collective memory

Media and collective memory

Introduction

The essay is about the relation between collective memory and media. The focus of the essay is on the mechanism that is followed by media to shape collective memory. In addition to how media used to have powerful control on collective memory and how is their control is contested after the introduction of alternative media and social media. The domination of collective memory is harder with democratization of media. Mainstream media is the center that redefines common knowledge. Common knowledge can be defined as what we all know that all (or most) of us know. Common knowledge is the base of the social identity, hence the base of collective memory. Media is considered to be the store of collective memory. Mass media has the power of communicating with the people. The communication between mass media and the audience is mainly one-way or one-to-many communication, it is not interactive communication. Mass media is mainly the sender and the audience is the receiver. Therefore, the mass media has a high level of control on the process of collective remembering. Since the mass media has access to most individuals in the society, and the audience is aware of this fact, when the audiences are watching mass media they are aware of the changes that occurring in the common knowledge of the audiences. An individual of the audience realize that he or she is not the only one who is receiving the new information, hence a new common knowledge is created.

The relation between collective memory and media

Powerful media and cultural institutions are considered to be the store of collative memory. Media and cultural institution record archive and manage collective memory. One of the aspects of collective memory that is managed by powerful media and cultural institutions is collective public access. An individual might choose to remember what and when ever he or she likes. But for the collective remember, it would be very hard to trigger any collective remembering without the help of powerful media and cultural institution. For example, the national day of Canada would not be easily remembered collectively without the help powerful media covering it, and the cultural institution giving one day off to almost every one in the country. Another aspect of collective memory that is controlled by powerful media and cultural institution is the framing of remembering. Powerful media and cultural institution govern the context where memories are presented and the interpretation of them.

Powerful media and cultural institution are mainly writing the narrative in a way that glorifies cultural hegemony and the societies they serve (Hanson, p. 50). Although that media and cultural institution are only custodians and not the full rightful owner on national heritage, the level of their control is not matched by and other entity within the country (Hanson, p. 50).

This domination upon collective memory eliminates the spontaneousness or the natural existence of collective remembering. Powerful media and cultural institutions can tailor collective memory they way the see fit. Collective memory is a product; it does not exist by itself. Therefore, collective memory is manufactured, and the manufacturers are powerful media and cultural institution. Bulmler believes that we need to acknowledge the role of institutions, cooperation, commercial organization and industries that are heavily involved in recording, producing, storing, archiving, creating and making accessible memories of local, national, global significance (Hanson, p. 51).

Foucault believes that controlling memory means controlling experience. He argues “ since memory is actually a very important factor in struggle, if one controls people’s memory, ones control their dynamism. And one controls their experience, their knowledge of previous struggle” (Hanson, p. 55). One of the means that is used to reshape memories is cinema. William Adams is one of the veterans of Vietnam who demonstrated in his book the effect of cinema on collective memory about the war in Vietnam. Adams explained in his book “when Platoon was first released, a number of people asked me, Was the war really like that?, I never found an answer […] what really happened is now so thoroughly mixed up in my mind with what has been said about what happened that the pure experience is no longer there.[…] The Vietnam War is no longer a definite event so much as it is a collective and mobile script in which we continue to scrawl, erase, rewrite our conflicting and changing view of ourselves (Hanson, p. 52). William Adams testimony in his book demonstrates that media can even influence the memory of the people who witnessed an event of the past by them selves. Oscar winner producer David Puttman asks “Has Hollywood Stolen Our History?” (Hanson, p. 60). The controlling of memory is important for professionalism and institutionalism of cultural memory. Through the 20th century media (particularly broadcast media) has structured how citizen participate, create and recreate their nations’ past (Hanson, p. 53).

Some argue that media and cultural institutions should define them selves as an influential factor in cultural reproduction and renewal. (Hanson, p. 51). Nichols argue that media system should be for the people and of the people. Media fail to provide basic support for citizenship because it is owned by a handful of enormous conglomerates that have secured monopoly control of vast stretches of the media landscape (Hanson, p. 59).

The selective process of building collective memory by media

Hallin 's spheres refer to a theory of media coverage developed by political scientist Denial Hallin in his book The Uncensored War. It has three areas of media coverage into which a topic may fall. Media cover each area with different rules of objectivity. The areas are diagrammed as concentric circles referred to as spheres. From innermost to outer most they are: The sphere of consensus, the sphere of legitimate controversy, and the sphere of deviance.

The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics as Hallin proposed in his book (Allan, 2011, p, 82). The inner sphere encircles those social issues that are typically regarded by media, specially the ones from mainstream media, as being beyond partisan dispute and worth remembering. The things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they’re almost universal lie within this sphere. Hallin writes, “Media do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers”. Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will sense the bias of media. (Allan, 2011, p, 82).

The sphere of legitimate debate is the one that media recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. As Hallin explains “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors …”. In this sphere, objectivity and balance reign as the supreme media values (Allan, 2011, p, 83). Many events in this sphere is allowed to be part of collective memory, but without unification of interpretation.

The sphere of deviance is perceived by media and the political mainstream of society as unworthy of being heard and thus it is rejected. As in the sphere of consensus, media maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. Exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda encounters the issues that comes from the deviant sphere. The role of the deviant sphere, as Hallin explains it, is to mark out and defend the limits of acceptable political conduct. Hence, anything that happens in the deviant sphere should not be remembered by anyone.

Objectivity varies from one sphere to other. Objectivity in media refers to fairness, disinterestedness, and factuality, and nonpartisanship but most often encompasses all of these qualities. In each sphere objectivity is implemented differently. For the consensus sphere, objectivity can be built on common belief or generally accepted values instead of being built on solid facts. In the legitimate sphere of controversy, objectivity is implemented as it is defined by journalists, solely based on facts, neutral, and for public interest. In the deviant sphere objectivity is fading due to the selective process of news. News values, such as conflict, unexpected, timeliness, elite people and negativity, etc… are in general concentrated in the consensus sphere and controversy sphere. This make the coverage of deviant sphere rarely found in mainstream media.

For mainstream media the sphere of consensus is considered to be a sacred area that is considered to be unquestionable. In many occasion mainstream media are considering themselves as defenders of the consensus sphere which is the main source of collective memory.

Controlled media

Independency is a corner stone that Media cannot be successful without it. According to Herman and Chomsky, there are five filters that are influencing media in general; the five filters are ownership, advertising, sources, flack, and ideology.

In terms of ownership, most mainstream media outlets are influenced by it. Most of Mainstream media are for-profit and cannot survive without profit, which means that everything that is going to disturb their source of revenue will not be covered or maybe even suppressed by the media. With the high level of concentration and conglomeration in the media industry, the elite owners of media tend to merge with the political elite (Hanson, p. 59). The interests of mainstream media owners might prevent mainstream media from having full independency. On the other hand, most alternative media outlets are not for profit. Most of them alternative are intrinsically motivated, which lessens the influence of external factors.

Advertising is the second filter, which is considered to be the main income source for mainstream media. Advertisers are looking for purchasing power, which makes them target media outlets that have an audience with high purchasing power. Since the mainstream media cannot survive without the money of advertisers, they treat their audience as customers instead of dealing with them as citizens. Many mainstream media outlets are producing what interest the public and not what is considered to be public interest. Advertisers also realize how mainstream media is dependent on them, which gives advertisers influence over what mainstream media could or could not publish. For alternative media, the influence of advertisers is minimum if it exists at all. Since most of alternative media are not for profit, the independency of alternative media is very high.

The third filter is sources. The main source of information is government officials. Relaying on the sources is considered efficient and affective to mainstream media. The symbolic relation that media have with their information sources is driven by economic necessity and reciprocity of interests (Allan, 2011, p, 21). It is easy for mainstream media to use the steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news (Allan, 2011, p, 21). This filter is affecting both mainstream media and alternative media.

The fourth filter is “flack”. Flack means the negative responses to media content as a means of disciplining news organizations. Flack could take the form of a letter, phone call, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and bills before congress. Mainstream media is more sensitive to flack than alternative media is, due the mount of damage that could be caused to mainstream media. Therefore, mainstream media is rarely disturbing the area that could trigger a flack.

The final filter is ideology, which is defined by oxford dictionary as “ a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy”. Chomsky and Herman describe ideology as political control mechanism in their book Manufacturing Consent, and they add that “Ideology is the mean by which ruling economic classes generalize and extend their supremacy across the whole range of social activity, and naturalize it in the process, so that their rule is accepted as natural and inevitable; and therefore as legitimate and binding”. Therefore , ideology is considered to be the ruling ideas that are supported by the elites. The ruling ideas are constantly justified and normalized, and in many occasions are celebrated by mainstream media. Mainstream media tend to help maintain the statues quo and ensure that the danger of radical protest emerging to disturb the statues quo is sharply reduced (Allan, 2011, p, 18).

Mainstream media is more influenced by the five filters than alternative media is. On the other hand, the influence of mainstream media on the public sphere is bigger than the influence of alternative media. Can mainstream media reach the high level of influence without being influenced by the five filters? It seems that achieving a high level of influence in this interrelated world without being influenced is very difficult if not impossible. Alternative media on the other side exist to lessen the influence of the five filters, while being aware of the cost of not making alliances with the major forces in society. At the end, it is up to the awareness of the audience. In this constant battle between mainstream media and alternative media the responsibility of the audience has to be defined in order to know the role of the audience in this battle.

Democratization of collective memory

Mainstream media and social media define the consensus sphere differently. For mainstream media the consensus sphere is bigger than the consensus sphere of alternative media. Social media, specially the radical ones, tend to challenge dominant institutions, ideas, and values, while mainstream media mainly protect them. Mainstream media take the role of maintaining hegemony (Hanson, p. 50).

Hegemony in short can be defined as leading with consent. Hegemony is a concept that is much broader than ideologies. The hierarchal influence model and Hallen’s spheres are all embodied in Hegemony. There are three aspects of cultural dynamics of hegemony, lived process, matter of common sense, and always contested. The role of mainstream media is to maintain hegemony and lead the process of change and adaption. The role of alternative media and social media is to be the force that constantly challenges hegemony. Mainstream media dominating the first and second hegemony dynamics, lived process and common sense, by maintaining the system of meaning, value. While alternative media are dominating the third aspect, always contested, by activating the process of negotiation and renegotiation of hegemony.

Mainstream media is mainly focusing on the individual rather than on the structure that individuals are functioning within. For example, in an article in Globe And Mail about the scandal in the senate, the focus is on the two senators, while in another article from The THETYEE.CA the focus was on the structure and weather the senate is needed.

The role of mainstream media is demonstrated in not questioning the status quo, but always maintaining it by focusing on individuals rather than the system itself. Another example can be found on the coverage of war on Iraq. Mainstream media such as Fox News was fully with the government pounding the drums of war under the pretext of patriotism. War journalism dominated mainstream media, and the rhetoric of us versus them justified their biased coverage. While on the other hand DemocracyNow.org, which is an alternative media outlet, was questioning the war motive and standing away from emotional evaluations. Peace journalism dominated alternative media, which was defined by de-escalation and also known by victimization and vilify of both sides.

Conclusion

Collective memory is knowledge of the past that is shared by many, and the media control the process of sharing, hence is controls collective memory. Powerful media are considered to be the store of collative memory. Media and cultural institution record archive and manage collective memory. Mainstream media is the center that redefines common knowledge, which is the base of collective memory. Media has a huge influence on collective memory, but with democratization of media due to the technology advancement, people can communicate directly and create collective memory without the supervision of mainstream media.

References

Allan, Stuart. (2011). News culture. (3rd ed). New York: Open University Press.

Skinner, David. ‘Ch. 13: Minding the growing gaps’ Shade, L.R., et al. Mediascapes: News patterns in Canadian Communication, 3rd ed. Canadian: Nelson Education Limited, 2009 ISBN: 978176500351, pp. 221 to 236,16 of 433 pages. Copyrights: Nelson Education Limited, 2009.
Hanson, (2011), Media And Memory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.

References: Allan, Stuart. (2011). News culture. (3rd ed). New York: Open University Press. Skinner, David. ‘Ch. 13: Minding the growing gaps’ Shade, L.R., et al. Mediascapes: News patterns in Canadian Communication, 3rd ed. Canadian: Nelson Education Limited, 2009 ISBN: 978176500351, pp. 221 to 236,16 of 433 pages. Copyrights: Nelson Education Limited, 2009. Hanson, (2011), Media And Memory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.