Professional Documents
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Volume 6 | Issue 1
Article 5
5-8-2013
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studying the mass media and that has helped generate critical resistance among the public at large.
At most, we can say that in Europe the academic analysis of media
has had a greater impact on society than in the United States. In the
United States, the studies of Merton or Cantril are neither read nor
discussed in high schools and elementary schools; in Europe, a critical
awareness of mass-media strategies-also as vehicles for ideologieshas frequently influenced the educational curriculum. More and more
often, conscientious teachers in elementary and high schools prepare
their students to think critically of the mass media by analyzing advertisements or newspapers in the classroom.
IV.
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sity since the invention of the printing press, the development of mass
media has only made this knot even more intricate.
V. THE MASS MEDIA EXPLOITS THE UNIVERSrrY
Let us imagine the strictly honorable position of a scholar who analyzes the persuasive mechanisms of mass media, independent of financial and advisory assistance. From the viewpoint of the morality of
intentions, such a scholar is beyond suspicion. But if he publishes the
results of his research, then the mass media may obtain and exploit it.
Hence, the scholar's critical description of forbidden procedures of
persuasion may become an unintended contribution to the application
of those very procedures.
This problem obviously exists for every discipline. The chemist
knows very well that if he writes a paper on Oriental poisons, a murderer could potentially use the information. However, the chemist
regards such research as a description of something that exists
independent of one's writing about it. In contrast, in the social sciences, the scholar is incessantly obsessed by the danger of creating a
phenomenon by simply describing it.
A book of essays on Madonna, recently published in the United
States, includes a variety of quotations from deconstructionist literature, semiotics, Heidegger, and so on (and anything else, provided
that they were d la page). Do the essays present a critical analysis of
the Madonna phenomenon, or do they contribute to the reinforcement of the Madonna myth?
Let us not be excessively moralistic. Do we think that such an enormous amount of discussion devoted to Madonna is more reprehensible than that devoted to cholesterol? Scientists had studied
cholesterol because it was their obligation, but frankly, every responsible weight-watcher had been informed about the effects and consequences of cholesterol for quite some time. Then suddenly, the media
started to exploit the cholesterol issue, and we witnessed the incredible story of the cholesterol hoax-vegetables were advertised as cholesterol-free in the supermarkets. A respectable scientific
investigation was adopted by the mass media and by the food industry, and then exploited purely for profit.
VI. THE UNIVERSITY TRAINS A WORK FORCE FOR THE MASS
MEDIA
The preparation of a work force for the mass media is perhaps more
typical of the American situation than of the European one. But in
fact, in universities all over the world, there are courses which train
students to perform according to the standards defined by newspa-
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The convenience with which all the basic texts of literature, philosophy, history, and science are available offers the student multiple
sources of information and enables him or her to debate the professor's line of thinking. The professor teaches Russell and the student
reads Husserl instead. This may constitute a reason for panic. The
professor can no longer hide his lack of knowledge, and he bears
responsibility, in a certain sense, for all the texts that the culture
industry has put on the market.
Among other things, it must be noted that the publishing industry,
by way of choosing which texts are made available, influences the subjects that will be studied in the next ten years. It can be argued that
university professors dominate this selective process. But it so happens that a small group of influential scholars, through their editorial
selections, will influence or determine the editorial selections of their
colleagues who are encouraged to follow their same scholarly agenda.
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The university may decide to utilize the mass media as an instrument to broaden its area of influence. The successful experiments of
the Open University, an educational institution for adults and an
alternative for working students, demonstrate how the coordinated
use of printed bobklets, tapes, and video cassettes may help to create
a mass university circuit. But this excessive availability of information
may also have a paralyzing effect. The mass media is certainly indispensable in order to reach, above all, those who are excluded from the
circle of cultural information, yet it cannot replace the direct didactic
relationship, the immediate interpersonal dialogue of the university
setting. We may pretend to ignore it, but the university establishment
utilizes mass media as an influential tool in academic controversies.
The scientific debates carried on in newspapers are not a novelty of
this century. What is certainly new is the role of television debates in
influencing opinions regarding important scientific policy decisions,
such as the use or the rejection of nuclear power.
Another example of the influence of the mass media on academic
opinion is the alleged discovery of Heidegger's Nazism. That Heidegger was sympathetic to Nazism has been a well-known fact since the
fifties. In the early sixties, I remember reviewing a book by Dagobert
Runes, published in the United States, in which Heidegger's political
speeches were reprinted. Every serious scholar knew this dark side of
Heidegger's personal life and was aware of the philosophical problem
of whether or not his philosophy was dependent on (or determined
by) his political positions. I am not a Heidegger fan, but I find this
attempt to dismantle Heidegger's philosophy-or the alleged Heideggerianism of other American or continental thinkers-on the basis of
such biographical gossip simply to be mass-media sensationalism. We
cannot deny the importance of Voltaire's role in the development of
Western thought simply because he invested part of his financial holdings in the slave market-he was indifferent to this ethical problem
and merely a product of his times.
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LIFE
The mass media has also brought the university into the world of
celebrities, and we often ask ourselves if the fame of certain scholars
is truly linked to their intellect and accomplishments or, instead,
merely to their images as created by television and glossy magazines.
The media system is so powerful that it successfully makes news not
only of the impudence of those who appear every day on television,
but also of the privacy of those who have retired from the public eye.
Even absences are transformed into news by the celebrity press. Not
only those who publish a book per year make the news, but also those
who never publish anything at all. There are scholars who can make
their silence speak, and if they do not succeed at this, a good reporter
will help them. Some publishing houses specialize in making famous
those who have never published a line in the course of their lives, and
perhaps the greatest prospects are given to those who have left not
even a single manuscript.
Equally embarrassing is the influence of the mass media on students. The 1968 student demonstrations were influenced by the intervention of the mass media, which encouraged their almost
simultaneous spreading to different countries, and resulted in protests
with similar patterns. Yet, although we might consider the major 1968
demonstrations as an inevitable historical phenomenon, this is not
true of many subsequent, smaller-scale demonstrations. These later
protests often occurred because various groups of students aimed at
copying the image of those portrayed by the mass media.
Finally, the mass media has a tendency to. make a spectacle of university life. The announcement of a study is presented, alternatively,
as a discovery, as a cautious experiment, and as the achievement of a
universal panacea. Needless to say, serious scholars will try to avoid
such celebrity performances. They will, however, inevitably become
victims of such a system, and the more they attempt to keep out of the
eye of the mass media, the more vulnerable they will become.
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Mass-media technologies are threatened by an incurable diseasethe perishability of the actual materials which document and transmit
information. The video tapes, the recordings on magnetic discs, and
the photocopied pages are all perishable. Even the book, the principal instrument for the dissemination of knowledge, has become perishable. All the books published since we went from rag paper to
wood paper are destined to become dust within a period of seventy
years. The mass media has allowed the proliferation and circulation
of books which do not survive their authors. All the methods (e.g.,
microfilm, reprinting on acid-free paper, chemical protection of
existing books) that have been applied in order to avoid this tragic
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now. I believe that students still come into our lecture halls because
they realize that there is something being discussed which the mass
media has not yet encountered. When the mass media eventually gets
around to reporting it, the university will already be-will have to
be-discussing something else.
If we are able to maintain this gap, we will still have a role to play,
and indeed an invaluable one.
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