50 years on, after the masses have become producers of imagery rather than mere consumers, it is surely time to re-examine Hoggart's fears of a consumerist conquest of individuality and culture.
With more people creating and using images, surely they will begin to learn to see through the lies being told them. They are now increasingly members of the Magic Circle, rather than members of the gullible audience. The printing press has been invented again only this time, everyone has one.
As even the most impoverished people in the world begin to access global communications, so their global presence will grow. And as they learn to tell their own stories in their own way, we will be less able to see them as mere flotsam, the collateral damage of capitalism, and more as real people like us.
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