International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Communication technologies have been seen both as instrumental and as destructive to democratic processes. The advent of the print media is intrinsically linked with the struggle for civil liberties and the construction of contemporary nations. At the same time their destructive capacities became equally clear when, for instance, at the end of the nineteenth century Hearst propagated war against Spain, and the French newspapers assisted in dividing the country during the Dreyfus affair, some of them relying heavily on anti-Semitic imagery. Similarly, the audiovisual media brought political voices and faces into the living room, but after Goebbels's usage of the radio waves, their democratic capacity could no longer be taken for granted. Communication technologies are not necessary neutral instruments in the service of Enlightenment. They are always embedded in ideological constellations that may be democratic, but also may be totalitarian. An equally tempting myth is the belief that communication technologies are the driving force of society, and that the development of new technologies will necessarily and fundamentally change our society. This techno-deterministic myth collapses the social into the technological, ignoring the complexity of the social. In this context Williams's (1999 , 133) remark should be borne in mind: “While we have to reject technological determinism, ... log in or subscribe to read full text