Communication. Media. America. As I began to read Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media, the relationship between these terms kept coming to mind. Communication is synonymous with our current cultural framework, and as Starr states, “the global influence of the American media and the American model now puts an even heavier responsibility on the United States than in the past” (19). Wow – that one sentence demands necessary attention in order to fully begin to interpret the role of communication and media in our culture. Obviously, this is only one blog post, but I think it deserves at least a few reflective thoughts in order to prompt discussion and insight into an aspect of American society that most citizen take for granted on a daily basis.
To begin, one must look at the American model. What does communication and media look like in “our” world? With Facebook, Twitter, email, and Skype, we are not at a lack for communication tools, and this is only a very abbreviated list of communication avenues. At this point in American society, there are communication options on a minute-by-minute basis, and we can, theoretically, remain in contact with thousands of people a day; this is the norm for the upcoming generations, and with communication tools become ever more usable and available, this is bound to only increase with time. Americans have the opportunity to communicate horizontally, and this in itself is a key aspect of the American model. This model encourages interaction, and while this may seem to be an obvious “right” to many Americans, it is revolutionary when looking at the rights to horizontal communication as recent as the 1990’s in the Soviet Union (9). How important it is to realize that Americans are living in an American model, to borrow from Starr, and that this model has not been universal accepted or understood in other parts of the world.
Moreover, in the American model, we taking advantage of this horizontal approach to communication on a daily – hourly – basis in our intake and reaction to news reports. There are numerous media outlets reporting – from their stance, of course – on a plethora of political issues, and we – in the most broad and general sense of the American population – typically have access to a variety of perspectives on a given issue in a matter of couple of seconds with a quick Google search. To use a cliché, “we have the world at our fingertips,” quite literally. And, this is not purely limited to the intake of information; rather, it is a reciprocal relationship, as Americans have the ability to interact with the source by writing a response – in agreement or disagreement – via the Internet; in essence, Americans have the unique ability to be receivers and participants in the communication framework of this society – a right, according to Starr, that would have been punishable at one time in England, France, and the Soviet Union if it involved the government or a governmental issue. Perhaps, it is also important to note again here that horizontal communication is still problematic in many countries and that the reciprocal interaction with the American model is not a globally accepted norm.
As Starr concludes in the last paragraph of his introduction, “the question is no longer whether a post-industrial, information society is coming; it has come;” it is the “American model” (19). This is the norm in American culture, but it also begs the question that if the United States is credited with being a power player in the advent of the modern communication culture, what is the “global influence of American media” (19)? What is the “responsibility,” to use Starr’s term, of the United States in reacting to and engaging with this issue in the global setting? We can infer that America has a unique role in this arena. Does the American model – in all communication avenues – play to the advantage of the American government as it attempts to exemplify democracy across the globe? Perhaps that is the question now at hand.
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