How to criticize media; or be critical to the mass media or mediation

Is it really your politics?

It is nowadays a common non-phenomenal circumstance to make a ground on the other side of the popular mass media or mediated contents. Although people have to be grounding for their individual social positioning in contrast to the power exertion and socialization process of mass media, the individual audience in most of the time takes the lesson of social positioning from the mainstream media. It is therefore a must-do job for an individual audience to get accustomed with the mediated content on the one side and to criticize on the other hand in contrast to his/her own temporal positioning in the public sphere.

What do mass media do? In between media and audience

It is not a simple question as it looks like for many aspects of its manifestation or what people usually accord in common understanding with it. The first approach toward its non-simplicity is that audience-people in any common cultural understanding or plane largely appear to be media-expert, media-friendly, media-observant, counter opinion maker and many such identities what comes suitable at any moment. In other side of such arbitrary identities media people at the back a typically capitalist corporate establishment often commonly manifest protectionist approach within organization and outright opinion maker in the operating society. So the question ‘what do media do?’ appears to be highly monolithic in nature at least to set public agenda and policy agenda in any point of time and space. So the audience in this condition hardly gets any space to criticize media content in general.

Media in this conditional space perpetrate certain jobs for its own hypercommercial purpose:

(i) locate and identify the targeted people;

(ii) form the audience;

(iii) prepare suitable programme contents [news, soaps and any other entertainment material];

(iv) influence the audience [viewing process];

(v) stimulate audience action [in short run];

(vi) change audience behaviour [in the ling run];

Media therefore gradually use the so called democratic space not just trivially to perpetrate ideal duties [to inform, to entertain, to educate, to…all other responsible duties] but to sustain its commercial corporate existence, earn maximized business in terms of turn-over and reach. Media here also played its nationalist role altogether in the post world war global perspective. In India the union government once used mass media extensively to disseminate public agenda along with policy agenda in three four decades since independence. People at that time were not in a position to at least open the lips. Gone are however those days as nationalist media largely being replaced by the hypercommercial media have lost its existence. 

What then do people do to its media?

If it at all appears to be a question accepted in any social format, people do not possess any form of statutory right to do anything substantial for media but to pose a responsible citizen as media-audience following democratic norm. Many will not agree with such harsh and passive looking condition for a growing belief that what media do is just for public perusal. Just for public consumption media produce contents. Mass audience have become gradually more and more active as individuals get enough amount of space to interact with media.

Whatever commonly spoken or uttered hovers close to bankruptcy of such concepts when audience recognizes interaction with the media in contrast to his/her shrunken space in public sphere. The growth of hyperreal mediation not only fictionalizes the reality with many fabricated counter-real arguments but also redefines all social spaces like political, economic, cultural etc. Thus an election oriented talk-show often fabricates the show in a set of a ‘boxing ring’. Such a presentation nevertheless proposes audience activism to make the programme successful outside the media in public sphere. Audience on the other side often transports the content in various lanes public sphere, like discussions in tea shops, lanes and rocks etc.

What is hypercommerciality?

The commerciality of media or consumption of media contents by the audience are often loosely derived as a choice-customization of an individual by Transnational Industrial Corporations (TNC) in any region-state thus defines the hypercommerciality of media. The hypercommeriality therefore moves beyond the once traditional corporate commerciality that only defined the institutional perpetuity. Hypercommerciality appears to be a ‘combined effect syndrome’ of large scale mediation and heavy viewing of media. Huge and incessant mediation greatly influence audience behaviour with a massive homogeneous behavioural effect that causes lowering of reactive space in an individual mind. Hypercommerciality thus dissolves all barriers between fiction and reality even in a finer space that goes beyond audience psyche. So the audience has no option but to consume the mediation.

The hypercommerciality of media thus appears to be a post ‘active audience’ analysis what Joseph Klapper, Denis McQuail et.al. proposed in 1960s in contrast to the dominant media paradigm phase with a clear notion that audience is equally active while they watch media; they usually choose the programme content what they want to view or read. This activism toward using media to gratify individual needs becomes a highly monolithic syndrome extensively used by the media conglomerates in post-eighties period. Thus far beyond the activism of just switching the channels over and surfing the channels, this individual mechanism of media viewing was the USP of media houses throughout the world.

Hypercommerciality thus proposes an outright consumption of media contents and substantial use of such contents in suitable places. As aircrafts need a runway or an airport to operate, such media contents also need a hyperreal space where the consumption can take place. Audience is just supposed to attend such mediated place to hang out and rediscover all mediated symbolic contents; so are they very active audience!!!

Media vs. Ideology? Progressive use of the Mediation?

In such a situation people nevertheless feel there is much space left for launching a huge protest against such mediation and criticize mediated contents. It is almost a counter use of the same media space for progressive and people’s purpose. The progressive use of mediation thus can be traced out:

(i) producing progressive contents using same mediation technology;

(ii) producing a content for a specific causal factor; may be a political issue;

(iii) producing for the making of an ideology; may be a mass political ideology;

(iv) producing for a specific targeted mass for a specific time and space;

(v) revival of ‘to inform-to educate’ syndrome;

(vi) producing benevolent contents for the mass;

(vii) redefining social awareness more than the popular use of mediation;

(viii) more and more participation in popular mediation programmes;

Audience on the other hand needs also to be classified for the underscored progressive use of mediation: 

(i) audience mostly in traditional middle class public spheres;

(ii) audience in an upper social-class formats;

(iii) audience in hyperreal spaces; shopping malls, water parks, viewing newer channels etc.

(iv) audience regularly migrating from traditional residing places to newly transformed hypercommercial office places.

(v) audience promoting democratic norms;

(vi) audience as opinion leaders;

(vii) audience promoting individual ideology; ideology of a rock band etc.

(viii) audience vanguards of a mass political ideology;

(ix) audience ‘partial’ vanguards of political ideology; i.e. representatives of mass organizations; more socially promoted; earlier Marxian social identities.

(x) audience of rural, urban identity specifications;

The progressive use of mediation is thus a competitive replication of popular mediation guided by a socially upgraded ideology that covers maximum benefit of the common mass in contrast to the unlimited entertainment mediation of media conglomerates. So in such cases progressive mediation following the same path of popular mediation promotes somewhere a different mode of ideological dealing.

Criticizing in such a huge gap between mediation and audience-ship

It now though not difficult to undertake an opinion-building process, often comes out very difficult to criticize the popular mediation being in traditional public spheres. Such a huge gap between progressive mediation, audience-ship and popular mediation creates a huge space-jolt for the mass audience to consolidate a non-bourgeois political ideology; or the Left ideology precisely. Mass audience nevertheless criticize media contents, launch debates in public spheres, democratic spaces often play a crucial role to become real vanguards of ideology somewhere more than the mass leaders and political offices. The common oppositions here in such cases are the nationalist bourgeoisie; right political opportunist forces, and newly emerged postcolonial violent extremist forces.