The Bias of Mediatization: Utopia in Charlottesville

Nikola Mlađenović

Abstract


The paper reconstructs Harold innis’ idea of media’s bias. It is argued that media construct a view of the future in line with temporalized Platonism that excludes people that belong to the past. The clash of statues and media in Charlottesville presented mediatization as a progressive but not dialectical force. Statues and media did not check each other’s biases. Media embody the confrontation of authority and publicity (Habermas) or the Enlightenment and Absolutism (Koselleck). After the neoliberal commercialization, the Enlightenment acquired the form of utopian future that confronts the media logic against conservative forces. The truth is constructed according to the prescribed future. Trump blamed all, in accordance with the Absolutist principle. Commercial media professionalism stood by its Enlightenment origins and accused Trump of revitalizing forces of the past. Because most citizens were against taking down the statues, commercialized media logic was less receiver steering than the public service media.


Keywords


mediatization; neoliberalism; populism; bias of communication; Donald Trump

Full Text:

PDF

References


Balibar E. (2015). Citizenship. Cambridge: Polity.

Bjerre H. J. (2016). Freedom of Expression in the Era of the Privatization of Reason. Akademisk kvarter, Vol. 14, pp. 12-25.

Bonefeld W. (2017). Strong State and the Free Economy. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Chomsky N. (1989). Necessary Illusions. London: Pluto Press.

Couldry N. (2014). Mediatization and the future of field theory. In K. Lundby (Ed.), Mediatization of Communication. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 227-249.

Curran J. (2011). Media and Democracy. London: Routledge.

De Vreese C.H. (2014). Mediatization of News: The Role of Journalistic Framing. In: F. Esser, J. Stromback (Eds.), Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies. Palgrave MacMillan: New York, pp. 137–156.

Fairclough N. (2018). CDA as Dialectical Reasoning. In: J. Flowerdew, J. Richardson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. Routledge: London, pp. 13–26.

Friedman M. (1982). Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Habermas J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Habermas J. (2012). The crisis of the European Union. Cambridge: Polity.

Hayek F. (1998). Law, Legislation and Liberty. London: Routledge.

Hepp A. (2013). Cultures of Mediatization. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hjarvard S. (2013). Mediatization of Culture and Society. London: Routledge.

Honneth A. (1995). The Struggle for Recognition. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Inglehart R. and Norris P. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the rise of Populism. Paper presented at the 24th World Congress of the International Political Science Association.

Innis H. (2008). The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Koselleck R. (1988). Critique and Crisis. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Koselleck R. (2002). The Practice of Conceptual History. Stanford: Stanford University

Press.

Koselleck R. (2004). Futures Past. New York: Columbia University Press.

Marcuse H. (1969). An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.

Marcuse H. (1972). Counterrevolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press.

Marcuse H. (1991). One-Dimensional Man. London: Routledge.

Mazzoleni G. (2014) Mediatization and political populism. In F. Esser and J. Stromback (Eds.), Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 42-57.

Močnik R. (2017). Beyond fascism? Historical Parallels and Structural Specificities of Post-Socialism. Tiempo devorado, Vol. 4 (1), pp. 146-165.

Nozick, R. (1999). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.

Peruško Z. (2017). Mediatization: From Structure to Agency (and back again). In O. Driessens, A. Hepp, S. Hjarvard and G. Bolin (Eds.), Dynamics of mediatization: Institutional change and everyday transformations in a digital age. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 57-85.

Rustow, A. (1980). Freedom and Domination. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Streeck W. (2011). The Crises of Democratic Capitalism. New Left Review, Vol. 71, pp. 5-29.

Stromback, J. (2008). Four Phases of Mediatization: An Analysis of the Mediatization of Politics. Press/Politics, Vol. 13(3), pp. 228-243.

Van Dijk T. (2018). Socio-Cognitive Discourse Studies. In: J. Flowerdew, J. Richardson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. Routledge: London, pp. 26–44.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/ms.2019.3.69-81
Date of publication: 2019-10-16 16:31:03
Date of submission: 2018-06-29 14:20:35


Statistics


Total abstract view - 1265
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 0

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2019 Nikola Mlađenović

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.