Consideration of Magazine Contents and Celebrities as a Cognitive Category Reproduced by Media Monopolies: A Theoretical Approach for Applying Formal Pragmatics in the Globalization of the Late Modernism

For capitalism, the working masses' free time has always been lucrative to gain profit and to reproduce consent. That is why magazine media texts are significant to orientate personal choices in the direction of system processes. Through the magazines, the system has an opportunity to permeate and colonize personal spaces during free time. This is a linguistic process to construct categories in human mind and so since the beginning of industrialization the system's purposive actions of instrumentalist rationality are often offered as a part of human nature. In the current era, the process can have non-capitalist roots including all forms of modernism. In the post-Fordist era, the process takes some new forms spreading over the central capitalist societies as well as over the transition societies with new styles. Among different aspects of globalization, media as a communication sub-system emphasizes personalization and offers identities based on the freedom of consumption, while producing the culture of modern society to keep it as a whole.

The present study offers a theoretical linguistic approach to the analysis of ideological reproduction in modern industrial societies considering deeper cognitive dimensions. For any subsequent analysis we offer to apply Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action which can establish a linguistic and socio-psychological background. Then, categories can be offered to analyze media contents within formal pragmatics. In addition, the contribution of critical political economy and neo-Gramscian theories about the double-sided function of culture has allowed defining the character of monopolies and their practices in societies. In this respect, we consider the mediated communication processes through media which operates bipartitely in cognitive space, either for the emancipation or for the production of consent as oppression and cultural-political illiteracy.

The developed approach is based on the studies and recent observations about magazine content uniformities/divergences, which are adapted by media monopolies in different countries. Within the context of globalization, the USA is taken as the center. Additionally, two emerging economies (Russia and Turkey) have been considered due to their unique performances, separating them from the rest of the periphery.

Keywords: globalization, monopolization, magazine journalism, celebrities, communicative action, reification, instrumentalist modernism.

Political Economy of Global Networks and Communication Media

The globalization concept generally refers to the mobility of various elements of economy, and mobility of values to maintain the process (capital, labor and mentality of the system/ideology, standards, cultural production etc.). Put simply, the elements of globalization are the growing transfers or movements of products, capital and labor force between countries (Bartelson 2000: 36). However, it could be easily resolved that the movements have never been performed on a balanced and equal circulation in any dimensions.

The relationships between globalization and dominant political economic structures and their ideology are important. As a universal expansion of capitalism, globalization can be assumed to siege and finally to destruct any legal and physical boundaries against the accumulation of capital worldwide (Adda 2002: 10). Ernest Mandel depicts the ‘late capitalism’ as an unlimited expansion of production, the extension of capitalist domain all over the world and the tendency to consider all the world population as potential buyers (Mandel 2008: 57).

To define a turning point for the current phase of history, the crisis of welfare state has been decisive in the development of the hegemonic, politic, and economic frameworks experienced within current globalization process (Dursun 2001: 87–88). Having started in the United States, the crisis spread to the industrial societies of the North Atlantic axis and then, the rise of post-Fordism supported the neo-liberal policies and globalization, which in turn stimulated the emergence of a new cultural atmosphere (Heffernan 2000). Politically within the conservative discourse, the social settings based on market mechanisms are presented with more ‘freedom of choice’, so the relationship between free-market economy and democracy is brought to the fore by New Right. In this context, the hegemonic discourse of the current globalization could be built as the ideological extension of the capitalism established at the worldwide scale (Yeldan 2003: 428–431). To support the discourse with cultural production, the new privatization – general tendency for removing the rules in the field of media – has resulted in deregulation; and this turned to the introduction of new rules (reregulation), allowing entrepreneurship to act with an increasing freedom (Murdock 1990: 9–10).

Since the very beginning of this process, multinational capital has been organized through the networks of production structures/units – and these networks also has been organized through multinational capital (McLuhan and Powers 1992: 90). The communication networks required by post-Fordist productive relations became gradually sophisticated. The communication structures have been the life-support system of capitalism, especially supporting the financial system during the recent decades (Schiller 2000). Today, the global market of foreign currency exchanges (Forex) exceeds 3.8 trillion US dollars every day and it is dependent completely on digital networks.¹ This pure form of speculative markets can be a real source of motivation, or a steering factor (Habermas 1989a, 1989b), for the main actors of the globalization, concordant with the instrumental rationality. In terms of journalism and culture, the digital communication networks, sharing the same structure with financial networks, are to facilitate the access to information of multifarious kinds. However, a high investment cost of new technologies is another factor to encourage the monopolization in media sectors² (Adaklı 2001). Within the structure of the relations between political sphere and economy, communication networks, which are vital to global capital, have been integrated with journalism ever more. The media monopolization and content uniformity are the primary aspects of the general capitalist globalization in the sphere of communications; nevertheless, non-capitalist roots of the current global processes have been, perhaps, neglected in social studies. In this case, the integral manner of the process would be conceptualized within Jürgen Habermas's system concept from his theory of communicative action and his critics against Western modernism (Habermas 1989a, 1989b).

The transition from Fordism to post-Fordism yields in many economic outcomes, however, the main point in question can be the modern system's social and psychological capability to reproduce consent, giving perceptions of ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to different societies throughout the world. Considering the recent consumer democracies and consumer lifestyles of post-Fordism together with formerly-socialist transition societies, the cognitive dimensions should be examined which reconstruct human consciousness as reification. In this regard, monopolies as central structures organizing life and economy can become the mechanisms to cause societies to consent and adapt changes. Thus, the goal of the present study is to describe political and economic sides of a theoretical approach, which will explain the modern cognitive construction. In further studies, one can analyze the mechanisms within the signifiers produced by communication media, independent from approaches based merely on capitalism.

Habermas's conceptualization, including the dichotomy between lifeworld and modern system, can be used to develop a descriptive model of transition at the modern global scale. Within this framework, monopolistic/oligopolistic media structures have been considered as certain bodies of the system's communication medias, based on the previous studies.

The Transition of Media Business and a Cognitive Model for Consumers within Cultural Production

Since the beginning of the modern age, the developing and changing structure of capital accumulation has been always observable in the journalism sector in parallel with capitalism (Conboy 2004). Due to the New-Right policies within the post-Fordist development, mass communication field can be considered as the scene of critical change. In this change one can distinguish four main trends in the political economy: the increasing concentration in media industries, the growing diversity in the businesses of media, the increasing globalization and the general tendency for removing the rules in the field (Thompson 1996). With giant corporations' investments in communication/media sectors, media monopolies manage the cultural production, using similar business disciplines, in performing their works worldwide.

Along with the global networking strategy of the post-Fordist era, media emphasizes the personalization and identity formations based on the freedom of consumption. Therefore, identities are diversified and audiences are fragmentized into different groups and strata. At the same time, a dominating cultural production (especially with media again) keeps the consumers together in a common frame; and they become the subjects of a global mechanism at the level of pleasure-interest-consumption. Thus, globalization works simultaneously in the direction of integration as well as of fragmentation (Bauman 1999: 8). Processing with global post-Fordist networks and the consumption culture based on their products, the standardization/homogenization joint and absorb different cultures (King 2000), upon similar lifestyles.

Globalization and localization work together as a glocalization (Robertson 1999: 40), which is the strategy of multi-national enterprises to utilize the native and authentic diversities and to employ them, instead of destroying them totally (Morley and Robins 1997: 56–60). Within globalization, this approach has been assisting the rapid expansion and adoption of consumer culture in non-Western societies through the articulation of local characters. In respect of consumption culture, local media associated with the global media and local capital integrated into the global capital are assumed to have important roles in ideological reproduction processes (Dağtaş and Dağtaş 2009: 63).

The characteristic of the system's linguistic media can be observed clearly via the practices of media monopolies, due to the worldwide flow of information, to the dependency on central news agencies, and to the similarities based on the organizational logic within the system bureaucratization. Although the uniformity of organizational structures can be clearly identified, the overall situation should operate in a latent nature worldwide. Within current globalization period, these multi-dimensional processes occur within linguistic and non-linguistic process in the human cognition as a matter of socio-psychological sphere; and within power relations – as a matter of political economy. Even though the implicitness of processes is well emphasized (Foucault 1980), the researchers have not agreed on a coherent methodology yet to include all the dimensions of the processes and to consider the cases experienced by different nations speaking different languages.

Time and History Problems Emerging with Post-Modernism: Phases of Capitalism and Synchronic Analyses of Semantic Structures

The current era started in the end of the twentieth century. So, the duration of the sequential phases is shorter than an average human life expectancy in modern societies. Accordingly, for the analyses, it is difficult to approve any synchronic approaches or anachronous approaches, which omit the dimension of time, or the dimension based on the historical continuity. If social phenomena could be examined with neglecting its character of continuity, there were only independent periods in time line -or in history-, which human generations perceived disconnectedly. However, the generations are connected with collective memories (Habermas 1989a: 70) and human cognition is neither synchronous nor anachronous. Anthropologically, human beings perceive the ‘present’ with the past and with the concern of future, and then, integrate three of them in the mind, to construct time consciousness (Augistinus 1995). One can interpret Augistinus of Carthage with his emphasis on the term ‘present’ which is the very base of time cognition; however, Augistinus showed that human perception works in diachronic and social manner. In this case, everybody has memories, shaping the personal decisions, and even the most selfish ones have some plans about their relations with others in the future society. Meanwhile, everybody contributes to the collective cognitive world of meanings and this collective-cognitive world influences everybody. So it seems reasonable to presume an anthropological approach for social studies.

The researches should take into account not only governing or dominant factors but also the main criterion of success of any social model and policy in globalization. This criterion is the socially constructed-human cognition. The policies may seem to be shaped by capital, by consumption, or by governments; however, it is human cognition that decides about the success of the policies and may enforce the policies to be changed, even if the social masses seem passive. Whether individuals passively consent to the domination or actively criticize the order, the subject has always existed with human consciousness and free will (Kant 2003). It is the reason why a system needs to change its strategies, that is discourses and policies. To protect the prevalent relations, the system needs logical arguments to induce the individuals that the order is advantageous for the society and personal interests.

One needs a theory and method to explain global political economy, temporary culture, and the reproduction of cognitive and social consent together with historical process. Within such a theory, history may not be perfectly linear because there can be fluctuations and even backwards or loops during transformations, as argued by Ibn-Khaldun, who described collapses and ruptures, as conditional to the impossibility of the communication between societies (Toynbee 1987). However, time goes only forward within dialectical process and nothing can remain the same in the course of time; as proved by Mohammed Ghazali, in the Late Middle Ages before the decline of eastern enlightenment (Ghazali 2000; Lewes 2010). In this case, the continuity of history – and inevitable progress based on the reasons of the past – could be proposed with regard to the humankind's time perception against any idea of the indefinite time perception and of the stabilization of social progress or the end of the history (Baudrilliard 1998; Fukuyama 1998).

Changing Modernism in a Stable Frame: Habermas's Theories

The cases of media corporations or monopolies of daily information give significant reasons to study political economy within the socio-psychological context and linguistics. In fact, the cognitive function of communication media is a part of the general system processes as mediatization and colonization of lifeworld (Habermas 1989b). Today, media monopolies, which manage publication and broadcasting spheres, still have significant effects on the cultural field, socialization and people's perceptions. During the Fordist era, they were organized in a linear hierarchy. Now, the evaluating bodies are composed of many branches widespread in the world and connected to their centers (Arsenault and Castells 2008). As regards the relationship between popular and commercial cultures, the concept of culture industries should be considered however; new media monopolies and their cultural production based on the digital technologies require analyses in an interactive model with a larger account of human social cognition. In this context, monopolization of information and linguistic resources endure because they satisfy human cognitive needs at the same time supporting the system's action model for the reproduction of social consent.

A Short Definition of Post-Fordism

One can mention Marshall McLuhan to be the first theorist of the post-Fordist economy and the world order based on it. His ideas as ‘the theory of communication and production networks’ can be described as a worldwide single system, which integrates distant consumption and production units through communication mediums (McLuhan 2008; McLuhan and Lapham 1994). In this model, independent production suppliers can be organized under the demand of main firms and this relationship can be managed to fulfill industrial quality standards with much more options for consumers. According to McLuhan, in the global labor and capital market the main firms could seek for most effective labor; and also, smaller suppliers could sell their innovative ideas at highest prices. Nets of suppliers different from strict bureaucratization of giant corporations could support the innovative ideas better, and with new communication systems, information or payments could be transferred and managed despite the distance (McLuhan and Powers 1992).

McLuhan's ideas can be understood with the help of the political economy theory of his theoretical predecessor Harold Innis, who offered an approach for historical analyses based on the communication systems and technology. In a few words, the most powerful and enduring political systems (empires) or their social orders were successful due to their ability to construct communication systems and to utilize communication technology of their age (Innis 2007). However, Innis argued the hegemony of long-lasting national or multinational monarchies before the modern age; so, it was controversial how his theory could be functional for a new globalization phenomenon, which has been offered in discourse, as a voluntary participation of independent democracies,

The defects of the network theory, and of global village based on it, can be found in McLuhan's concept of communication (McLuhan 2008[1962]). McLuhan thought that interpersonal communication and negotiations were the primary reason of social inequality, so his model of globalization offered an intense mediatization of social life through communication mediums (Ibid.: 29). According to McLuhan's concept, mediated social relations would give more freedom and opportunity to individual's self-actualization. However, there exist central corporations that possess scientific knowledge of production and know-how to regenerate it. Moreover, news-making conglomerates control the information flow. Accordingly, these central structural elements of the networks can control the distribution of knowledge, and it again means the accumulation of power. Such an ability to control the distribution would be a real problem in terms of freedom (McChesney and Schiller 2003). Moreover, the mediatized communication process can be identified with atomization of individuals and more barriers against organized critical public.

Although modern individuality without interpersonal communication comes with atomization, alternative results emerging from technological progress are also possible. For example, global interactive networks can be considered as a proof of digital communities. However, after great expectations about the World Wide Web in the late 1990s, an increasing normalization was observed, oppressing the real potential of criticism arising from Internet (Schweitzer 2005). Actually, the conglomerates' Internet sites can be used as well for any kind of analyses instead of printed pages.

As regards the communication media, the conglomerates can simply transfer their hierarchical patterns and business disciplines into the cyber space. Again, the power of the media in cyber space can be used to shape human cognition, to form modern socialization and to reproduce instrumentalist rationality, to sustain the system's model of action and to maintain the current power relations worldwide.

From Modern to Post-Modern: From Fordist to Post-Fordist and from Socialist to Capitalist

At the global scale, the concepts of freedom, democracy and liberalism need to be re-evaluated with the account of production, consumption, distribution and justice. So, there can be other choices than contemporary market democracies, which are based on increasing consumption and are offered with the discourse of free trade. In this respect, the neo-Hegelian theories about the end of the past, or the end of history within a final system, should be criticized (Fukuyama 1998). In the new era, the discontinuities in the memories/meanings and disconnection from the past have been dominant aspects of post-modernism and this can hinder critical development of individuals (Best and Kellner 1998). In this case, the new post-Fordist production structures and their post-modern cultural logic can be maintained within a situation of social unconsciousness, or another kind of consciousness, meant to produce aggregate utility. However, this is not a new or post-modern condition. Since the beginning of instrumentalist modernity up to the present, consciousness has been reified and human cognition has been constructed through the production of cognitive categories and the guidance of the industrial way of socialization (Habermas 1989a).

The transition after the 1970s may seem to be conducted by Western capitalism. To some extent this approach is reasonable because alternative society models had been abandoned. Following Ernest Mandel's approach, Fredrick Jameson identified the behavior of capital accumulation or capital as the central factor provoking changes in modern societies and in the cultural modes: market capitalism of the early industrialization era, then monopolistic capitalism of national corporations, and currently – late capitalism (Jameson 1991). However, this can be inadequate without explaining other important factors causing the change. These factors can be found within the basis of socialization depending on human perception and worldviews. In other words, there must be reasons which enable capital flows to be formed in various ways or cause capitalism to organize societies in different models. Yet, the former non-capitalist societies of the last century have shown an active adaptation, which requires some inner causes to be available in the societies, other than a mere foreign intervention. So, in the societal model there must be an opposite part which tries to negotiate with the dominant structures and makes the system to be applied by hierarchies within different ideologies or discourses. In this case, the current change can be described as a direct transition of macro production structures to the level beyond capitalism. It can be assumed that the cognitive steering factors of modern system have existed in non-capitalist industrial societies, and once they have been performed within different discourses, these factors were used for the capitalist transition afterwards. Therefore, the analyses based on the ideas about unique phases of capitalism, shaping space, time and culture (Ibid.), can be augmented.

The Theoretical Perspective

The homogenizing global information space of the single system of instrumental rationality (modernism) is the reason for our assumption about the homogenization in the ways of performing journalism, within different national media spheres. In this case, the similarities of monopolistic characters observed within different corporations in different countries, are assumed to be the reason for the parallel business patterns in the system's communication medias. This political economic approach can be also expanded to include the analyses of cultural production.

Some media monopolies still operate mostly at the national level. In this case, the differences between current monopolistic structures at the national level may be emphasized. However, due to the post-Fordism and globalization of markets one can find common features within all current ownership structures and management patterns. It is the reason why contemporary monopolies can be studied basing on their similarities. In this context, main global media monopolies or conglomerates, developed basing on the Western industries, can be the sources of global monopolistic features and global business patterns. So in case of media monopolies, one can find some global themes which media use in the text production or in the construction of meanings. The themes can be supposed to be the basic mediums of processes and the signifiers of meanings and arguments offered by the system's communication media. In this context, the diachronic method of analysis in pragmatics can be proposed to study structures/contents along with the historical progress of modernity. Linguistic practices in media texts (signifiers of the system processes) also will help to identify the content uniformity, along with the construction of system argumentations that are against the anthropological entity – or lifeworld (Habermas 1989b).

When studying critical political economy of media in terms of Habermasian linguistics and sociology, our first step will describe the main organizational structures such as current media monopolies in three countries. The similarities can be useful to perform a diachronic analysis with contextual content analysis in further studies. However, a contextual approach, which is actually based on political economy and concerns the whole political and economic reality, needs more than a conventional analysis of its contents (Lewis and Jhally 1998). In this case, we can take into account such units of data as the themes based on the meanings constructed and negotiated on the pages with a background of social reality. Within this context, media monopolies as the communicational bodies of system medias producing connotations in meanings and arguments presented on the pages, should be positioned during the connected phases of modernism.

Post-Fordism as an Organizational Way of Late Modernism

Power is a steering/non-linguistic and cognitive media that defines socialization in modern societies (Habermas 1989b). However, some conversions are possible among different types of media, and hierarchically organized power can be converted into liquid capital. So the production structures are the primary spaces, through which power works and organizes societies. In this case, production phases explain better the macro process of adaptation during the transformation of societies, when there were no real capitalist classes in the late 1980s.

Russian Federation and arising China give some clues about the common logic, cognitive construction and reification within modern industrial societies. In addition to these main states of socialist industrial societies, there were other forms, such as Turkish model. It was based on the state-bureaucratization, in the mixed model including the central planning approach from real socialism, and the usage of capitalist classes, which were made up of reputable capital owners who had privileges from political domain (Öztan 2007). In this framework, the Turkish variation of state-capitalism probably was the most eclectic construction of organic society model.

One of the currently emerging markets, Turkey, the social and economic history of the 20^th century should be examined with the account of the policies based on the mixed model of corporatism (Ibid.). So, the main Turkish capital owners and investors had been protected and supported in many ways, which could hardly be considered ethical or rational in any advanced capitalist societies. As a result, the Turkish capitalist classes had carried some defects, and it was hard to describe them with the term of advanced industrial-capitalist classes before 1980. During 60 years nearly, the system of public banks and customs were the tools to support and to protect the ineffective production structures; and, in fact, much of the capitalist classes remained in the stage of merchant capitalism. As their main character, Turkish capitalist classes were not used to effective tools of business. Under these conditions, the lack of ability for international competition and for reproducing technology had endured for decades. Together with the corruption in state bureaucracy which conducted the process, this policy had been reproduced within Fordist industrialization policy and corporatist discourse of the past (Öztan 2007). Even today some deficiencies in the qualifications of Turkish capitalist classes seem to remain.

After 1980, capitalist classes and capital structures have been subject to great changes as clearly observed in the sphere of media ownership and cross/diagonal monopolizations (Dağtaş 2006). According to the Turkish researchers, the reflections of social transformation were observed in the lifestyles and dominant cultural production/consumption patterns (Işık and Pınarcıoğlu 2000: 4–5). The power relations and the lifestyles of the new capitalist classes were being observed in the magazine contents during the 1990s and 2000s (Dağtaş 2006).

Non-Capitalist or Incomplete-Capitalist Classes of Power inthe Period of Changes

In the developed Western countries, some peculiarities distinguish the professional management stratum with its symbolic and cultural capital within the current structures of economy from conventional/traditional capitalist classes (Bourdieu 1992). After 2008, the recent global economic crises show that these types of capital or power can be converted into fortune against the wealth of working classes. Similarly in the currently emerging markets, non-developed capitalist, primitive capitalist or even non-capitalist agents of former Fordist and corporatist structures have transformed into the current capitalist agents, and process of modernity in such countries has being taken the form of post-Fordism and globalization.

There can be other factors than capital in modern societies to transform production structures and to regulate societies. In this case, the predefined concepts of political economy can be studied together with the production of social signifiers and with the socio-psychological effects of the transformation processes. In order to enable such a model, based on the relations of production – or on the patterns of organization for production – can describe better the current phases in all modern societies. The model based on the phases of production modes, rather than capital, can explain the present social phenomena, independent from the political backgrounds of societies, and independent from any former regulation policies, or regimes of property.

In case of former socialist or corporatist societies, the roots of the factors to reproduce consent can be found in Weber's concept of bureaucratization, which enables the emergence of Fordist structures without capitalist classes in the past. In Russia, after the 1990s, the organizational/dominating factors might have forced the society to change into the capitalist order and transform the Fordist structures into new monopolies. In this case, a certain model of action and psycholinguistic character shaping individual's socialization can describe the worldwide similarities and differences in the modern societies' cultures in the expanding post-Fordist economic relations.

The Faces of Magazine: Celebrities and Lifestyles for Observing Socialization and Power Relations in Modern Societies

Celebrities as a group or strata, which participate in the power relations without primary need for capital, were first studied in postwar America (Mills 2000). In this respect if all modern societies had been liberal-capitalist democracies in the Fordist twentieth century, it could have been easier to explain the cultural dimension of the current US-centered globalization. However, the 20^th century has not been only the century of capitalist modern societies. Nearly half of the world applied different regimes to regulate economy and relations between the production factors in their countries. Definitely, there were no capitalist classes in modern societies of that kind. Nevertheless, after the collapse or abandoning their system, formerly socialist nations are quite efficient in adapting to capitalism and after a relatively short period, there are giant corporations and capitalist classes in these transforming societies. Today, a common process, called globalization, is considered to involve all nations of the world.

Habermas offered his media systems concept for all kinds of modern societies, including socialist – or poststalinist – regimes (Habermas 1989b). However, he generally analyzed communication media, and its double-sided function between social integration and fragmentation, in Western democracies (postliberal societies). Moreover, the power elites (Mills 2000) and the cultural mediators as the owners of the non-financial capital (Bourdieu 1987) have been already studied. Thus, non-pecuniary forms of the capital have been analyzed with regard to the Western capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Anyway, one can hardly say the same about the socialist regimes in the past.

In the last decade, coherent studies have been proposed to describe social power related to the individual connections with state authorities in the Soviet Union (Grinin 2009). In the USSR, in different spheres the success – or the fame, power or reputation – often depended on the relations with the state and the party (Ibid.). In fact, ‘reification of consciousness’ had been distinguished in early times after October Revolution (Lukács 1999). Later this situation was considered in the Soviet Union as the ‘manipulation of consciousness’ (Grinin 2009). In other words, in this model of industrial society, steering factors and motivation for personal/social actions had been constructed in connection with the single source of power– the state bureaucracy. The reason could be assumed as similar to the capitalist strategy to keep human consciousness in the orbit of the system. However, strategies of the real socialism were much more closed to criticism and policies were more centralist in accordance with the authoritarian approach.

In the young Russian Federation, power is considered similarly as a kind of symbolic capital with concrete forms such as fame and reputation (Grinin 2009). Moreover, the current situation of newly-born capitalist classes and their relations with state bureaucracies in the formerly socialist countries give other evidences about the following shifts: all the forms of capital can be transformed into the financial capital or, vice versa, power can be used to create capitalist classes. In this connection, power has always had a certain political and economic character; however, in some cases the people in power (or power-owners) do not need to have financial capital directly in their hands.

The power relations can endure basing on the social hierarchies, and the hierarchies can survive with oppressing the communicative rationality, which is the main anthropological tendency of humankind during socialization (Habermas 1989a, 1989b). To prevent risk of pure rationality of public criticism, which can revive the communicative rationality against the system's instrumental rationality, modern hierarchies can transform into new organizational forms. Thus, the explanations based on the differences between global post-fordism and – relatively national – fordism of the former era can describe late modernism. Changes in the monopolistic characteristics can be examined within the same frame.

Cognitive and Political Power of Non-Political Journalism: Magazines and Lifestyles Representations since Early Modernism

Consumer identities and lifestyles, which are central in the post-Fordist era, can be observed in the magazine contents. Thus, among the practices of media monopolies, the reason for choosing magazine journalism can be found in the direct connections of the contents with consumption-based lifestyles (Dağtaş 2006). In particular, the media monopolies, which publish and broadcast magazine contents in their channels, papers, web sites or in the networks of connected sites, can supply some samples for studying the culture produced by system medias in the current era. Then, their contents can be analyzed with a diachronic approach based on Habermas's concept of universal pragmatics.

Magazine journalism had emerged for the purpose of protecting British labor class from deviating to some ‘false tendencies’, in other words, to reduce the labor class's interest in political issues. This new kind of commercial journalism was reproduced in the frame of political conservatism after the 1820s (Conboy 2004: 154). It was especially characteristic for the weekend's publications aimed at keeping workers busy in their free time or preventing them from potentially undesired actions. There was sensational news with the contents about sexuality, events around popular arts and entertainment, decrying of drunkenness and laziness with a conservative discourse in the background – all were mixed together. Later, the contents evolved within the ideological reproduction and consumption-based lifestyle presentations have been included. Today, the formats of magazine journalism, consumer journalism, news of entertainment or celebrities can be all considered in this term (Ibid.: 148). Despite the apolitical nature in the denotative level (straight structures), magazine journalism had been the most politically effective type of journalism, even surpassing the main political content (Ibid.) with its long-term cognitive effects and their effects on the reasoning in the Western societies.

One can be examine magazine pages to observe the new monopolies' and networking relations' effects on communication media practices. New relations of production can also affect business disciplines or the codes, which are determinative for journalism, culture industries and entertainment industry. Media conglomerates have significant shares in these various kinds of industries (Arsenault and Castells 2008). So, magazine pages reflect the actions, which are directly or indirectly connected to their ownership structures. As a part of modern society, the businesses of cultural production are organized under the private bureaucratization.³ However, the organization of entertainment industry and its connection with journalism-information sector have its own informal characteristics. In the non-capitalist Soviet society, the celebrities (the representatives of culture industry) were organized in their informal, closed or secret structures connected to the state (Grinin 2009). These analyzes can reveal a part of the state-bureaucratization conducted within an authoritarian approach (Weber 1978) and its long-term side effects in the cultural life.

Today, the sectors of information and cultural production can be considered globally within current post-Fordist networks. In the context of modern socialization, the cognitive construction steered by system processes can be observed clearly in the news contents. In this respect, the intentional level or reason of the overall meanings can be found in the argumentations in the texts. Accordingly, the ways of reasoning in printed and online pages can be the subjects of media pragmatics. In this context, magazine news contents can be critical for the system's process to substitute system meanings for the meanings of lifeworld. Then, the system can process further to manage cultural life and political-economic impacts in societies. Thus, the monopolies' magazine production can give us the codes used in cognitive process between the system and individuals' perception. As a result, magazine themes can be offered as the schemes based on the system argumentations intending to reconstruct social-cognitive world of meanings.

For a study which investigates only the direct meanings of magazine contents – such as news about relationships, personal success or reputation – magazine pages can be considered apolitical. However, the reproduction of the consent had been the primary motive of the British elites to support the emergence of magazine journalism (Conboy 2004). In addition to this, working masses' free time has always been lucrative to gain profit. Today, beyond the direct pecuniary results, magazine texts significantly orientate personal choices in the direction of system processes. Magazines can invoke and prompt people to the consumption-based lifestyles, and offer consumer identities to them as individual roles in the society. At the global scale, magazine press and magazine journalism can be examined as a social structure and an agent affecting cognitive domain with the production of meanings and arguments which are concordant with the logic of the post-Fordist globalization. This process, interacting with cultural and private spheres, can be analyzed through the uniformity in the texts published by media monopolies. For studying the operational ways of social-functional language outcomes (subjects to pragmatics) in case of different languages, the practices – or constructed meanings – should be reduced to the basic elements to be decoded, in order to extract analogical argumentations within similar ideological structures worldwide.

Ownership Structures and MediaMonopolization in the United States, Turkey andRussia: The Case of Magazine Networks

In terms of consumption in the monopolized environments of culture, the increase in cross promotion of cultural products causes the reduction of ‘inappropriate’ ones (Bagdikian 1992). While eliminating pluralism, the circulation of certain ideas or meanings can be supplied and this causes an increasing uniformity within different dimensions of the system logic. In this context, the texts produced by the apparatuses can be effective and steering in daily activities and communication, supplying topics to talk or to think about; and the texts become the sources of meanings in language within national and global dimensions of the system.

The argumentation processes dominated by the system have got deeper socio-psychological effects and have produced many argumentations for legitimation (Habermas 1989b: 221) and so they can be more effective to reproduce the consent in liberal democracies compared to the authoritarian forms. However, in case of public-established monopolies, arbitrations may be claimed for state or semi-state ownership, against unstable social conditions. Even the public can approve social stabilization committed by media and state intervention (Oates and McCormack 2010). Consequently, the media monopolies' executives being either appointed by the state as bureaucratic elites or employed by main shareholders as cultural intermediaries, perform similar cultural practices in an overall global structure. Besides, the complex structures of semi-state ownership can effectively conceal managerial power relations (Becker 2004).

Ideological and cultural production in the domestic magazine texts should be examined together with the worldwide cultural production, and so the similarities in the ownership structures of organizations behind the texts should be considered within the framework of the system's current globalization. Throughout the history, forms of lifeworld had been mainly constructed within individual relationships (Habermas 1989a), or in a definable and relatively holistic habitus (Weber 1978: 536). In this new era however, the cognitive field and ways of socialization can be formed within a dominating global logic and conflicts with reality based on the local conditions can be expected.

In relation to the linguistics, the researches show the tendencies in contemporary language practices towards similarity and uniformity under the impact of North American English and culture (Hjarvard 2004). This may be a starting point for studying culture and cognitive development. For the reasons originating from global commercial culture, from media monopolization and from media uniformity, it could be necessary that the researchers consider the central position of the United States and its media industries.

Under the private or state ownership, media monopolies and their resembling (probably, uniformed) practices can exist within different forms of modern organizational approaches for the societies (Habermas 1989b: 330). These forms are private bureaucratization and state bureaucratization mainly. Additionally, the general organizational structure of a country's system can make these two kinds of bureaucratization hard to distinguish, because business is integrated with state and politics. USA is a good example of such integration (Baker 1992). In the terms of loss of meaning and the oppression of cognitive freedom, similar outcomes of media monopolies – as the system's communication media – can be described within different models of industrial societies and different regimes of property; but all are similar in compliance with instrumentalist rationality (Habermas 1989a: 261; 1989b: 369).

In the case of authoritarian state interventions for social stability (as in Russia) the networks of power struggles can oppress the objections against media monopolies at initial stages (Becker 2004). On the other hand, in case of anti-trust regulations without multi-dimensional approaches, even if the states introduce some interventions and legal arrangements, media monopolies are able to re-emerge or they can contribute to the power relations again, along with the changing governments (as in Turkey). In case of the pursuits for social stability and control, the real cost of media monopolies, must be reconsidered. Even a relative stability can be set with the help of monopolistic media sphere; the long-run and non-pecuniary social costs caused by monopolies can be much higher for nations. These costs are sourced from obstacles set by monopolies, which oppress democratic cultural production and the capacity of a free public (Ibid.).

Within a comparative approach, which starts from the analyses of ownership structures, the positions of the shareholders are considered more stable in the US market, than the shareholders in the emerging ones. However, the cognitive effects of system processes could be supported by ‘market stability’, and vice versa, general structure based on the domains of political economy can affect the system argumentations and legitimation in the United States. Although most of the studies on the American conglomerates tend to consider political content, these companies are also influential for worldwide culture industries with respect to the general magazine contents and to the styles of news-making disciplines.

The primary assumption for our study is that the non-political contents about personal relationships and lifestyles can shape socialization more effectively through the substitution of system meanings/reasoning for lifeworld meanings and reasoning. For this assumption, magazine journalism can be taken as a typical example of monopolistic business patterns and monopolistic journalism codes. With their dependency on the entertainment industry/lifestyles and required connections with celebrities for news-making, it is unlikely that magazine contents can be produced outside the monopolistic media. Today, same corporations control entertainment industry ad control all kinds of press. However, ‘the subjects’ of the contents are also produced within system processes and system medias offer their self-evident meanings while they construct their subjective rationality. This closed process could be operated by many system agents within the nets of production and consumption which are managed by monopolistic centers. During the Fordist era, in the liberal-democratic USA, these closed structures produced stars as models for lifestyles (Mills 2000), and in the socialist USSR different structures produced artists reputable by the regime (Grinin 2009). Both political regimes benefited from the reproduction of system rationality for different Fordist-industrial societies.

Now the American media monopolies (as well as some European ones) call themselves as ‘international groups’. However, one can hardly prove that the centralist character of corporations has changed. Most concentrated media monopolies are the US companies, as ‘critical nodes’ and main lines of the networks, which operate post-Fordist relations in the current era (Arsenault and Castells 2008: 740). The nodes thus ‘connect the networks of finance with the global network of media networks, and this enhances their role in the global media networks’. Thus, six of the seven global media conglomerates are the American trusts. The only exception is Bertellsmann of Germany while other giant media corporations from Europe and the Middle East cannot be included in the ‘big seven’. Besides, the non-American media monopolies share their ownerships with the US monopolies (Ibid.). Although these other nationalities have increasing shares in American corporations today, the complex connections and nested ownership structures of the American conglomerates are much more significant (Ibid.: 713–715). As regards the online contents, new actors have emerged and the nested character of structures is getting more complex. Still, the online press may seem to give more chances to the audiences to deliver their own voices, but new Internet monopolies can be assumed to support and enforce the power relations. Qualitatively, the US media monopolies are ownership structures performing diverse business operations as a worldwide characteristic of monopolization (such as NBC of General Electric).

Unlike local monopolies, the Western transnational media conglomerates (mostly from the USA) need local partners to customize contents for distant audiences as a source for both integrated globalization and localization (Arsenault and Castells 2008: 708). However, still their major market is in the USA, and income shares from other regions – even from Europe – are much lesser (Ibid.: 722). This can be a reasonable cause for the Americanization in the worldwide cultural production. In this case, cultural globalization means a high dependency on the US production. For example, in Britain, 80 % of the news contents are received from American information monopolies and historically-constructed global agencies (Ibid.: 742). On the other hand, the CNN holding of Turner Media, Time Warner alone owns 10 % of the total film market worldwide. Nevertheless, their direct and indirect dominance in the US cultural market can be naturally assumed more significant. In this context, the ‘mythology of freedom of communications’ is supported because of the private monopolies expanding in the United States (McChesney and Schiller 2003).

Negative examples of state intervention and attempts to regulate media field in other parts of the world can be another factor weakening support for media regulation in the United States. However, during the last decade considerable changes have taken place for the main owners of media groups in Turkey and a general oligopolistic schema has been maintained. The most important results of such a concentration can be discussed around the contents, quantitatively with counting the similarities, and qualitatively, with defining the ways of arguing and presenting the similar contents, used by media in different societies. The commodification, standardization, uniformity and also a ‘low’ literal quality together with the increase in the overall tabloidization of contents have been the dominating features of Turkish media (Dağtaş 2006). Similar with the media around the world, the media uniformity in Turkey can be observed in contents. There has been a diversity of materials available in circulation, although their contents can be the variations produced based on the same main themes and images (Golding and Murdock 1997: 58).

The concentration in Turkish media has grown and various dimensions of monopolization have been experienced over the last three decades (Dağtaş 2006). As regards to the magazine publishing ‘in 1997, more than 70 % of the revenues in the magazine industry are shared by Dinç Bilgin Group and Doğan Media Group’ (Çakmur 1998: 138). After 2007, with the governmental interventions, 77 % of the media sector and other forms of publishing, including Internet sites, now belong to four media groups and the share of foreign investors has increased (Sözeri and Güney 2011). Although Doğan Group appears to protect its power and influence, it has started to withdraw from the media sector by selling its assets after the assignment of a huge tax penalty in September 2009 (about 2.5 billion US dollars) for its fiscal frauds. However, Bilgin Group has also experienced a radical transformation. As the owner of Sabahnewspaper – a figurative agent of the transformation and Americanization in the Turkish press after 1980 (Adaklı 2001) – the group has expanded from broadcasting to the banking and energy spheres and so has evolved into an outstanding example of conglomerate. Due to the structural depression in 2000–2001 and economic crises in Turkey, and after the prosecution against its frauds in the banking sector, Bilgin Group had to transfer its majority stakes to Ciner-Çukurova Group. Because of the hidden connections between the groups, the government's probe deepened to cover both groups' actions. In April 2007, after the condemnation of the groups by TMSF (Savings Deposit Insurance Fund), the expropriated media assets, which once belonged to Bilgin and its partner Center Group (Ciner),numbered 63. In accordance with the Banking Code No. 5411, the media assets were sold to ÇalıkGroup via public tender, which was assumed to be close to the government.

A similar process of condemnation against Uzan Group and its media assets can also be linked with power relations in Turkey. The events experienced by Uzan Group (once one of the largest groups in media, telecommunications, construction and banking) might be related with its establishing a political party against the ruling party, as well as its commercial conflicts with the US electronics giant Motorola.

Like Turkey, Russia has experienced some similar interventions against media. However, different from the formally open course in Turkey, the Russian case is more difficult to define clearly and it can be described as a renationalization or returning of state ownership (Tompson 2007). Although Russia has a wide range of media content supplied by numerous companies, conglomerates with state support have been managing to increase concentration based on their direct or concealed connections with state bureaucracy. In the case of federal television broadcasting, both state monopolization and informal state monopolization (such as NBC under the management of Gazprom) are clear (Oates and McCormack 2010). In the case of printed press, the situation is complex and there are many factors to enable resistance against the media monopolies (Treisman 2011). For example, the young federation is the world's leading country with respect to the number of journalists. Besides, the number of printed newspapers in circulation is remarkable. However, the struggle over the control of respected and influential publications, issues and channels can be the main field of action for Russian conglomerates. The investors' position and success of their actions depend on their relations with government (Becker 2004).

Its socialist past as a counter model for industrial societies is the reason to approve significance of the Russian case. It is also interesting that many Russians approve the control over media for a politically predefined stability, without interrogating the power relations of media owners (Oates and McCormack 2010). Thus, it is another reason to study Russian media together with the cognitive construction of modern system in terms of a multi-dimensional approach.

It is difficult to access all information about the general Russian case so it would be more suitable to study some remarkable cases. As a newspaper and Internet news site, Izvestiya is a proper case because its symbolic value has remained from the former era. Moreover, for an approach based on the system's cognitive categories against lifeworld categories, Izvestiya includes magazine pages and a supplement. In our studies it was the supplement Nedelya (‘Week’) which can be accessed from the main Izvestiya news site. In the first half of 2011, Nedelya was the center of Izvestiya's magazine network of many sites, called Novosti Partnerov (‘Partners' news’). It is notable that with their lighter or mainstream magazine styles compared to main Izvestiya magazine, these sites can be assumed to supply content richness, to analyze system processes in contemporary Russian culture.

During the recent decade, some measures have been taken by the central government against thegiant Gazprom because of its owners' supposed illegalities in the gas distribution business. The measures have affected the ownership of the group's media asset – Gazprom Media – which held reputable publications such as Izvestiya for a long period. Finally, after several changes of its owners – all of them were related to the gas distribution business as the primary source of capital in new Russia – finally, Rossiya Bank from St. Petersburg obtained 55 % of Izvestiya, and the management of the editorial board has been given to National Media Group.

Many interventions to the editors, and changes in the boards could be supposed in Izvestiya in the last decade. This situation and complex measures can be considered together with many related cases of the period of special politically economic relations in Russia. In this context, the conjuncture in the young federation's media can be examined in the general pattern of media regulations in an authoritarian style (Becker 2004). Despite the difference of semi-public ownership in Russia, the monopolistic behavior can be considered in comparison with Turkey and other examples of the concentration of ownership in media.

Cognitive Category of Magazine Celebrities as an Example of Power Redistribution through Media

Construction/reproduction of cognitive categories and identities can explain why communication media have been critical for social structure in all kinds of modern societies, and this explains the similarities in managerial relations of the media organizations. Communication media have been organized owing to the modern hierarchies, so media corporations sustain their political-economic benefits. However, unlike other corporations the communication media actively functions in reproducing the system rationality with linguistic production. As opposed to the non-linguistic medias such as power and money, which penetrate in and mediate daily relationships of people (Habermas 1989b), the texts published or broadcasted can construct and impose the system-subjective meanings into the lifeworld and motivate people to continue living within the system reason (Habermas 1989b: 383).

The fame and power of celebrities who do not have any real education or talent to deserve fame have been examined owing to the fact that they could transform their fame into the real power and capital (Grinin 2009: 188). Within the framework of system argumentations as alternatives of anthropological rationality of lifeworld, media may put some ordinary individuals into daily life and daily communication. For example, kinship-like connections, sexual relationships and lifestyles can be shaped via the presentations of these personal lives as models for society. This can be the real power of non-politic (magazine) journalism.

In the new era, main nodes or centers dominate media networks (Arsenault and Castells 2008) and cultural processes make societies to consent to the global hierarchies. Given this fact, the national processes should be examined in the context of a global sphere. As a deeper example of global media uniformity, the subjectivity of the criteria of a ‘celebrity’ have been noticed both in the transforming Russian Federation (Grinin 2009) and in Turkey (Dağtaş 2006). Although some inequality can be clearly observed between globally known American/Western European and domestically known stars in both emerging markets, the subjectivity can be very similar to that typical for the American model. Besides, the reproduction and representation of similar lifestyles around media celebrities (Ibid.) can be studied as a central practice of the worldwide media monopolies. In this connection, the main problem can be found within the argumentation processes and in the imposition of the system meanings as cognitive categories.

Although the ‘phenomenon of the stars’ was also studied as ‘powerless elites’ because of their irrational significance in modern societies (Albertoni 1987), celebrities are considered with respect to their position in power relations as a significant social stratum in all modern global societies (Grinin 2009). Within expanding media industries, the relatively apolitical magazine news-making processes can be a countable and analyzable part of the socio-linguistic dimension of cognitive construction, and mediatization of lifeworld in industrial societies. Produced by magazine journalism, celebrities can become a real social stratum as well as a cognitive category constructed within modern socialization.

A Previous Research on Turkish Magazine Contents and Monopolistic Media

For a content analysis in terms of pragmatics, the categories can be developed basing the results of Erdal Dağtaş's research on Turkish newspapers' magazine supplements during the period between 2001 and 2005 (Dağtaş 2006: 216–248). To examine the global themes produced by system medias, Dağtaş's main ideas can be considered the frames of ideological meanings and of argumentations produced by Turkish magazine media. The research primarily examined the Turkish conglomerates in terms of ‘communication sub-system’ within the frame of global and local political economy (Ibid.: 27–125). Then, the research was to analyze professional codes and journalism practices of Turkish media monopolies exposed through the interviews with magazine editors as cultural mediators (Ibid.: 131–144, 179–201). So it was observed that the new middle class, the high-rank employees of communication sub-system reproduce the dominant discourse. It can be assumed that examples of argumentations (validity claims in process) supporting purposive action practices were revealed within the interviews. Dağtaş's research also included descriptive frames for lifestyles of celebrities who can be considered here as cognitive categories and secondary system mediators which are produced and used by the cultural mediators of magazine media. According to Dağtaş, during globalization initiated by post-Fordist capitalism, the ideological process within magazine media can be attributed to the presentations of consumption-based lifestyles.

Diachronic versus Synchronic

Although this study argues about the cognitive significance of magazines, one can object to the importance of media's non-political contents. For this purpose, an additional assumption can be made and it may be worth explaining the reason for studying magazine contents.

In accordance with the political and economic conditions of globalization, the magazine representations of monopolized communication media provide support for the construction of cognitive categories through the common linguistic and non-linguistic processes. For the global processes intending to form human consciousness, representations are applied within uniformed outcomes based on the instrumentalist rationality. So, monopolies must reestablish system argumentations to supply coherence to a global extent.

To configure the categorical groups, the components which are analyzed as themes of ideological reproduction, reflecting system logic within communication media's magazine branch can be singled out: ‘1) Private lives and temporary relationships/separations, 2) Gossips, rumors and polemics, 3) Blessing of and dedication to body and nudity, 4) Events of fashion, 5) Lifestyles based on consumption together with entertainment places and venues, towards lifestyles’ (Dağtaş 2006: 216).

Dağtaş's assumptions are suitable to be the examples of cognitive schemas offered by system's magazine media for human cognitive categories. Then, with a defined reasoning to be used in journalism, the system substitutes for the lifeworld meanings/categories can be presented. As system alternatives for the basic steering factors and for the basic relationships during human socialization, system may orientate cognitive construction and the way of individual's decentralization, starting from the early steps of cognitive development. However, the main way of cognitive construction still exists as the lifeworld socialization. So, social perceptions of the audiences and oppressed critical readings against system argumentations should be studied. Even within absolute domination of the system, the signs of lifeworld's universal rationality should exist.

The universal categories have endured since primary societies as the base of contemporary social structures (Habermas 1989a). They have progressed through communal decision-making first, then through critical public debate to reproduce collective interest. However, if modern system reproduces an individuality which seeks only personal interests against reconciliation, current socialization or citizenship of global consumers can be only the collections of purposive individuals seeking aggregate utility from conflict and feud. This is compatible with basic liberal assumptions (Hunt 2002); however, it is not human universal behavior (Habermas 1989b).

Neither events disconnected from history and nor the cognition of human species could be changed dramatically unless our genetic codes evolved in a short time. Of course, the themes and the analyses based on the monopolistic media's practices may change over time. Then, individual perceptions may transform and different articulations will be possible. However, a stable frame can be built to explain the recrudescent global problems, and the frame should include political economy, human socialization and cognitive development through the articulation of language and culture. Thus, the lifeworld meanings based on human conciliatory tendency, and against lifeworld, the logic of system medias (functionalist reason) can be accepted as stable for a period of average life expectancy. Here one can distinguish the following universal human requirements to support our propositions: the needs for mutual understanding, for understanding the world and for finding personal place in society to reach self-actualization (Habermas 1989b).

To perform the contextual content analysis of global media monopolies, the assumption for the method of media pragmatics can be described.

The categories in monopolistic media publications are presented and imposed to individuals and to their sphere of social relations. The processes are committed in order to replace instrumental rationality in the place of communicative rationality. As an expression for the problem of modernity, the processes substitute system's purposive socialization for universal solidarity socialization of human kind. Meanwhile, if the cognitive processes are not perceived or argumentations are accepted passively, it means the domination of a system is strengthened because its logic will be naturalized and normalized in the society. Hence, deception and colonization processes would last without fail. Perception of the system processes provides an opportunity for open communication and emancipation together with the potential for resistance against the system.

The preferences about the criticism or even the meaning of rationality can be constructed by the system (Habermas 1989a). Moreover, the modern system is always dissociated and separated from the lifeworld, and system medias seek to colonize lifeworld, maintaining a distance from it. As opposed to current system meanings in the magazine contents, the lifeworld meanings, which are excluded or reconstructed by the system, make a more stable frame to enable diachronic analysis. First, at the level of words and clauses, the traditional meanings remaining from pre-industrial ages, or at least from elder generations, can be considered.⁴ Furthermore, in the case of dichotomy between the lifeworld and the system, oppositional readings against media texts can be more suitable than critical readings. Following the way of British Cultural Studies, oppositional readings have been applied – together with critical readings – for British television programs (Fiske 2002) and for the Turkish newspaper advertisements (Dağtaş 2003). Here, oppositional readings can accommodate solidarity socialization against market-based socialization of self-interests, and consumption-based lifestyles (system's purposive action) against collective public interest (communicative action). The second assumption can be offered as follows:

The lifeworld meanings are universal (Habermas 1989b) and are based on the anthropological tendencies of solidarity socialization and on human cognitive needs. Via the analyses of the texts from different corporations in different countries, this assumed universality will be gained from oppositional readings of magazine contents.

Uniformity/diversity observed in the magazine pages of the current monopolies can be taken as a sign of common system logic during the transformation of productive relations, from Fordism to global post-Fordism. Within this framework, to study magazine contents distributed through the monopolistic media organizations/networks the texts can be decoded within their operational way of media pragmatics. As a part of the system processes, it can be different from the main pragmatics of daily communication, but it can describe the ways of the system's linguistic media for imposing its reasoning and for distorting meanings against lifeworld.

Conclusion

Globalization of the late modernity can be explained in the context that industrial modernism and its way of socialization have been penetrating worldwide without borders, in the territories of the Western and non-Western nations, with a new character. Post-Fordist production and finance networks which depend on the digital communications have been an important part of the current global processes. In general, it is an integration of markets based on the same styles of consumption and similar business disciplines. Nevertheless, in relation to the conditions remaining from colonial ages, globalization of the late modernity still has been conducted basing on the power of the North axis, directed by the historically constructed interests of some elites. In this context, the current globalization utilizes the operational efficiency of professional profit-organizations in the world societies. Therefore, globalization could progress fast without real efforts for negotiations and cultural interactions. With ever-increasing numbers of neglected population, more turbulence can be expected throughout the world.

Our study considers some theoretical obstacles against the methods of diachronic analyses to examine modern cultural production. However, when considering culture and its signs or products, such as media texts, the limitations of the research methods are beyond the methodology. If the problem originates only from the synchronic nature of the semantics (or the structures which are subjects to semantics, as Ferdinand de Saussure said) some other ways can be possible to analyze the meanings and culture with respect to their change in the historical process. In fact, pragmatics as a field of linguistics was offered to overcome this obstacle. However, the problem can be with ontology; that is the substance and its dimensions. To propose a frame to analyze the problems of modernity and globalization, the researchers need to distinguish the subjects and the objects interacting with each other within today's political economy, culture and discourse. Therefore, the elements of the societal transitions must be defined alongside with a well-defined dimension of change. In this respect, the concepts of time and history have to be attributed with their feature of continuity, as perceived by human cognition. Nevertheless, a common problem exists about the subject who shall evaluate the changes and processes. If the human condition of free will (the quality of being active of the conscious human beings) cannot be used by the individuals in the societies, this may be the main part of the problem of modernity.

In our study, the concepts produced and defined by the Western socialization (such as capital, money or power) have been detained from the main structures. In this frame, capital is a product and a result of social life, so it is a reflection of the main subjects and a defined concept in the society, within the networks of human actions. In this case, real structures and agents of industrial society and the mediums between them, which are used during the exchanges and for the regulation of exchanges, should be conceptualized. As a result, the modes of productive relations, or the organizational strategies which systemize the structures of production, have been accepted as the fundamental element of the transitions in the fields of political economy and culture. Therefore, the transition from Fordist mode to the post-Fordist one can be more significant than the changes in discourses or ideologies as the political strategies of system. Then, industrial societies can be analyzed basically in a dualist model of structures and agents. Based on sociology, psychology, anthropology and linguistics, Jürgen Habermas's theories can provide an ontological frame for the diachronic analysis of culture and media contents. According to his theories, instrumental rationality has established the mentality and dominant worldviews, designating all kinds of industrial society models.

The system of organized productive relations is the main entity subjacent to the industrial production modes. The majority of man-made structures and apparatuses, which are organized hierarchically, are consistent with instrumental rationality to reproduce self-interests and utility. On the other hand, lifeworld is the social-cognitive and anthropological entity which is constructed during the individuals' cognitive development and socialization. Lifeworld is based on the innate tendencies of human beings, and the source of original human condition, such as, seeking the truth and solidarity towards reconciliation. It needs some admitted social structures which enable the development of universal communicative rationality and the relations based on mutual understanding. Both system and lifeworld exist in the same reality, or the world of nature and political-economic relations. In fact, the source of both structures – system and lifeworld – is human beings social behaviors. Nevertheless, in the actual state, the worldviews of the lifeworld and the system are different. The system changes the strategies to reproduce the relations and to sustain modern dominations in the societies. The lifeworld is also changing because of the communicative/deceptive processes and conflicts between lifeworld and system medias. Therefore, roles and dispositions may change. However, the main tendencies and intensions of both structures can be considered constant over the time.

According to the context based on Habermas's model, one can suppose that current globalization of the late modernism has been conducted by the system, and its non-humane logic spreads all over the world, producing a biased economic growth at the expense of conflicts and social pathologies. In fact, the current processes are concordant with the system's model of human actions. Modes of production can be used to describe the periodical strategies conducted by the system in societies. The system's mentality is supranational, and with its basic point of view about human society it is diachronic because of its main stable intention.

Although modern nations have different past because of different industrial society models of system, all societies are subject to the current globalization. This approach can be used to describe the motives and mentality that organize the meaning production in the news contents, such as magazine pages from different countries and cultural outcomes can be analyzed at a supra-lingual and universal pragmatic level.

NOTES

* This essay is the expanded version of the theoretical part of the paper ‘Analysis of Media Uniformity in the Frame of Globalization via Magazine Contents: CNN, Hürriyet and Izvestiya Networks as Monopolized Samples’, which was presented at the Second International Scientific Congress ‘Globalistics-2011’ in Lomonosov University, Moscow, May 19–22, 2011.

1 Bank for International Settlements, April 2010. The daily amount is more than Germany's annual GNP.

2 Concentration of media ownership and oligopolies can be alternative terms. However, because of the similar economic mechanisms within markets of imperfect competition, monopolization and monopolies are preferred for the current situation and main actors in media sectors.

³ Weber's theory of bureaucratization includes both kinds of hierarchical organizations in industrial societies and emphasizes the common intent to optimize productive forces in the society. So, bureaucratization includes private bureaucratization of firm management, and state bureaucracy, under the same legitimation of laws and ethics (Weber 1978). According to him, the rationality and scientific behavior which enable this organizational approach would be the optimal solution for class conflict and problems of Western civilization. However, this rationality was instrumentalist rationality. The actions were accepted only as agents' purposive actions which sought self-interests, and non-communicative logic of system structures were underestimated by Weber (Habermas 1989a). In fact; Weber's solution has been another source of the current modernity problem.

⁴ This can be accepted as a connection between universal pragmatics and semantics, however the approach can make use of ethnology and cultural anthropology here.

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