Clarified and Enlightened Column on Media Stress and Stress Media: A Horizon in Your Pocket

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When we still lived in the desert, we anxiously watched the horizon. We wanted to know if a lion was chasing us. Today we carry the horizon in our trouser pockets. It has dwindled to a digital interface that we dig about 200 times a day. The outside world has become a virtual movie – the small screen is the real thing that absorbs our attention. And we are still looking for dangers: we are looking for the actual tension on the screen.

Oppression. Exploitation. Accidents of all kinds. Crimes. climate apocalypse. End of the world, the rise of evil. Why are we doing this voluntarily?

The German thinker Peter Sloterdijk formulated a theory suitable for the media age. Modern media do not primarily provide information, but produce stress. They present the audience with a range of arousal offerings to choose from. It is only through stress that something like a thematic connection and thus the cohesion of a modern, individualized large society arises.

Of course, societies, in turn, constantly complain in the media about the stress they are subjected to. But at the same time, they need it in order to function at all. They depend on the creators of the media, modern stress blowers. According to Sloterdijk, “Sometimes the journalist himself can be successful as an incentive if he brings up the subject first, but in terms of his job profile, he’s basically a fellow swimmer in worlds of excitement.”

Sloterdijk’s theory of media has a double meaning: firstly, the actual tension, which brings society into a state of excitement, performs a coherent-forming function. And secondly, the media form a system that is prone to selfishness. They report primarily not about what is, but about what others report. The causative agents of the topic constantly watch each other suspiciously. That’s why everyone writes the same thing about the same thing. And for the same reason, they conduct phantom debates, which are primarily of interest to themselves and politicians like them.

Ordinary media users are surprised by the uniformity of coverage. But there is no big thematic master plan developed by the mastermind. Just a media bubble with everyone looking at each other suspiciously. The creators of the media stress us because we want to be stressed. The stress of questions produces a tense society. In other words, a society that would otherwise not be. Fine

René Scheuil is a philosopher and director of the Swiss Institute for Economic Policy (IWP) in Lucerne. He writes to Blick every second Monday.

Source: Blick