9/11 and Mass Media

A major event that I recall experiencing through mass media was the tragic event of September 11, 2001, in which the World Trade Center towers in NYC collapsed after two hijacked jets crashed into the buildings. Although I live in New York now, at that time I was still living in my home country, Israel. My exposure to this event was therefore mostly through news channels, both local new channels and international channels, such as CNN, which were accessible through cables, and as well through the internet web sites of the news channels.

At the time of the event I was at work, in the offices of a company that I was working for as a web developer, in Jerusalem, Israel. Since there is a time difference of seven hours between Israel and New York, at the time of the event it was around 4pm in Jerusalem, almost the end of the work day. I remember sitting at my desk when I received a phone call from a close friend of mine who broke the news to me, urging me to go online to see the published pictures and read all about it. Without thinking too much, I immediately notified my coworkers as well, and as we were all still in the office with no access to television, the internet was indeed the immediate accessible media to connect and search for the news.

By the time I got home from work that day, the local news channels on TV were fully covering the event, providing ongoing updates throughout the day. The news about the event was then continually being reported showing footages and images on a daily basis. As I recall, the footages were actually CNN broadcasts embedded within the local Israeli news broadcasts. The Israeli newscasters were commenting on it and referring to it as they reported the event, or the live CNN broadcast was provided as it is whenever there was a new important live update.

This experience of the 9/11 event through its exposure in the media was probably the same experience or very similar to the one that many people throughout the world had. In other words, it is mass communication reaching a global population through the mass media. On one end, we can identify the receivers, the society, which depends on the mass media to get the information, and on the other end, the senders, who create the messages and use mass media to transmit the information to the masses. The audience is a heterogeneous audience, “made up of a mix of people who differ in age, sex, income, education, ethnicity, race, religious, and other characteristics” (Hanson, 16), an audience which is as well an anonymous audience, “an audience the sender does not personally know” (16). The players in this mass communication correspond to the Sender Message Channel Receiver (SMCR) or transmission model (11).

Such an experience leads to cultural effects, as the entire society is provided with similar content which shapes its experience and understanding of the event. Content and symbols of destruction, casualties, terror, fear, death, help rescues, and more, are immediately shared and consumed by an entire society. In What is Culture? Baran discusses this aspect of shaping a culture through mass communication, and points out that “when media professionals produce content we read, listen to, and watch, meaning is being shared and culture is being constructed and maintained”.

My understanding of the event has not changed in retrospect. Such a large scale terrorist attack, its extreme means, and the devastated aftermath, sadly, are vivid evidence of cruelty and violence embraced by certain groups and ideologies that should not be tolerated.

Links:

CNN.com - September 11: Chronology of terror

References:

Hanson, Ralph. Mass communication : living in a media world. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2011.

S. Baran , What is Culture? – Article published on BlackBoard\Course Materials.