החזון הקולקטיבי: תפקיד שיח המדיה בעיצוב עתיד חברתי משותף

The goal of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework for media discourse that refers to the future. The paper contends that the well-established concept of “collective memory” has a parallel, mirror-image concept, that concerns the ways in which society looks at and into the future, prospecting events and conditions that will or are likely to occur at a later time. This new concept, dubbed the “Collective Vision”, contains societal fantasies, fears, aspirations, dreams, concerns, and expectations. Thus, it is constructed in a multi-directional process of concretizing a narrative about the future into a functional, socio-political construct as an outcome of shared ideology. The paper elaborates on the mechanisms of the mediated "Collective Vision" and their linguistic aspects. Israel's Channel 2 newscasts serve to illustrate the pragmatic uses of the “Collective Vision” discourse and reveal the hegemonic role of the media in the construction of a shared future.