This reading took me back to foundation literature of Adorno & Horkheimer, Baudrillard and Merton & Lazarsfeld. It also generated the following questioning around which I will attempt to organize my response: how is today’s society shaped by the prevailing imaginary presented by the culture industry? How can social media play a role to challenge the prevailing imaginary? Can participatory culture generate changes of mass messages (or the prevailing imaginary)? What does it mean for social marketing?

I found the argument made by Professor Barone regarding how film create prevailing imaginary very compelling. It is also pertinent to so many other social issues which are often misrepresented by the media. The mass media, and by extension the culture industry, is still very driven by ratings and profit margin. And what sells is drama. Therefore, what we see and read about is always tainted by the need for extreme: the hero who survives the many struggles, the criminal who commits the worst of crimes. The ordinary is boring. And so ordinary people with ordinary lives who don’t have a lot of connection with a particular social issues or a particular social group will have their vision of it shaped by what prevails in the culture industry and the mass media?

To me, this has a pervasive effect on both the outsiders and the insiders. First, those who are not in contact with that issue/group (outsiders) will continue to have misconceptions of it. These misconceptions will eventually become a true representation in the mind of the outsiders who do not seek out a counterbalanced set of images. This “truth” will be shared with their friends and family and will further skew perceptions. Second, the group targeted by the prevailing imaginary (insiders) may come to believe that this is the reality with which they have to live, eventually replicating behaviors offered by the culture industry.

This is particularly true of ethnic and/or cultural identity and I will not go further into the issue because the literature on the subject is quite extensive. Suffice to say that the culture industry and mass media (in particular television and visual media) play a role in the formation of a child’s identity, the extent of which is determined by the presence of other influences such as parents, teachers, role models, etc. Unfortunately, in the case of single parent families or where both parent have to be away from home long hours because of financial constraints (often working two jobs), there are fewer opportunities to offer a counterbalance to images offered by the culture industry. So the insider that has little or no access to alternate images might adopt behaviors, attitudes and/or beliefs that adhere to the images he or she is presented with, while the outsider comes to expect prevailing behaviors, attitudes and/or beliefs generated by the culture industry and mass media.

Although this might sound like a gloomy scenario, I think that there is some validity to it, or at least to the idea behind it. But can social media really challenge the prevailing imaginary generated by the culture industry and mass media? Marshall McLuhan envisioned that the electronic media would lead to a global village based on transparency of information and communication. With the spread of mass media, McLuhan and many other “optimists” saw an opportunity for participation of the people. Is it really much different today? Do we think that we are living in a participatory revolution while we are just replicating old behaviors? I don’t know and to answer that would go beyond the scope of this blog (and the time that I have) but it is an interesting question (for me anyway). I keep coming back to the old article by Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton (Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action), in which they argue that mass media act as a social narcotic. Because there is so much information about political and social issues, people can stay informed. The time that people could spend participating in organized social action on a political or social issue, is instead spent on keeping up with all the information available regarding that issue. At the end of the day, you can go to bed with a clear conscience that you are keeping yourself informed. The article, written in 1948, seemed even more relevant today where one has to spend so much time keeping up with the flow of information and communication. Just think about how much time you spend everyday cleaning your inbox, or navigating from one website to another, when all you wanted to do was look up a term on wikipedia!

But I digress. Going back to the prevailing imaginary. It is true that is has become easier and more affordable than ever to create you own content and share it with the world. This might lead us to believe that we can affect the imaginary and more easily offer that counterbalanced view of the world. And it might be true in a certain way because it does open communication channels that weren’t there before. But to what extent are we preaching to the converted? What percentage of the population uses social media? And more importantly, which segments of the population? Urban vs Rural? Generations? What are the demographics? In my point of view, we (users of social media) tend to be very optimistic when we think about the power of social media, user-generated content, etc. While it does offer the opportunity to present and access various discourses that would otherwise not find their way into the mass media, we have to keep in mind that it is only as powerful as the number of people it affect.