Editor’s Introduction

Dorothy Smith (1987, 1990) once pointed out that textually mediated discourse is a distinctive feature of contemporary society. It establishes the translation of individual personal experiences into impersonal theoretical domains of knowing and thereby enters individuals into a translocal mode of ruling. It contributes to the organization of the social relations of economics and politics. Through reading discourses, individuals find themselves transformed into objects, and they tend to disregard what they know of themselves as embodied subjects and perceive their activities and practices as properties of structures and systems. They are induced to reinterpret the daily actualities of their lives into the alienated constructs of power discourses and subordinate the experienced world to the categories of ruling. Thompson (1995) argues that “the meaning attributed to the ‘individual’ and to the individual’s rights and beliefs derives from particular” cultural discourses circulating in “particular cultural-historical contexts” (p. 408). In other words, the relationship between the mass population and the macrolevel relations of ruling is maintained by cultural discourses. It is mainly through these discourses that an individual becomes, acts, and speaks in the way that the economic and state apparatuses desire. Given the constitutive power of discourses in everyday social life, to examine them means to enter into and engage with the social relations organized by them. In this issue, the authors investigate the influence of discourses on social relations and cultures by focusing on a range of media genres: film, TV, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet. In “Shattered Glass, Movies, and the Free Press Myth,” Matthew C. Ehrlich uses the 2003 movie Shattered Glass as a case study of the free press myth in action (i.e., the popular belief that a privately owned, market-driven press is necessary for the functioning of American democracy and the survival of a free people). The movie describes how reporter Stephen Glass fictionalized stories for The New Republic magazine before he was found out and fired in 1998. Both the Stephen Glass case and the movie have generated considerable commentary among journalists and the public regarding the role of the press in contemporary culture. In his article, Ehrlich does a critical reading of the movie itself; analyzes the texts related to the film’s production, such as an early script draft and studio publicity materials; and examines the materials related to the film’s reception, such as news stories and film reviews. Ehrlich suggests that contrary to some journalists’