Book Reviews

Abstract

By eroding interpersonal skills, the mass media have undermined community in America, according to Michael Bugeja. The main contribution of his book is to place some familiar concerns about, and fresh examples of, electronic media’s negative influences on self and community within a universal ethical framework and approach to individual development. His approach is influenced by humanistic critiques of technology and by a media ethics derived mainly from Western culture, especially Christianity. Bugeja begins by contending that we should be less concerned about the digital divide than the “interpersonal divide,” which “concerns the social gap that develops when individuals misperceive reality because of media overconsumption and misinterpret others because of technology overuse” (p. ix). This leads to a host of social problems, including diminished relationships at home and work, loss of connection to geographical communities, declining civic engagement, violations of privacy, and hypercommercialization. Bugeja especially indicts television and the Internet for isolating us from face-to-face communication. He starts from the belief that we are social creatures who crave above all acceptance in community. For him, face-to-face interaction in place-based community is the source of individual moral development and social well-being. From the telegraph to the Internet, electronic media have progressively estranged us from talk and place, offering us virtual environments that Bugeja sees as lacking authenticity and reality. Instead of encouraging us to seek fulfillment in community, media marketers substitute material gratification and foster dependence on psychological self-help gurus, dulling our conscience and consciousness. We can no longer distinguish fact and fiction, especially in contemporary journalism. We are left unable to cope with the human challenges experienced at each stage of life and our mortality.