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Processing Culture: Cognition, Ontology, and the News Media 1
Author(s) -
Ostertag Stephen F.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
sociological forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1573-7861
pISSN - 0884-8971
DOI - 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2010.01214.x
Subject(s) - mainstream , sociology , negotiation , object (grammar) , certainty , ontology , ontological security , epistemology , media studies , social psychology , aesthetics , social science , psychology , law , political science , linguistics , philosophy , security studies
This article discusses how people cognitively engage with the contemporary, mainstream, U.S. news in ways that yield ontological services. It treats the news as both a system of signs and a cultural object, and assesses how people mentally intercept, negotiate, and use the news in ways that foster a sense of control and order over an unstable and unpredictable social world (i.e., “ontological security”) (Giddens, 1991). Based on interview data, it argues that through criticisms, consumption orientations, lay theorizing, and “ignorant othering,” all orbiting and drawing from the contemporary, mainstream, U.S. news, people cognitively sift through and simplify a broader frenzied social environment. In so doing, they are able to mentally establish at minimum a sense of rudimentary understanding and at most a sense of trusted certainty of what is real and true of the world outside their immediate social circles.