While it might prove impossible to identify an exact point in time when information crosses over the threshold between the referential and the inferential, Lynch argues that the degree to which information maintains or loses it societal relevancy is dependent in part on the nature or subject matter of the information itself:
“It is not the impact of a single story or a single event, but rather the impact of a constant stream of converging information from multiple sources that builds the conventional wisdom of society.”
Marc Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today
In other words, information retains public value only to the degree of its perceived relevance to its consumers’ everyday concerns. And it is this very quality of mass media that affords media producers a certain power to shape the beliefs, anxieties, and attitudes of media consumers, a quality which has been exploited in some advanced democratic societies to serve both capitalistic and propagandistic ends.
