Mediated

Last updated

Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It is a non-fiction book by anthropologist Thomas de Zengotita published in 2005 by Bloomsbury about the effect of the media in the Western world.

Contents

Summary

Mediated aims at creating awareness rather than offering ready-made solutions to remedy the intrusion of too much media in our industrial societies. Rather than writing yet another pamphlet against the media, the author chooses to focus on the mechanisms and the processes of our mediated society.

The basis of his analysis is that the opposite of reality is not phony or superficial, it is optional. We choose between options to determine who we are, to make statements to the world about who we are. People, he argues, have always done so, but the difference with today's situation is that we have a lot more options. In terms of options, comparing the modern world with the post-modern world is like comparing a breeze with a hurricane. The media forces at work since the fifties have contributed to expanding our options greatly, making the self "aware" of the possibilities to be who it deems worth being.

We have become method actors, constantly flattered. Deception is luring because it is the inherent condition of the "flattered-self". So we seek new ways of satisfying our selves. These are the true forces at work behind what de Zengotita calls the "virtual revolution".

Reviews

With Mediated, Thomas de Zengotita received critical acclaim outside his field of study. The Washington Post called it "A fine roar of a lecture about how the American mind is shaped by (too much) media". [1] O, The Oprah Magazine stated "Reading (...) Mediated is like spending time with a wild, wired friend, the kind who keeps you up late and lures you outside your comfort zone with a speed rap full of brilliant notions".[ citation needed ]

Notes

  1. Shelby Coffey III (April 28, 2005). "Totally Wired". Washington Post. Retrieved July 31, 2008.

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<i>Being and Nothingness</i> 1943 book by Jean-Paul Sartre

Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, sometimes published with the subtitle A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In the book, Sartre develops a philosophical account in support of his existentialism, dealing with topics such as consciousness, perception, social philosophy, self-deception, the existence of "nothingness", psychoanalysis, and the question of free will.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Career</span> Individuals journey through learning, work, and other aspects of life

A career is an individual's metaphorical "journey" through learning, work and other aspects of life. There are a number of ways to define career and the term is used in a variety of ways.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pascal's wager</span> Argument that posits human beings bet with their lives that God either exists or does not

Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument advanced by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), seventeenth-century French mathematician, philosopher, physicist, and theologian. This argument posits that individuals essentially engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter L. Berger</span> American sociologist (1929–2017)

Peter Ludwig Berger was an Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and theoretical contributions to sociological theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Choice</span> Deciding between multiple options

A choice is the range of different things from which a being can choose. The arrival at a choice may incorporate motivators and models.

In existentialism, bad faith is the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals act inauthentically, by yielding to the external pressures of society to adopt false values and disown their innate freedom as sentient human beings. Bad faith also derives from the related concepts of self-deception and ressentiment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Television broadcast interruption</span> TV audio transmission hoax in southern England (1977)

The Southern Television broadcast interruption was a broadcast signal intrusion that occurred on 26 November 1977 in parts of southern England in the United Kingdom. The audio of a Southern Television broadcast was replaced by a voice claiming to represent the 'Ashtar Galactic Command', delivering a message instructing humanity to abandon its weapons so it could participate in a 'future awakening' and 'achieve a higher state of evolution'. After six minutes, the broadcast returned to its scheduled programme.

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a worldwide marketing campaign launched by Unilever in 2004 aiming to build self confidence in women and young children. Dove's partners in the campaign included Ogilvy, Edelman Public Relations, and Harbinger Communications along with other consultants. Part of the overall project was the Evolution campaign.

Choice-supportive bias or post-purchase rationalization is the tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected and/or to demote the forgone options. It is part of cognitive science, and is a distinct cognitive bias that occurs once a decision is made. For example, if a person chooses option A instead of option B, they are likely to ignore or downplay the faults of option A while amplifying or ascribing new negative faults to option B. Conversely, they are also likely to notice and amplify the advantages of option A and not notice or de-emphasize those of option B.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard</span> Major influence on existentialism, postmodernism and psychology

The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard has been a major influence in the development of 20th-century philosophy, especially existentialism and postmodernism. Søren Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher who has been labeled by many as the "Father of Existentialism", although there are some in the field who express doubt in labeling him an existentialist to begin with. His philosophy also influenced the development of existential psychology.

"The Will to Believe" is a lecture by William James, first published in 1896, which defends, in certain cases, the adoption of a belief without prior evidence of its truth. In particular, James is concerned in this lecture about defending the rationality of religious faith even lacking sufficient evidence of religious truth. James states in his introduction: "I have brought with me tonight ... an essay in justification of faith, a defense of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. 'The Will to Believe,' accordingly, is the title of my paper."

A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from Self-Help, an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles, but are also known and classified under "self-improvement", a term that is a modernized version of self-help. Self-help books moved from a niche position to being a postmodern cultural phenomenon in the late twentieth century.

<i>The Paradox of Choice</i> 2004 book by Barry Schwartz

The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less is a book written by American psychologist Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004 by Harper Perennial. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. The book analyses the behavior of different types of people. This book argues that the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.

Media planning is generally outsourced and entails sourcing and selecting optimal media platforms for a client's brand or product to use. The goal of media planning is to determine the best combination of media to achieve the clients objectives.

<i>Love and Will</i> 1969 book by American existential psychologist Rollo May

Love and Will (1969) is a book by American existential psychologist Rollo May, in which he articulates the principle that an awareness of death is essential to life, rather than being opposed to life.

<i>Predictably Irrational</i> 2008 book by Dan Ariely

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions is a 2008 book by Dan Ariely, in which he challenges readers' assumptions about making decisions based on rational thought. Ariely explains, "My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are—how we repeat them again and again—I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second inauguration of George W. Bush</span> 55th United States presidential inauguration

The second inauguration of George W. Bush as the 43rd president of the United States took place on Thursday, January 20, 2005, at the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 55th inauguration and marked the beginning of the second and final term of George W. Bush as president and Dick Cheney as vice president. The ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist administered the presidential oath of office for the last time before his death on September 3 that year. Attendance at the inauguration has been reported as being around 100,000, 300,000, or 400,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynn Shelton</span> American filmmaker (1965–2020)

Lynn Shelton was an American filmmaker, known for writing, directing, and producing such films as Humpday and Your Sister's Sister. She was associated with the mumblecore genre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filter bubble</span> Intellectual isolation involving search engines

A filter bubble or ideological frame is a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches, recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation. The search results are based on information about the user, such as their location, past click-behavior, and search history. Consequently, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles, resulting in a limited and customized view of the world. The choices made by these algorithms are only sometimes transparent. Prime examples include Google Personalized Search results and Facebook's personalized news-stream.

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University who is known for her work in the field of "science help" which focuses on translating insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support health and well-being. Mainstream media articles about inner-conflict-related aspects of modern lifestyles regularly quote her. A longtime advocate of self-compassion and mindfulness as stress-coping strategies, McGonigal has altered her focus on the problematic aspects of stress; in a talk at the TEDGlobal 2013, she emphasized the importance of an individual's subjective belief in themselves as someone who is able to cope successfully as being a crucial factor in their actual response to stress.