The Technological Communications Revolution

This paper summarizes and analyzes Michael R. Real's 1989 book, Super Media: A Cultural Studies Approach. Real investigates the nature and power of the technological communications revolution, what he terms "super media," the electronically transmitted means of communication which provide global links among individuals. He studies the super media through the culture they create: the shared values, aspirations, ambivalent feelings, and distilled experiences they offer to modern society.

Real begins by considering the prevalence and power of electronic media. He observes, "Today a person must constantly function with information that is from remote sources and [is] not immediately testable" (p. 23). He notes that technological revolutions have made possible the transfer of information much faster and more impersonally than in previous times, expanding the "potential for personal influence" (p. 28) of those with access to the media. He writes, "We construct personal identity within a different context than those who lived in earlier centuries" (p. 30).

Real's choice of dates in Table 1.2 (p. 25) seems arbitrary (and his date of 1976 for the introduction of the telephone is obviously a typographical error; he means 1876). He chooses almost the earliest possible date for television broadcasting, 1923, well before television had begun the broad penetration into homes that exploded just after World War II. Yet he sets the start of radio broadcasting at 1920, eight years

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ew her and could attract her with some grand gesture. Real finds it especially ironic that the shooting postponed the Academy Awards ceremony at which Robert DeNiro, who had played opposite Foster in the film that most influenced Hinckley's actions, would later win an Oscar. Real observes that assassinations, both successful and attempted, offer particularly useful examples of the study of the cultural impact of super media. They provide a striking opportunity to study how a society processes, understands, assimilates, and interprets a shared event, as well as offering explanations of why, for example, there continues to be such opposition to the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting John F. Kennedy. Real argues that a cultural studies approach transcends earlier ways of analyzing the super media either through the qualitative approach of criticism or the scientific analysis approach of behaviorism. A cultural studies approach (and he emphasizes that his consideration is just one of several possible methods) allows him to provide a more comprehensive overview of his second significant case history, the broadcast of the Academy Awards, shown around the world in 1989 to more than 250 million

Category: Psychology - T