Presentation

Imagining the death of the mass media may help us understand their function and import. If we envisage removing the media from our lives, society will be left devoid of three basic faculties: democracy, the free market economy and the enlightenment of its people. Thus far, the communication media have brought together professionals with a core mission in western society. They have exercised as mediators in social relations and interactions. They have established a common terrain to launch and contrast ideas, to share knowledge, as well as to buy and sell products and services. For more than a century, press, cinema, radio, television, public relations and advertising have provided a public space to help us construct a public, communal "self".

In the three prior editions of "Communication and Reality" hosted by the Blanquerna School of Communication, scholars and researchers have charted the incursions of new types of communication media into this public space: in 2005 we explored the digital utopia; in 2007 we examined the limits of the media and the transgressions made possible by the new media; and in 2009 we proposed metamorphosis as an apt metaphor for the changeability of the media space. In our 2011 conference we feel that the time has come to rise to the challenge and envisage what might happen if the "traditional media" were to stop operating altogether. Thus, the aim behind the title of our upcoming conference is to appropriate the apocalyptic discourses of many media experts and take them to their deliberately challenging extreme: Life without Media.

Conclusions of the VI Internacional Conference on Communication and Reality