NEO-MYTHS: ISSUE-ATTENTION CYCLES AS MEDIATIZED SOCIAL DRAMAS.

• Author: Grisinas, Arvydas

1. Introduction

   A popular narrative holds modern myths to be false beliefs, legends or ideas that people tend to uphold in modern societies despite them being wrong (meaning, counter-factual) or un-scientific (meaning, not proven empirically). In times that are on the contrary considered rational, information-driven and grounded in scientific factuality, these myths are held as a curious oddity at best and a dangerous piece of disinformation at worst. Recent developments of the public sphere, however, such as post-truth politics, and mediatization, render political dynamics ever more dependent on performative dramatization in the news and social media (Stromback and Esser 2014). With digital technology becoming ever more complex and obscure to the non-specialist users, some authors argue that we are re-entering a type of a 'new dark age', where mythological thinking is regaining traction (Bridle 2019).

   Much of the mid-twentieth century research has demonstrated that myths are born from traditional, long-term practical and performative participation in social life, which is then rationalized and explained using standard representative narrative structures or archetypical symbolism (Jung 1928, Campbell 1993, Eliade 1971). Campbell (1972) also demonstrates how there are mythological constructions that are manifest in the contemporary societies, and that we actually need them to make sense of the world and our own lives.

   It is, however, difficult for a culture that relies on linear, literary and factually grounded legal narratives to comfortably accommodate the deeper, archetypical meanings of this cyclical and archetypically grounded mode of communication and public conduct. This is why as Roland Barthes (1957) demonstrated, modern myths tend to be rather shallow and stereotypical. In other words, they retain the mythological structure of myths that are grounded in archetypes, but are more fluid, more consciously constructed and grounded in stereotypes and schemas. As evidenced by just about any marketing strategy in the world, there are patterns of public discourse and behavior that can be if not mapped and capitalized on, then at least recognized and triggered.

   Through proposing a concept of a 'neo-myth', this article therefore intends to provoke a discussion on the idea that digital public sphere is essentially performative, schematic and cyclical. With this intent, it combines the concept of a 'social drama (:) (Turner 1980) and its stereotypical narrative structure with literature on mediated 'issue-attention cycles' (Downs 1976). It argues that many contemporary news issues can be understood as a type of publicly reproduced neo-myths. Social dramas have not only become central objects of mediated news content but are also themselves structuring the political process. This renders performativity and narrativity central to how political issues are being experienced and participated in. Some authors argue that this magnifies in times of digitalization as a result of a 'Gutenberg parenthesis' (Pettitt 2012), where linear, singular and strictly-ordered forms of literary knowledge give way to plural, performative and fluid forms of digital knowledge.

   This article does not propose a finalized theory of contemporary mythology. However, it presents a sketch thereof, through studying the literature on masscommunication and issue attention cycles and asks, how are these neo-myths produced, facilitated, structured and how do they function in a contemporary society? It concludes the inquiry by exploring patterns of variation in these social dramas and performances, and possible reasons thereof.

2. The mediated birth of a neo-myth

   Information, data and news, as well as social networks, through which all of the latter is being shared, consumed and re-cycled, constitute the lifeblood of today's societies. It seems that endless streams of knowledge, advertising and gossip fill every moment of our paper coffee cup-holding, permanently-commuting, smartphone-scrolling, bitcoin-shopping life. However, while the amount of circulating knowledge grows exponentially, human capacity to process this information remains limited. This is no secret neither to the academic community, nor to the world of news and technology, which is why social media employs algorithms to filter our information intake, and news media use catchy headlines to capture viewers' attention (Teixeira 2015).

   According to Downs (1976), the public attention cycle is triggered by a certain revelation or sensationalization of an issue within the society. Nowadays, in most cases, this revelation would certainly derive from the proliferation of the news in either the social or traditional media and would heavily rely on how it is framed and represented. According to Schaffner and Sellers (2009), framing is depicting an issue in one way and not the other, excluding potential other interpretations. There is a rich body of literature discussing a variety of frames, both general, case-specific and hybrid (Boydstun et al. 2013). However, it all agrees that news media uses frames to shape the vision of social and political issues in a particular way.

   Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) describe five main framing categories that can potentially be applied to most issues. In a way they can be considered stereotypes that are being used in structuring or schematizing social drama. These are the responsibility frame, the conflict frame, the economic consequences frame, the human-interest frame and the morality frame. Their approach is based on Neuman et al. (1992) who identified the most frequent frames used in the US media. They also demonstrated that these categories are widely used in the European media as well. Nisbet and Kroepsch (2003) note that some of the frames are more dramatic than others. Hence, they are more likely to be found during the stage of rising public interest in the issue than during the period of waning public interest. Media frames become vehicles for representing reality as well as knowledge thereof in a meaningful and symbolic yet somewhat simplistic, stereotypical and distorted, or, so to say, neo-mythological way. Thus, specific standardized representations of reality organize the complex issues into meaningful and reproducible units of communication (Reese 2001: 10-12).

   Liu, Vedlitz and Alston (2008) demonstrate how peaks of issue salience are also connected to different world events that have associative meaning to issues at hand and trigger certain hypes of media interest. Therefore, there is a strong relation between how news is framed and depicted in the media, and the public experience of the social drama. Post-truth and populist politics, but most recently the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how simplistic yet emotionally charged narratives have a way to capture people's interest and attention, as well as affect policymaking. For instance, research done by Brookings Institution shows that in the US, "Republicans consistently underestimate risks, while Democrats consistently overestimate them" (Rothwell and Desai 2021).

   It is therefore the mediated performative and standardized dramatization of social and political issues that creates neo-myths. A neo-myth is hence a schematic news story that is mediated, received and performed in public, in accordance to media frame-defined scripts. It might be too far-fetched to call these scripts archetypical in a Jungian sense. Yet it would not be too far-fetched to call them stereotypical. Here are some of the most popular contemporary stereotypical scripts for public neomyths: a school shooting in the U.S., a refugee crisis in Greece, a breach of human rights in Russia, and so on. These are real-world political issues, yet they have a stereotypically recognizable form and a predictable narrative content.

   They in their turn also produce predictable reactions from public and politicians. It is as if under cue that the public becomes outraged by some events and utterances, and worried, sending their 'thoughts and prayers' during other events. At certain stages of the script, politicians feel compelled, or a proper tone requires them to express their opinion, while specialists are urged to explain the contents of the issue at hand (Thunstrom and Noy 2019). There is thus a certain choreography to how a social drama is being performed and mediated in the public sphere. The characters and circumstances in these social dramas change, but the plot and the performance remain schematic and stereotypical.

   The processes of mythologization of public sphere are further accelerated since especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, a large portion of our life, both private and public, moved online, and our media consumption has risen drastically (COVID-19: tracking the impact on media consumption 2020). What this means is that political processes ever more depend on the market dynamics of mass media. Social and political dramas and the way they are being framed and represented in the media, in that sense become schematic in accordance to the news cycles of the media. In other words, social and policy issues are being dramatized, mediated and played out according to a specific logic, which is media-friendly and can fit popular narratives.

   The idea of mediatization became popularized in social sciences, and specifically in communication and media studies over the last decade. It denotes the process during which politicians and public agents alter their behavior and political practices to better suit the 'media logic' rather than 'political logics' (Stromback and Esser 2014). Donald Trump's Twitter politics is the first example that comes to mind thinking about the topic, however, it is easy to think of many other cases when politicians either behave and formulate their thoughts in ways that could be easily mediated and published (taking selfies not excluded) or use the powers of mass media as a political vehicle (Stier...