Worship To Mass Communication Media: An Abnormal Relationship Between Mass And Media In Contemporary Society

This dissertation investigated the relationship between the masses and the mass media in the contemporary society and drew the conclusion that the masses are increasingly dependent on media, which finally lead to Being Media. The status and function of mass media are getting more outstanding. Based on its superiority on specialization and high-tech, mass media is now of great authorities, meanwhile by cooperating with political, economic and cultural capital it gained more and more resources and power. Under this background, though the public can use all sorts of media skillfully, they may not capable to control them rationally, so the mass and the mass media now form a deviant relationship— worship to communication media in contemporary society. This dissertation is composed of three parts:The first part described the survival way of being media, and summarized some characteristics on how the masses use media. This part brought forward a new concept—the worship to communication media. This concept was defined as a situation of over-dependence, addiction, over credulous, obey blindly and being misled which existed in the masses' using mass media. The crux of this worship is that the masses reach a compromise to some lure of contemporary mass media, and it's also alienation and assimilation.The second part searched the cause of this worship from aspects of social basis and psychological factor. Media's core position in contemporary social structure, modes of information communication and orientation of mass media in contemporary social system together set up the foundation for the worship to communication media. The social basis could act on this worship only through psychological mechanism of the masses. The mass media can meet the public's demands in the following fields: pursuing for infinite while living in a finite world, eliminating fears through dependence, seeking ideal by overcoming reality and acquiring identity through imitation etc.. Mass media infiltrated these into the public's mind and constituted the main psychological factors of this worship.The third part analyzed three expressions of the worship to communication media: the worship to media technology, the worship to media power and the worship to media idolatry. The worship to media technology represented technical complex of contemporary public in mass communication field. This type of worship includes deep dependence on, seeking blindly to, and unrealistically optimistic view on media technology. The typical expression can be found in the idea of supreme speed, superstitious belief of image reality, and modern electronic Utopia etc. The media power is the unity of property of power organizations and ability property of intervening society. The origin of media power is production ability of power, which produced knowledge, audience and the worship mentality. The object of this worship consists of rights of speech, status -endowing and society-supervising. The worship magnified these powers, and led to media's offside and misplacement. The modern idol is produced and communicated by mass media, so modern idol is actually media idol. The media idolatry reflected collusive relationship among modern idol, mass media and audiences.