Summary Of The Mass Society By C. Wright Mills

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In "The Mass Society," C. Wright Mills argues that mass media transforms the population into a series of markets instead of publics, thereby inducing "social-psychological illiteracy" in place of authentic discussion.
He identifies the main elements of "social-psychological illiteracy" as: knowledge of social realities is obtained indirectly, mostly through mass media outlets; the citizen has little or no competing viewpoints to compare and judge, because a few corporations control all of mass media; mass media influences the person's image of his or her self, by throwing images at the individual in quick succession giving them no time to analyze and think; and mass media overwhelms the emotional energy and transformations potential of small