obvious characteristics and provide ourselves with tools for understanding that will enable us to overcome our common impressions of the ‘mass media’. In spite of their differences, these two types of discourse sometimes give the impression of going round in circles, limited to truths that are difficult to argue with but ultimately tell us little.

It would of course be terribly arrogant and utterly absurd to reject en bloc all that can be said in these fields of study and debate. Criticism of the cultural industries is necessary, often invigorating and sometimes inspired. Their analysis by people producing academic research in the social sciences is absolutely essential, often illuminating and sometimes exciting. This book, devoted to the mediarchy, will absolutely not claim to do any better than the discourses I just mentioned. However, it will try to do something else – drawing its inspiration and its quotations from elsewhere than the discourses on the ‘mass media’ produced in France.

A Layer of Strangeness

For almost half a century, another type of discourse on our apparatuses and practices of communication has been developing in the Anglo-Saxon and German-speaking worlds. Under the name of Media Studies or Medienstudien, this work – which includes both a critical dimension and an endeavour to produce quantified surveys – has placed an effort of THEORIZATION at the heart of its dynamics. The notion of theory is not to be understood simply as a set of hypotheses subjected to empirical verifications. In accordance with its Greek etymology (where θεωρία designates contemplation), theory consists of an attempt to develop a counterintuitive vision that will help us perceive (as well as conceive) an unusual dimension of our realities. Since the emergence of one of the founding fathers of this field of research, Marshall McLuhan, this work of theorization has striven to deconstruct our habits, firing off paradoxical assertions or enigmatic formulas which, in the best of cases, only begin to make sense if we submit to a systematic displacement of our customary landmarks. This work does not consist of describing, in a precisely and objectively quantified way, reality as it can be observed around us. Nor does it provide us with little boxes into which its various component elements can be analysed and classified. Its ambition is, rather, as Christophe Hanna has clearly shown in a quite different field, to propose layers, as the term is used in Photoshop, that bring out unsuspected forms as well as surprising virtues.³ The aim of such theorizations is not to anatomize reality but to show its several superimposed levels. Rather than categorizations, classifications or measurements, this activity generates visions – with all the disturbing aspects these visions may entail for our dominant conventions of rationality.

When, for example, McLuhan included the lightbulb as an example of the media, serious-minded folk ri...