Engaging our media culture

Engaging our media culture by guest columnist, Annette Ford

Postman and the Effects of Media on Culture
Gifted communicator and celebrated professor Neil Postman wrote, spoke, and taught extensively about media ecology, the theory initiated by Marshall McLuhan. Postman said, “I believe I know something about what technologies do to culture, and I know even more about what technologies undo in a culture” (1990, para. 4). An investigation of Postman’s ideas reveals four points to consider regarding the effects of media on culture: 1) The influence of new media, 2) The influence of power holders, 3) The influence of television, and 4) The influence of Truth. Other media theorists’ ideas add further understanding to these points.

The Influence of New Media
Postman described the profound influence of each new technology on society. He said just as changes in the ecological world neither add to nor subtract from the existing environment, but instead alter it completely, “a new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything” (1993, p. 18). McLuhan’s viewpoint elaborates this, saying,

“When we continually use a communication technology it alters our symbolic environment – the socially constructed, sensory world of meanings that shapes our perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and behavior. We concentrate on analyzing or resisting the content of media messages, yet we miss the fact that the medium itself is actually the message.” (Griffin, 2009, p. 309)

Although McLuhan asserted this change is neither positive nor negative, Postman said, “I don’t see any point in studying media unless one does so within a moral or ethical context” (2000, para. 6). He said technological change is a Faustian bargain. “A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided” (Postman, 1990, para. 5).

Postman adhered to McLuhan’s description of history and of new technologies’ influence on culture. McLuhan divided history into: 1) the Tribal Age, where listening and storytelling shaped society; 2) the Literate Age, where the phonetic alphabet introduced linear instead of cyclical thinking; 3) the Print Age, where the printing press introduced mass production; and 4) the Electronic Age, where the telegraph became the first of many devices to extend not only the human ear or eye, but also the whole central nervous system (Griffin, 2009).

Postman described the progress of change from tool-bearing cultures to technocracies to the present American Technopoly (1993). He said Technopoly is the control of technology over culture, and it redefines “what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements” (1993, p. 48).

Stated in the most dramatic terms, the accusation can be made that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living. (Postman, 1993, p. xii)
According to Postman each new technological shift profoundly changes society, though not necessarily for the good of the people.

The Influence of Power Holders
Postman described the power of society’s experts, of the elite who make decisions for the masses (1993). Schultze said, “These managers aim for greater production and distribution efficiencies and for more control over markets…. They seek and reward only impact, not virtue” (2002, pp. 150, 157).

Agenda-setting theory agrees with this view. It speaks of the “gatekeepers” of the news, “the handful of news editors who set the agenda,” who “select, emphasize, elaborate, and even exclude news stories or parts of news stories to create a certain effect for the audience” (Dainton & Zelley, 2005, p. 199). McCombs and Shaw said, “The media may not only tell us what to think about, they also may tell us how and what to think about it, and perhaps even what to do about it” (Griffin, 2009, p. 366). They view media as shaping the way we see reality and what we perceive as truth (Dainton & Zelley, 2005). In his cultural studies theory Hall said because much of our information comes from the giant corporations of society, the media “keep the average person more or less powerless to do anything but operate within a corporatized, commodified world” (Griffin, 2009, p. 338).
Hall believed “the mass media provide the guiding myths that shape our perception of the world and serve as important instruments of social control” (Griffin, 2009, p. 341.

Hall also said, however, the media are not overtly trying to manipulate society, but rather they reinforce society’s generally accepted ideas, thus presenting those ideas as the only acceptable ones (Griffin, 2009). Uses and gratifications theory also presented the view that the audience exercises control, saying the audience responds only if the media gratifies them (Dainton & Zelley, 2005). Although Postman spoke strongly about the control of power holders over media, he did concede that the audience has a strong influence on media as well. (Postman, 1996).

The Influence of Television
Postman perceived television as a negative influence on society. Griffin said, “Postman argued that television is detrimental to society because it has led to the loss of serious public discourse. Television changes the form of information ‘from discursive to nondiscursive, from propositional to presentational, from rationalistic to emotive’” (2009, p. 319). Hall, in his Cultural Studies theory, explained the necessity for making meaning through discourse, the “‘giving and taking of meaning’ between the members of society or a group” (1997, p. 2). Postman said television hindered this discourse.

Postman also described television’s trivializing force (Postman, 1993). It reduces education, for example, to mere entertainment. In “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Postman argued that “educational television” is no more or less educational than “Little House on the Prairie,” “Cheers,” or “The Tonight Show.” Each one forms people’s opinions, and each one’s primary purpose is to entertain and to encourage people to love television (Postman, 1985, p. 144). This follows McLuhan’s thinking. Since the medium is the message, television as the medium in this case has one purpose – entertainment and the love of television – so the television programs all convey the same message.

Cultivation theory and social learning theory also decry the negative influence of television on society. Cultivation theory suggests extensive television watching will make people more fearful (Dainton & Zelley, 2005). Social learning theory “predicts that the use of force modeled on television today may erupt in antisocial behavior years later” (Griffin, 2009, p. 347).
McLuhan said, “we shape our tools and they in turn shape us” (Griffin, 2009, p. 308). Griffin wrote, “As Boudrillard suggests, ‘It’s not TV as a mirror of society, but just the reverse: it’s society as the mirror of television.’… The issue is not whether media distort reality. In today’s world the media have become the reality – the only one we have” (2009, p. 309).

The Influence of Truth
McLuhan said the progress and influences of technology are not right or wrong, they just exist. Hall urged people to fight injustice through semantic battle (Griffin, 2009). Gerbner’s Cultural Environment Movement believe the public must take control of television to ensure more equitable stories are told (Griffin, 2009). Some theorists only ask hard questions about how to bring positive change to society. Other theorists give some answers, but few offer the radical, world changing answers found in the Word of God.

“The first step in dethroning technology, to chasing it back to its proper place in the order of things,” said Conway, “is not to belittle it or detract from its intellectual fascination or its power to set men and women free from drudgery, but, rather, to erect around it and over it other values and wisdoms that oblige us to see technology in its correct perspective (1999, p. 31). Schultze said the media “are really extensions of our God-given ability to cocreate culture. In spite of their limitations, the media are potential resources to help us serve our neighbor by telling the truth and building communities of shalom” (2000, p. 121).

Postman said, “The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory” (1990, para. 35). In the same paragraph he quoted the words of the prophet Micah, “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" Herein lies the answer. Rather than being cloaked in “technological glory,” the world will change positively if its citizens instead cloak themselves in godly justice, mercy and humility.

In his many books, articles and public addresses, Neil Postman spoke of the influence on society of new media, of power holders, and of television. He also touched on the influence of the Truth. In all, however, his core belief could be summarized in the words of Thoreau, “All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end" (Postman, 1990, para. 35).

References
Conway, R. (1999). Choices at the heart of technology: A Christian perspective. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.

Hall, S. (1997). Representations: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London, England: Sage.

Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death. New York, NY: Viking Penguin.
Postman, N. (1990, October). Informing ourselves to death. Speech given at the meeting of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik), Stuttgart, Germany.

Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York, NY: Vintage.

Postman, N. (1996, January 17). Re: Neil Postman ponders high tech [Online Forum comment]. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/january96/postman_1-17.html

Postman, N. (2000, June). The humanism of media ecology. Keynote address at the Inaugural Media Ecology Association Convention, Fordham University, New York, NY.

Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20031013150449/http://www.media-ecology.org/publications/proceedings/v1/humanism_of_media_ecology.html

Schultze, Q. J. (2000). Communicating for life: Christian stewardship in community and media. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Schultze, Q. J. (2002). Habits of the high-tech heart: Living virtuously in the information age. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.