On Hans Magnus Enzensburger, Constituents Towards a Theory of the Media.

"A revolutionary plan should not require the manipulators to disappear; on the contrary, it must make everyone a manipulator." (Enzensburger , 20)

Enzensburger's Constituents Towards A Theory of the Media  is not a complicated piece but neither is it necessarily simple. His observation that new media in forming new connections are also forming a universal system, that electronic media has a mobilising power, that  consumers are now also producers by virtue of platforms and hardware and technology,  that every use of media presupposes manipulation are as applicable today as they were in the 1970 writing.

With the rise of personal computers, smart phones, tablets, eReaders, wearable technology ranging from watches to spectacles, media equipment is not just a means of consumption but also surveillance, of control, of command, and of production. Media equipment is a means of production as well as consumption. Combined with the rise of platforms - Facebook, Amazon, Google to name only the most obvious, the most ubiquitous of these - media is not only no longer confined to the most obvious formal formats, but with it has come the ability to consume and produce and to disrupt these formats. 

All media, Enzensburger declares, is by definition manipulative. If we set aside the visceral reactions most of us have to the connotations of manipulation we can see the truth of this. Even a piece of poetry is asking for the reader to at least see, if not accept, through the lens of the writer. More so the work of fiction (be it written or filmed), more so the newspaper article (or news broadcast) the text book, the lecture, the manifesto....Even if these were created by a machine, that machine has been programmed and carries with it the biases of the programmer. 

An egalitarianism is inherent in this  - as long as an individual has the equipment necessary, they are able to respond. To act. This ability to take action is one of the hallmarks of new media (21). 

Response, manipulation, the ability to produce - these characteristics give new media (whether by Enzensburger's 1970 definition or by our 21st century definition) the power to mobilise. The 'masses' for want of a better word are no longer simply subjected to that which is chosen by those in spaces of control and command,  but have the ability to respond and react through media. Whether it be through social media, social sharing, through independent publishing, through independent creation - the slush pile no longer silences to the same extent that it once did. Where once private or independent creation and production might have been, as Enzensburger called it in 1970, no more than license cottage industry (p22), it is now characteristic of a shift of power that permitted only a select few a voice, to one that is at least accessible to more - making everyone a manipulator. 

This surface equalisation provides for a somewhat messy, somewhat noisy space - and one that is far from apolitical. Despite pressures for producers - whether mainstream, independent, social, or otherwise - to remain within the frameworks of the socially and aesthetically irrelevant but acceptable (cat GIFS and Supernatural memes anyone?)these spaces by nature present a dynamic relationship between consumers, producers, and platform providers with the boundaries between each of these blurring more and more on a daily basis. 

There may not be, Enzensburger states early in the article, no Marxist theory for the media - that does not leave it without philosophical boundary or framework. Even if that framework is in a constant state of flux as the individual's role within their relationship with media continues to evolve.