Redefining the limits to thought within media culture: Collective memory, cyberspace and the subversion of mass media.

Abstract

This dissertation examines how cyberspace will impact upon mass media's socialization process within media culture. Mass media is defined as an elite-owned system which produces a limited number of symbols that socialize the audience according to the requirements of the economic system. The audience of mass media is described as located within media culture which is the location of media's symbol-flow. Cyberspace is defined as structurally-differentiated from mass media. Its distributed design has made it impossible for monopolistic ownership or state control to regulate completely the flow of symbols (communication and content production). Thus I conclude that cyberspace represents the democratization of symbol-flow (or the radicalization of free expression) within media culture. Case studies of media texts and events demonstrate the structurally-differentiated symbol-flow of mass media and cyberspace, the former being highly-constrained by the economic system, the latter exhibiting a highly-unconstrained flow of symbols (with symbols equivalent to shared meaning and values). With these two different types of media systems, constrained and unconstrained symbol-flow, I then apply a model of symbol-flow as a form of cultural reproduction. Mary Douglas' theory of collective memory describes culture as the arena of shared implicit assumptions about humans and nature. These assumptions are embedded in symbols which act as a form of social meta-communication. The social order is communicated through the symbols which are in use within social interaction. Collective memory allows us to analyse mass media as a highly-controlled form of social reproduction (thus the success and power of its socialization process is explained). Collective memory also allows us to identify how cyberspace will impact upon the socialization process of mass media. If the economic system is highly dependent upon mass media's constrained flow of symbols for its socialization effect (and it is), then unconstrained communication/symbol-flow within cyberspace represents the potential subversion of the dominant meanings and values which are reproduced through mass media. I argue that cyberspace potentially undermines the socialization process established through mass media. Collective memory provides a tool for examining the implications of a structurally-differentiated mode of communication (cyberspace) which has arisen within media culture in the late twentieth century.