Abstraction and Mass Communication

Mass communication is the circulation of ideas, images and content to large audiences whether via social media posts, comment sections or the newspaper. An abstraction is the isolation of a specific feature of an object or idea that neglects its defining context, history and relations. Mass communication spreads abstraction. Typically, ideas mass communication transmits are stripped of the conditions that would allow them to be properly evaluated yet people still feel confident in taking it as the whole or at least enough to form a conclusive statement. This builds composite images, understandings of people, ideas and phenomena from sedimented abstract data rather than more precise knowledge, that feel epistemically complete despite being created from incomplete and decontextualized information. Furthermore, these composite images don't just stay mental, they can manifest into real material actions and outcomes.

Mass communication abstracts what it transmits through how it delivers it. Short form content and social media are built around brevity, posts are short sentences and phrases, videos are clipped and fast paced, and because of this these ideas arrive stripped of the context, tone, history and relations that make up the whole idea. This abstraction operates at two levels simultaneously. The format of communication itself strips whatever precision language or visuals could carry, a short phrase or photo leaves wide room for misreading regardless of what it says. Second, the information being delivered is often abstract itself, Voloshinov establishes “only that which has acquired social value can enter the world of ideology, take shape, and establish itself there”(Voloshinov, 22), implying content circulating through mass communication arrives already socially charged, affecting how the consumer interprets this information. When the person producing that content wants to spread a specific sentiment, the mass communication's brevity becomes a tool, allowing short abstracted claims to spread fast. Furthermore, Debord writes that the spectacle demands “passive acceptance” through its “monopoly of appearance”(Debord, 12), and in mass communication it is the visual and textual format itself that holds the ability to be passively sedimented, the process by which common sense is built from all the stimuli received throughout life. These imposed meanings harden into common sense, feeling natural so that the consumer treats them as sufficient without examining what was left out.

Through this abstracted format mass communication circulates not just individual clips or posts but representations of people, political positions and phenomena assembled from those fragments. Schudson observes that media doesn't represent particular persons but social types and demographic categories, writing “the actor or model doesn't play a particular person but a social type or a demographic category”(Schudson, 212), and this flattening extends beyond advertising into every form of mass communicated content. A public figure becomes a type, their positions reduced to a handful of associated fragments that circulate independently of their actual views. Schudson further establishes that “advertising surrounds us and enters into us, so that when we speak we may speak in or with reference to the language of advertising and when we see we may see through schemata that advertising has made salient for us”(Schudson, 210), meaning the schemata through which people interpret mass communicated content was itself produced by prior mass communication. The consumer assembling a composite image of a person or idea is doing so through a lens already shaped by the same abstracting format. These fragments of full ideas are then reproduced by other consumers also working from abstractions, comments, videos and re-interpretations each adding another layer of abstracted meaning to the circulating phenomena. Where a newspaper reader may encounter a limited number of ideas with more surrounding context to evaluate each, a consumer of short form content absorbs thousands of fragments daily with little context for any of them, yet they still have the same confidence in the conclusions they've drawn.

These combined fragments build composite images that feel epistemically complete. Consider someone known only through mass communicated content alongside someone known through years of concrete lived experience. Both feel like whole finished people when thought about, one because they are genuinely known through precise communication and shared history, the other because enough abstracted fragments have accumulated to produce the sensation of a complete picture. Through sedimentation this assembled image hardens into common sense, treated as correct and sufficient without examination. Voloshinov explains the mechanism behind this, writing that “the ideological sign in an established, dominant ideology is always somewhat reactionary and tries, as it were, to stabilize the preceding factor in the dialectical flux of the social generative process, so accentuating yesterday's truth as to make it appear today's”(Voloshinov, 24), meaning imposed meanings present themselves as timeless and obvious rather than historically produced and contestable. The consumer mistakes this feeling of obviousness for personal understanding. Goffman observes that “the performer can be fully taken in by his own act” and “sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality”(Goffman, 10), translating to the case of a consumer who's absorbed composite image isn't experienced as an abstraction but as genuine understanding. The fragments have hardened into a conviction indistinguishable from direct knowledge. The consumer may experience this composite image as personal insight even though it was assembled from socially circulated fragments. This creates an opportunity for people and institutions seeking to impose a particular interpretation of reality. Voloshinov writes that “the ruling class strives to impart a supraclass, eternal character to the ideological sign, to extinguish or drive inward the struggle between social value judgments which occurs in it, to make the sign uniaccentual”(Voloshinov, 23), meaning the fragments that circulate in mass communication work to make the composite image feel natural rather than contested, shaping what people understand without the consumer recognizing the imposition. A consumer who mistakes an imposed composite image for personal insight may never question where that understanding came from.

These composite images don't stay mental. They become the basis for real material decisions and actions. Debord writes that “the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images which exist above it, and which at the same time are recognized as the tangible par excellence”(Debord, 36), meaning the abstracted phenomenon projects itself as part of reality and achievable for some, transitioning from something that was fictional or unattainable. For example, a consumer absorbs abstracted fragments about male body aesthetics, but enhanced physiques are circulated so widely on social media they become sedimented as achievable and desirable. The composite image of an achievable physique becomes the standard against which real bodies are measured, producing a material goal based on a false epistemic foundation. When that goal proves unachievable through natural means the consumer may still seek the composite image through other means, such as performance enhancing drugs, making a real material decision about their body based on abstractions. Whatever the material outcome turns out to be, it was determined largely by assembled abstractions.

Mass communication doesn't just circulate abstraction, it produces composite images that feel like genuine personal knowledge while being assembled from fragments stripped of context, history and the conditions that make them whole. Through sedimentation these images harden into common sense, treated as sufficient grounds for conclusive statements and real material decisions. The gap between the feeling of knowing and the actual epistemic foundation of that knowing has always existed, but mass communication has scaled it to the point where it influences how entire populations understand people, ideas and possibilities. Whoever controls what fragments circulate shapes what composite images get built and the common sense that is instilled, without the consumer ever recognizing that their understandings were assembled from abstractions.