Beyond connection: Cultural cosmopolitan and ubiquitous media

Abstract

In his media ethics, Roger Silverstone was particularly sceptical of the idea that increasing mediaconnectedness in itself is set to improve our overall moral condition or to foster a cosmopolitan cultural outlook. In arguing that we need to go ‘beyond connection’, he raised the broader issue of the cultural condition that an intensely connected environment is establishing, and posed questions of the kinds of relatedness, the sense of belonging, the moral horizons and awareness of responsibilities that such a condition entails. This article takes an historical approach to these issues by considering how mediated connectivity may have been regarded, particularly in relation to the ideas of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, during the 1930s. Considering this earlier period of modernity — in which media technologies and institutions were emerging as significant shapers of cultural attitudes, but before they had achieved the ubiquity and the taken-for-grantedness of today — can, it will suggested, offer a useful perspective on our own globalized, media-saturated times.