Addicted To Distraction: Psychological consequences of the modern Mass Media - Softcover

Charlton, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908684410 ISBN 13: 9781908684417

Publisher: University of Buckingham Press, 2014

Synopsis

For most of us the Mass Media is the focus of our lives - it provides the material which is discussed and debated, it articulates our responses and it provides the framework by which a vast potential volume of material is filtered, prioritised and interpreted.

Headlines and sound-bites constantly vie for our attention, and thanks to the pace of its growth and advances in technology, the Mass Media is largely defined its ability to grab our attention, and its level of addictiveness.

The reality is that anything can be treated as overwhelmingly important, urgent, desperate, demanding of action now, but as easily forgotten. The medium has outgrown the message. The overall fact of this massive system has become more important than the details of its communications.

Stimulated by the horrific revelations of the Jimmy Savile affair at the BBC, with its implications of wholesale Establishment corruption and a sustained media cover-up, this book diagnoses the fundamental problem of the modern world as addiction to the distractions of the Mass Media and points to the only logical destination of its expansion: the destruction of society itself.

About this title

About the Author

Bruce Charlton is Professor of Theoretical Medicine, University of Buckingham, UK and Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry, Newcastle University, UK. Prof Charlton researches widely in evolutionary psychology and psychiatry, and on the role of scientific consensus and social mechanisms in biomedical research. From 2003 to 2010 he was editor of Medical Hypotheses. He is also an editor of The Journal of Hypotheses in the Life Sciences.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Buckingham Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908684410
• ISBN 13: 9781908684417
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 164