Mass Media in a Mass Society

Hoggart takes a number of aspects of mass society today - celebrity worship, youth culture, broadcasting, and a decline in the proper use of language - and considers the paradox that the ready accessibility of information of all types does not automatically lead to greater comprehension of our world. Information itself is inert and only leads to knowledge if it has been ordered and assessed.   He assesses the slow but uninterrupted dissolution of old beliefs, the erosion of the traditional pillars of authority throughout a century and a half of sustained intellectual criticism of existing assumptions and beliefs, and the resulting corruption of language.