Media Capitalism

Introduction:

Throughout the centuries, media has played a key role in the development of companies and in the incubation of capitalism mutations. The history of media shows that media and its effects have been around since the beginning of humanity and have been conglomerating into different nations developing the methods of communication. According to the French radical theoretician Regis Debray, there are “three historical ages of transmission technologies: the logo-sphere, the grapho-sphere, and the newly born video-sphere” (Griscom, 2009). Indeed, these ages recall the use of different ways of media throughout different periods of time. The logo-sphere the age of writings, technology, and faith; whereas the grapho-sphere is the age of print, political ideologies, and laws; and the video-sphere is the age of multimedia broadcasting, models, and opinions. In the German Ideology, Marx said that “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it” (McChesney, 2009). Therefore, we can say that media now plays a salient role in shaping the information distributed and consumed by the society, but also the powers of perception, the political, social and economic systems, and the building of truth. Throughout the eras, media has been invading different realms and sectors; Since Marx’s time, “the means of mental production in society have expanded into a globalizing capitalist media and cultural industry that encompasses both print and electronic mediums, news and entertainment” (McChesney, 2009). A huge number of companies have launched their businesses to the global market. They consider the global market as a profitable market where they can expend their products. Modern capitalism is not about family businesses but those of big corporations. These companies can raise capital from banks to finance their growth instead of getting debts. To reach their goals, these institutions need a legal structure, a stock market and access to relevant information which is media. Media dispose of a unique privilege which is the monopoly of information flow all around the world. The abundance of new media mean and new social networks have been considered as a way of pluralism and freedom of expression. In fact, large Multinational and banks are the ones controlling the media concentration. Thus, the aim behind this paper is to discuss the use of media in the implementation of capitalism into the society using the case of Media Capitalism in Egypt.

Media Capitalism

If in medieval times the approach to a city was dominated by the spires of its castles, nowadays it is clear that high buildings become the predominant once; which means that spaces reserved to business activities is becoming larger and powerful. All business activities necessitate strategic planning, clear processes, and a good system of information. Thus, having a good system of interchanging information is a very important matter. Media is an essential tool in communicating information; “it is one of the key areas in society where power is exercised, reinforced and contested” (McChesney, 2009). We cannot imagine the elections, the political projects, and high investments without a media platform. Before the 20th century, few mass produced commercial media products were consumed. Later things started changing; Capitalism became the dominant way of distributing and producing information to the society. According to McChesney, it is at this period where “media has become central to politics” (McChesney, 2009). A widely held and reiterated argument for capitalism is that it is a brilliant complement to democracy; that the two systems, economic and political respectively, go together hand in hand. The justification of this position refers to the “bidirectional stimulation of growth”; where capitalism creates a “constituency for personal freedoms” through the free market and the “transparency and accountability” of democratic systems prevents much of the corruption that would otherwise obstruct a capitalist economy (Dahl, 1998). It is also believed that the two systems contribute to the utility of the whole by giving the ability for each member to seek his or her own self-interest.

Egypt and the media capitalism

In Egypt, during the beginning of the 20th century, fragmented and localized forms of identity were replaced with the new concepts of community, which for the first time had the ability to collectively conquer the majority of the Egyptians. The activism of Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) and the democratic message of the Watani Party started the process of defining and promoting the urban Egyptian nationalism. After the death of Kamil in 1908, there was a need to mobilize “new domestic constituencies in order to build a more broadly based independence movement” (Lockman, 2004). Accordingly, the mobilization of the Egyptian urban masses, and their “incorporation into the Egyptian nation,” was mainly due to the materialization and the manifestation of a variety of mass media leading to a growth in the national audience.

The increasing availability and popularity of non-print media, such as the music industry or the theater industry contributed as much as any print media to the molding of national choices and tastes, leading to the creation of a national community. Print-capitalism, as explained by Benedict Anderson in his Imagined Communities, was an important component in inaugurating the national identity. However, in a nation like Egypt, “where literacy rates were low, non-print media played an important role in shaping the identities” (Anderson, 1991). Anderson’s discussed also the “print-capitalism” and stated that not only it minimizes the relationship between the written and spoken word but it also misses the propagating efficacy of sound media, which unlike print media have the advantage of reaching directly a large range of people including illiterate ones. Therefore, “media-capitalism” is more suitable for examining the cultural processes taking place; it is expansive enough to combine all forms of mass media including print, performance, recording, and broadcast media, and it explains more comprehensively the potential insertion and participation of everyone regardless of the education or the literacy level. The theories stated of Anderson have merit on the surface, but still this latter does not take into consideration the specific properties of the Egyptian nation. Benedict Anderson’s theory does not take into account the “di-glossia” of Arabic, which created a “split vernacular” between the variations of Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic of all Arab countries today (Armbrust, 1996). For Instance, Egyptian Arabic is the exclusive language used in the daily communications, songs, jokes, cartoons, movies, television series, and other non-print media; however, the Modern Standard Arabic is not the spoken language in Egypt but a formal form of Arabic used mainly in text books, television news, and in print media.

From its beginnings, modern Egyptian mass media became a powerful cultural vehicle in the first two decades of the 20th century and had a big influence on the Egyptian society. These media, especially vaudeville and the music industry, which went beyond the bounds of literacy, gave the chance for the colloquial Egyptian culture to develop an “increasingly national forum of comprehensible, universally accessible, and socially relevant public discussions about political community, class, national identity, and British imperialism” (Fahmy, 2010). It is the totality of these new media, working together to entertain and inform, that produced new shared discourses about the national identity, creating a unified community. Eventually, The most effective and direct agent for the distribution of Egyptian “collective identity” was the newly formed performance and recording mass media, which removed the gap by mediating between the words and their sounds through the non-print media. “The key driving force in this emerging colloquial media-capitalism was monetary gain, which called for the almost exclusive use of colloquial Egyptian as opposed to print media and for an overall catering to the cultural tastes of the majority of Egyptians” (Fahmy, 2010). The mass-culture industry simultaneously helped in forming the mass taste through it’s the standardization of cultural production. The result was an interchange between the consumers and the producers of the mass culture, making the authenticity stronger and insuring the popularity of these new productions (Bakhtin, 1986).

Conclusion:

Theoretically, the public should have the power to have strong influence in the political and economical decision of their countries. This influence should not be enforced only by the elections and votes but also the window of the media. The media should credibly reflect the public opinion. This public opinion should be represented by governments under the check of the media. Otherwise, the media should take the public side and report the inefficiency of the government. However, the media industry is constantly growing; therefore, media is no more considered as the “watchdog” and “fourth institution” of the government. The quality and the reliability of news are less and less precise and credible; because,

nowadays media is considered more as source of entertainment and profitability than a source of information and news. The public is blinded by all the commercials and advertising they are exposed to. They do not care anymore about the accuracy of the news and the information they are exposed to.

References

Amanda Griscom, 2009. Trends of Anarchy and Hierarchy: comparing the cultural Repercussions of Print and Digital Media. Retrieved from: http://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/infotech/asg/ag5.html

An interview with Robert McChesney, 2009. Media Capitalism, the state and 21st century Media Democracy Struggles. Socialist Project, E-Bulletin, No.246. Retrieved from: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/246.php

Dahl, Robert. On Democracy. Yale University Press. 1998.

Zachary Lockman, 1994. “Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism, and Class Formation in Egypt,1899–1914,” Poetics Today 15

Benedict Anderson, 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Verso Press), 37–46.

Walter Armbrust, 1996. Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 37–62.

Ziad Fahmy, 2010. Media- Capitalism: Colloquial Mass Culture and Nationalism in Egypt, 1908 – 18. Int. J. Middle East Stud. 42 (2010), 83–103

Mikhail Bakhtin, 1986. “Towards a Methodology of the Human Sciences,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press), 169–72.

References: Amanda Griscom, 2009. Trends of Anarchy and Hierarchy: comparing the cultural Repercussions of Print and Digital Media. Retrieved from: http://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/infotech/asg/ag5.html An interview with Robert McChesney, 2009. Media Capitalism, the state and 21st century Media Democracy Struggles. Socialist Project, E-Bulletin, No.246. Retrieved from: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/246.php Dahl, Robert. On Democracy. Yale University Press. 1998. Zachary Lockman, 1994. “Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism, and Class Formation in Egypt,1899–1914,” Poetics Today 15 Benedict Anderson, 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Verso Press), 37–46. Walter Armbrust, 1996. Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 37–62. Ziad Fahmy, 2010. Media- Capitalism: Colloquial Mass Culture and Nationalism in Egypt, 1908 – 18. Int. J. Middle East Stud. 42 (2010), 83–103 Mikhail Bakhtin, 1986. “Towards a Methodology of the Human Sciences,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press), 169–72.