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Digital Culture: The Changing Dynamics
was developing and nationalism was blossoming as a unifying force – a process in
which the press played an important role as well.
According to Benedict Anderson (1983), these “imagined communities” – the idea
of a nation – could only emerge after the privileged lingua franca lost its importance,
when vernaculars 5 started to gain their significance in dissemination of public
information and the idea of republicanism emerged. The development of “print
capitalism” 6 formed “print languages” 7 , a fundamental of the national consciousness
that created a unified field of communication, a standardized language that represents
the language of authority. Anderson stresses the importance of the daily press, in
which the continuity of publishing gave a sense of continuity of the “community” and
thus served as a cultural unifier and homogenizer in spite of deep social stratifications
within the nation state.
By the end of the nineteenth century, when the growth of market economies
occurred, the relations between society and the state changed. This represents a
period in which, according to Habermas, the public sphere was in decline. The state
infiltrated society and “a polity of neo-mercantilism went hand in hand with a kind of
‘re-feudalization’ of society” (Habermas, 1989: 142). The interventionist policy of
the state also affected the relationship between the public sphere and the private
realm. In this process the family became more private, fulfilling a consumptive
function, and detached itself from the self-sufficient unit, which made the members
more and more dependent on the state.
Mass media audiences and the rise of electronic media:
a critical approach
With the emergence of electronic media, their spread and the rise of popular culture,
new concepts and approaches were needed. This was a period in which the idea of
5 Anderson defines “vernaculars” (Lat. vernaculus) as official languages which started to
appear in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as a replacement for Latin as a lingua franca
of the time. According to his opinion, vernaculars lie between “high” Latin language and
“low” native speech and were used in public communication and public affairs. They
served as a basis for the development of some contemporary official and literary languages.
6 Print capitalism refers to the interconnection of capitalism, print technology, the emergence
of vernaculars, and the spread of literacy which enabled commodification of print
languages.
7 According to Anderson, print languages served as a foundation for national consciousness
in three different ways: they formed unified fields of exchange and communication,
positioned in between “high Latin” and “low” native languages; they were strengthened by
print capitalism which contributed to the formation of a subjective idea of a nation; they
became official languages of authorities aided by print capitalism.
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