Social Evolution, Political Psychology, and the Media in Democracy by Peter Beattie

Author:Peter Beattie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030028015
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

De Lima draws on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to elaborate his “Setting of Political Representation” (Cenário de Representação da Política, CR-P). He defines the CR-P as “the specific space of political representations in contemporary ‘representative democracies’, constituted and constitutor, location and object of the articulation of total hegemony, constructed by long-term processes, in and by the media, overwhelmingly in and by television.” 82 Television exerts this power by creating a virtual proximity to events and experiences that viscerally feels real, weakening the power of the written or spoken word through the power of the image (turning homo sapiens into homo ocular), blurring the distinction between fiction and reality, and exercising disproportionate control over the construction of culture. Although audiences retain the power to freely interpret media messages, the power of the media to design messages for particular interpretations is far greater. Media representations come to constitute reality.

Many of de Lima’s observations on the media in Brazil apply to all contemporary media-centered societies: (1) the media occupies a central position in society, permeating human activity, in particular the political sphere; (2) there is no such thing as a “national politics” without the media; (3) the media have taken over many of the social roles traditionally played by political parties, from channeling public demands to constructing the public agenda; (4) the media has radically altered electoral campaigns; and (5) the media has transformed into an important political actor. Nonetheless, de Lima notes, “it is a common error to believe in the eternal omnipotence of the media.” 83 The power of the media is considerable and pervasive, but it is not an all-powerful “influencing machine.” As the example of Brazil’s Lula demonstrates, even politicians despised by the media can win elections; civic organizations and the new electronic media can create a counter-hegemonic bloc. 84 If the “representations” of the media are constitutors of reality (besides being constituted by it), the test of the power/effects of the media will have to be made on individuals’ cognitive maps, which is to say, the manner by which people perceive and organize their immediate environment, their understanding of the world, and their orientation on certain topics; in other words, the test will have to be on the manner in which individuals construct their reality. 85

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