Media, Culture & Society is a journal comprised of research and discussion into the media, with 1 volume published each year made up of 8 issues, by Sage Publications. For-Anyone-as-Someone Structures is an essay from Volume 22, Issue 1 published in 2000, and was written by Paddy Scannell.
Using ontologies from Being and Time (originally Sein und Zeit), which examines being, and was written by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in 1927, Scannell explains how media is a for-someone-as-anyone structure because of how it is shared by us all.
For-anyone structures:
These structures are best represented by mass-produced goods as they can be used by and are useful for anyone due to their easily reproduced design.
Mass communication is a for anyone structure. Researchers used to think of this medium to simply be used in order to transmit a message so it was seen as being manipulative in the way the transmitter of the message could be seen as being the one in control, with the audience being powerless.
'The rear view' image of media suggests that when new media is first introduced it is similar to its predecessor, only eventually separating itself and creating an identity for itself.
For-someone structures:
If a structure is for-someone it can be used only by the particular person it was designed for and is useless to anybody else. In media these are hand-written letters, snapshots, and home videos, which everyone has, but each have different personal meanings to different people that can not be seen by others in the same way. This means for-someone structures have an inward nature as they show someone's personal life and memories.
For-anyone-as-someone structures:
These are evident mainly in shared culture such as songs or novels, which are always both for me and for anyone, showing the social life of humans.
Television communicates by saying and showing. However, it is the element of saying that has caused problems as the audience is always unknown to the speaker on the screen. This had to be discovered and built upon over time once radio started speaking to its audience with the thought that each and every listener was an individual, also thinking about the locations within which they were listening.
Television news works much like this so that they are believable. This is dependant not only on the content of the headlines, but also on how it is told and by who, meaning news programmes typically use the same presenter, or group of presenters, daily.
Addressing the audience by looking directly at the camera implies that the presenter knows there is someone outside the studio who they are talking to, which is always 'me'. Because of this, a relationship between presenter and viewer is created which gives the transmission, but not the headlines, the feel of being a real-time, real-world event because the viewer feels like they are a part of it.
But this is not just exclusive to an individual but can be shared, as many people do by talking about last night's news at work the next day, meaning that a common, sociable world is created between people by for-anyone-as-someone structures.
Available self:
Self expression is outward, so if someone does not have a right to self expression in public, they can not be seen as a person. A person's personal views can be expressed and therefore matter, to other people.
But the me I am right now is not who I have always been, but is something I have become over time. This happens to everyone over the entire span of their lifetime, until death, when, according to Heidegger in Being and Time, my own dasein, the human being I actually am, appears. This is because death has a for-someone structure, the own-self, as ones own death only affects ones own entire lifetime, but is unaffected by the life span of another.
The ordinary dasein is created by the fact that everybody can become anyone, because of the changes that happen to being over a lifetime. Therefore, it has a for-anyone structure, the they-self.
Between these is the myself, the for-someone-as-anyone structure, which is defined by the phrase: 'being is in each case mine'. This is because everybody is a being, therefore I am also a being.
'Mass society' indicates that everyone has the same interests and opinions, which form the public opinion. However, everybody discovers they have an opinion which is reflective of the current public mood. In this discovery and by acting to express this opinion, helps to create the historical mood, the 'climate' of that time.
In turn, this creates historical phenomenon, which is when something happening in a specific time period is discovered and named (such as racism or sexism), therefore making the masses aware of its existence and capable to act on and give their opinions about it.
This is affected by the horizon of the historical-social, which is always 'there' for everyone and anyone. It is this background that comes to the foreground when public opinion is expressed, therefore marking the current historical mood. Because historical phenomenons are discovered, history begins to moves as individuals, the 'mass society' discovering how the current time period is affecting their own lives and acting on it. This is the overlap of the for-anyone structure of the historical-social horizon, with the for-someone structure of an individuals own experience of and reaction to the time they are living in. The reactions of the horizon with individuals experiences create a for-anyone-as-someone structure.
However, there are the separate life-worlds of individuals and the common public world. History is shown through public affairs, which analyses the life-world but is present in the common public world through news creating a for-anyone-as-someone structure as mentioned above.
These two worlds can be understood through two ontologies: A and B. Ontology A is an object world of objects, defined by the indefinite article ('a' and 'an') ,and can be seen as a for-anyone structure like the common public world. Ontology B is a world where everything has a significance, defined by the definite article ('the'), and can be seen as a for-someone structure like an individuals life-world.
But significance lies in how the thing is used and how it matters to particular individuals, meaning ontology A is dependent on ontology B as significance can be given to objects by individuals.
The available self is the one that belongs to an individual (mine) but is on display to others. It is the self that is shown through how it gives objects significance, creating ones own life world in the common public world.
However the 'realest' self is not the they-self (ordinary dasein) or the own-self (own dasein), but is instead the myself ('being is in each case mine'). Therefore, for-anyone-as-someone structures balance between for-someone structures, and for-anyone structures.
Available time:
Human being is being temporal, represented by the fact everyone has a lifetime. Following ontology A, things go on indefinitely, for an unlimited amount of time. But, following ontology B the time of an individual's life is a definite factor limiting the time of their being, giving each life significance.
However, this time of being is shared by each individual with others, creating a shared temporality between beings, almost like generational time, meaning this common world has a common time.
All broadcasting is set by a schedule that is continuous, whether anyone is watching or not, creating a sense of ordinariness to TV as it runs with everyday life. Under this lies uniformity, as it has a for-anyone structure, because the timetables follows standard time. Because of this dailyness, TV actually has a temporality, which has a for-someone-as-anyone structure as the schedule is constantly changing each day. What each individual hears and sees each day is not personal just to them, but is seen and heard by millions of others, who do not necessarily all see and hear it in the same way. This does mean though, that a common public world is created by all aspects of TV (not just news) as it becomes the subject of millions of everyday conversations.
What this does show is that everyday subjects are important enough to create conversations where people have different opinions, and in doing so the media is treated like a person, with views and attributes which matter. This is heightened by the increasing accessibility to the media, meaning it is beginning to matter more and more to anyone anywhere.
What this means is the now is being doubled into the now of broadcasting, located where the broadcast is transmitted from and connecting individuals together as the same subject matters to all of them collectively, as well as the now of listening and viewing, which is wherever the viewer/listener is. The way schedules are structured daily makes this double now evident, as they determine the structure of days, joining individual life-worlds to the common public world, and creating memories and therefore, history.
Each day is significant because each day there are new significant matters. History is now able to become a part of each individual's life-worlds because media means it matters to each individual, and is not written, making it something that happened previously, as writing creates a past.
Instead, history seems to happen in the present due to the media's temporality. However, as it happens now, this institutional time is focused towards the future, shown by the media as they must broadcast the headlines as they happen, therefore must be one step ahead in order to capture them. Without this institutional time, always in anticipation of coming generations, the now that makes history matter to individuals could not exist. Generation after generation, the human world continues on the basis of structures which have a temporality, allowing them to constantly re-generate, meaning it has a for-anyone structure and is the they-world. The my-world is specific to individuals so has a for-someone structure and is limited by it's individual's lifetime.
Media that is constantly changing daily, such as radio, TV, and newspapers, join the they-world and my-world, creating the our-world, the common public world, which has a for-someone-as-anyone structure.
References:
Scannell, P. (2000) 'For-anyone-as-someone structures' In: Media, Culture & Society 22 (1)
Comments
Post a Comment