COMM 123 Chapter Notes - Chapter 0: Reality Television, Mass Society, Social Capital
21 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Politicization of school shootings often puts the rhetorical cart before the empirical horse. Existence or lack thereof of evidence about media effects on youth shooters misses a broader point. Lack of evidence about media effects on youth shooters misses a broader point constructs youth audiences in oldest of mass society frames. Pervasive and inveterate desire for personal celebrity shows up in reality tv, myspace friends, media has in a way made fame the dominant currency of modern social capital. As each new medium of fame appears the human image it conveys is intensified and the # of individuals celebrated expands. Emergence of modernity yoked the yearning to be known w the uncertainty of self. The idea that in late modern society the supposedly rootless, alienated individual can through visual media broadcast rise above his or her station in life. Celebrities are allowed to express themselves individually and idiosyncratically while the rest of the pop are just demographic aggregates.
