‘field of vision’, which enables individuals to see things that are ‘far
removed from the locales of their day-to-day lives’ (130). Finally, there is
the ‘directionality’: ‘In the case of television... the direction of vision is
essentially one-way. ... The kind of publicness created by television is thus
characterized by a fundamental contrast between producers and recipi-
ents in terms of their visibility and invisibility, their capacity to see and to
be seen’ (130).
Thompson’s chronicle of broadcasting links mass media to a new
form of publicness based on visibility. He suggests that such a publicness
does not require speech in the Habermasian sense, but rather allows indi-
viduals to assume degrees of visibility and invisibility. Even if they are
part of an agorain which they are invisible and have no speech, they can
at least feel integrated with those who share their situation, and who are
metaphorically represented in the serial world of the screen. In the latter
sense, all audiences of mass media have visibility, in the very liveness of
the medium. On the Internet, however, everyone has speech, but, in
Akio’s third register, no visibility at all.
Tanjev Schultz (2000) is one writer who wishes to reclaim the func-
tion of mass media as an agent of integration and as ‘providers of a shared
lifeworld’. He sees ‘a future for this very function’.Criticism of mass media power and centralization does not necessarily deny
their immense achievements. Jürgen Habermas, for instance, continued the
cited tradition of worr y about lack of interaction in mass media .... But he
also viewed their integrational role as a benefit of modernism and as a
necessar y condition for a vivid public sphere in complex societies. (Schultz,
2000: 208)For Habermas, however, visibility in itself is an insufficient basis for
the public sphere if it does not include speech. At the same time, the power
of speech is attenuated if little is known of the speaker, as Habermas also
points out in The Theory of Communicative Action(1984). However, the rit-
ual function of media is absent from Habermas’s theory. Regardless of
what kinds of texts circulate within mass media, they provide a place in
which people construct meaning in their lives. Martin-Barbero (1997) sug-
gests that we should look for ‘the processes of re-enchantment in the con-
tinuing experience of ritual in communitarian celebration and in the other
ways that the media bring people together’ (108).
Not only does television provide such ritual opportunity, but it also
has an enduring constancy. Ruth Rosen (1986) refers to a study by Agnes
Nixon which found that most viewers (of soap opera in particular)
regarded TV as the only ‘constant’ in their lives. The world outside may
be in chaos and flux but TV provides an anchor. ‘All potential viewers
are members of a society that has been in constant transformation
through geographic mobility and the loss of extended families’ (Rosen,
1986: 46) find solace in tuning in to characters who, regardless of theTelecommunity 209Holmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 209