Všude a nikde: vliv elektronických médií na sociální chování

The book "No Sense of Place", first published in 1985, belongs without too much exaggeration among the classic books on the media. Joshua Meyrowitz, an American professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire, provides an imaginative and lively summary of Ervin Goffman's dramaturgical sociology and Marshall McLuhan's technological determinism. According to him, electronic media create new and unprecedented social situations, in which we establish relationships and show off without being bound by belonging to an actual physical or social place. Thanks to - or because of - electronic media we are at the same time everywhere and nowhere. Electronic media, which address us mainly through images and sounds, are not "closed? to anybody by some abstract code requiring various levels of literacy, such as is the case for writing. They are open essentially to anybody, which also brings the end of mystery in its wake. They establish "mixed situations", in which the previously unknown and merely suspected becomes widely available to everyone. Meyrowitz provides a detailed description especially of the end of secrets among the worlds of men and women, children and adults, the public and their political leaders.