This paper, first presented at the spring 1990 conference on Mass Media Ethics in the Information Age, compares and contrasts approaches of five scholars - Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Neil Postman, and Jacques Ellul - whose works are chief contributions to an influential communications theory that posits that the history of media technologies is central to the history of civilization, that media transformations result in social change, and that changes in the form of media technology alter the structure (...) of consciousness. (shrink)

This essay considers the analysis Jacques Ellul carried out about the devaluation of language. This investigation also explores the consequences of that devaluation (or humiliation as Ellul called it) wrought by our orientation to technology. Our existence in technology transforms language and our use of it, shifting emphasis as well to the visual image. The technological mindset encourages a disregard for language. It entails as well the disuse and misuse of what is perhaps most human about us, language. As language (...) conforms to the technological order, our thought processes, narratives, relationships, freedom, even being human are altered and threatened. (shrink)

Modern public relations practices have been dominated by appeals to impulses, desires, and images that affect publics defined predominantly in demographic terms. This paper argues that abandoning basic rhetorical assumptions about the ability of ordinary people to engage in practical reason has serious ethical implications for the marketplace as well as for society in general. The study applies recent rhetorical scholarship on issues of public discourse and rhetorical culture to public relations practices, considering how rhetoric can contribute to more effective (...) and ethical public discourse in our dominant modes of marketplace communication. (shrink)

Propaganda in all its forms is the culture of a mass society. The media transmits propaganda to form public opinion and recreate the human being. Reversing the Western ideal of a rational and free individual, the media creates a childish conformist ensconced in the peer group, who acts unconsciously.

This study began with a fascination for the enigma of American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987). I began to collect his words. I had been intrigued by German philosopher, literary critic, and essayist Walter Benjamin’s (1892-1940) philosophical snapshots and with the notion of an aura that could be pealed from objects by photography. And I was taken by French philosopher, professor of law, and theologian Jacques Ellul’s (1912-1994) claim that religion, philosophy, and aesthetics were mere ornaments that had gone the way (...) of the ruffled sunshade on McCormick’s first reaper. Benjamin’s epistemological understanding of aura, the capacity of the object to look back and to direct the viewer in search for origins, fleshed out Ellul’s claim. The symbol had lost its symbolic dimension in the technical process where words became images and images became concepts; clichés were the nature of this productivity, which became more than tired expressions. The cliché is the machine in its new suit. This insight informed my reading of Warhol and Benjamin with Ellul. And, of course, my reading of Ellul has influenced my reading of Warhol and Benjamin. (shrink)