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20 Dagnostaw Demski in cooperation with A. Kassabova, I. Sz. Kristöf, L.Laineste and K. Baraniecka-Olszewska Robert Rosenstone said that film can “restore the entire life of the past” by an “empathetic” reconstruction that allows the filmmaker to show what really happened, why it happened, and how the film depiction properly communicates the importance of the event (Rosenstone 1988: 1176). Developing his point, we may say also that television allowed the audience to look through the screen directly on representations of past events and experiences of people and places as if the viewers were there. The images and sounds flooded the senses and thwarted the attempts to maintain a distance, engage in criticism and be detached. This process of being engaged by new media can be observed throughout the period of focus of this work. In addition we can observe a development of the particular tactic of representation. Individuals in new media are identified only by some general social properties or by a type of action. They are not particular individuals but constitute rather certain impressions, embodiments of particular characteristics. This allows the medium to underline its message. White described historical movies, in which such general properties allowed people’s representations, to take their “roles” in the historical event (White 1988: 1196). This kind of conceptualization, in a variety of forms can be seen in images presented by Demski; Oroz; Czarnecka; Seljamaa; Baraniecka-Olszewska; Uzlowa; Gadjeva; Sz. Kristéf; Sorescu-Marinkovi¢; Kaser; Kassabova. These new technologies enabled the creation of global networks of communication. Paradoxically, such channels of communication accessible from home made people experience reality from behind closed doors. Everyday experience of reality has become more and more mediated by visual media which technological advancement made also more attractive. Giddens pointed out another feature that marked the period of rising modernity. The individual experience became mediated by an invasion of distant events into the realm of everyday life, and as a second-hand account it turned out to be largely organized by these far events. An individual can receive many news reports as recounted events but as external and distant; some other accounts can also affect regularly the individual’s daily activities (2002: 27). As Giddens stated, “Familiarity generated by mediated experience might perhaps quite often produce feelings of ‘reality inversion’: the real object and event, when encountered, seem to have a less concrete existence than their media representation” (Ibid.: 27-28). In the analyzed time period, despite living behind the Cold War iron curtain, people were faced with being closer to the events represented in the new media while simultaneously having opened up their eyes to what was far away. We can observe a correlation between communication tools and distance—new media development and a deterritorialization of images. Giddens has given us interesting examples from the past. New media, in a broader view as communication channels, shaped the content presented in the final printed pages of information. He argued that the telegraph, the telephone, and electronic media, the event of communication itself and not place, slowly though increasingly became a decisive factor in its
