We live in an era of fear. Fear of violence. Fear of bloodshed. Fear of obscurity. Fear of falling behind. Our society places an enormous value on material belongings. The prevalence of advertising and our consumerist Western culture is testament to that. Furthermore, the fault of our dependence on government lies singlehandedly and unequivocally with the mass media.
The past decade has seen an unsurpassed level of technological and scientific advancement. This is paralleled by a shift in intellectual enquiry, geared towards the close observation and interrogation of governmental administration. George W. Bush, and his doctrine of fear – which finds its origins in his opportunistic reactions to the terrible and unforgettable September 11 attacks – have held sway over not only the American, but the international Western consciousness, for the majority of this last decade. The September 11 attacks were the catalyst for the formation of an environment of uncertainty and paranoia reminiscent of the milieu within which communism, nuclear hysteria, and fear thereof, were allowed to fester. The difference, in the modern age, lies in the power of the media, and the power of technology, to disseminate opinion and bias.
The advent of the blog, which, I feel, is a step in the direction of an overly biased, yet distinctly unmediated and unrestrained form of socio-political and cultural commentary – towards Habermas’ ideal public sphere – heralds a new era of citizen activism. People – ordinary, everyday folk – now have been granted a voice, irrespective of the amount of listeners, the magnitude of reception. All 20 million Australians have the opportunity, and (though it may take some work and money) the resources to make their stories, their opinions, and their ideas about their nation and their world, available for that world to see, read, reference and absorb.
Technology has made this cultural vacancy possible. The Internet, in all its anarchic glory, is the vehicle through which the multitude can be heard. Consider Iraq, that most war-torn and violence-ridden nation, whose inhabitants are reduced to statistics after car bombings and missile attacks. For years the plight of Iraqis was unknown and probably very consciously ignored by Western media recipients. With the advent of the Internet, we hear of the personal tragedy largely ignored by the Western mass media – suddenly there is a human face, and very human feelings, attached to this conflict. This is what our media – our citizen media – can achieve.
This state of fear in which we live – fear of terror; fear of violence; the humanist fear of death and loss of legacy – is in a sense overcome by the liberties of expression, the opportunities available to us by our technologies.
Until next time…