Author: The Viral Inquisitor | Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror | Postjournalism and the death of newspapers | Human as Media. I study media and everything
New book: The Viral Inquisitor.
The world is switching from print to digital. Media are the hardware of society, and culture is its software; a change in hardware makes habitual software obsolete and disrupts old balances.
Get it on Amazon:
PreGPS-navigator
The 1927 Plus Four Wristlet Route Indicator with tiny interchangeable roll paper maps.
Don't forget upload all the local maps (into the box).
@mediarchaeology
@Quillette
No, in 2012-2014 advertising revenue in the media dropped below reader revenue. The media started wooing the digital audience in the hope for subscriptions. At the time, the early social media audience was young, educated, urban, progressive. The media aligned with their value:
Wow, is it for real? Toy soldiers of the coming civil war. 1 maga-shaman, 194 incels, 5 anti-vax podcasters, 406 karens, 2 bonkers congress-women, and others. Quite an army. Trump figure sold separately.
Because of the internet, the news media revenue switched from ads to readers.
The ad-driven media manufactured consent; the reader-driven media manufacture anger. The former served consumerism. The latter serve polarization.
In my book “
#Postjournalism
” 1/
Not only did the language of the Times change in 2011-2012 (
@bungarsargon
), but also a huge shift happened in the business.
In 2012,
@nytimes
became dependent on readers.
This shift has caused mutation of NYT journalism into
#postjournalism
.
Disinformation is undefeatable because fake news is better than news. Fake news is news that is wanted.
Fake news is just too good to be true. True is not that good.
@RichardHanania
Saakashvili in Georgia criminalized the status of criminal leaders, Thief-By-Law (= Italian "Don"). Judges asked, "Are you a Thief-By-Law?" According to their ethic, they can't say "no" - they would 1) strip of status 2) out of cowardice. They landed in jail or fled the country.
A very important article on surveillance capitalism by
@lhfang
in
@theintercept
1) The news media have learned to profit on surveillance advertising and lobby against restrictions. -->
Corey Doctorow
@doctorow
received the Neil Postman Award from the Media Ecology Association at the 25th MEA Convention. Daemen University, Amherst, NY.
@MediaEcology
@LanceStrate
When a medium was a physical tool, the responsibility for its use was easy to define. In the digital environment, the instrumentality of media swallows the user. We act and live inside the instrument. To grasp the oddity of this, imagine a caveman resettling into a stone axe.
The ad-driven media manufactured consent; the reader-driven media manufacture anger.
The former served consumerism. The latter serve polarization.
Ad money ceased to be the prevalent source of revenue for the news media circa 2010-2013.
#Postjournalism
Substack big authors are becoming proto-newsroom entities.
Bari Weiss
@bariweiss
shares her 1st year experience. Names, topics, resonance - very impressive!
Issues and risks:
1) Personal burning out because of the lack of "institutionality"... 1/🧵
On the internet, you do only what you’re pleased.
In real life, you do mostly what you have to, often unpleasant.
That is why digital natives increasingly withdraw from the physical, the most unpleasant part of their hybrid reality.
@CityJournal
As Stalin said, the class struggle intensifies along with socialist upbuilding.
People who fight misinformation for profit find increasingly more misinformation.
The cherry on top: some of them happen to be very experienced in misinformation.
By
@mgurri
@Quillette
Trump was rather a reaction to it. When social media permeated deeper into society (by 2016), the older, less educated, less urban and less progressive demographics started using social media and recognized their underrepresentation in the mainstream agenda. Trump just
The names of the news organizations currently funded by taxpayers is a secret.
The amounts they receive are a secret.
The names of those rejected are a secret.
The reasons why they were rejected are a secret.
In 2020 the Trudeau government started paying ongoing subsidies to newspapers.
It was a trip into the unknown! How did gov't decide which papers to bail out and which to let die? What about independence of the press?
Big questions. Now, there are 2 years of answers...(thread)
The internet has emancipated authorship, allowing everyone to talk. Such an environment can’t help but challenge the monopoly of knowledge, leading to what
@mgurri
Martin Gurri called the “crisis of authority” in his “The Revolt of the Public.”
Fake news is overhyped. Fake news is not an issue - it has an immunity mechanism embedded: the more often people face fake news, the less they're susceptible to it.
The real issue is polarization: it enjoys positive feedback.
From the talk at MEA2021 Convention.
@MediaEcology
“The effects of new media on our sensory lives are similar to the effects of new poetry. They change not our thoughts but the structure of our world.”
M. McLuhan in: A. McLuhan, "Our Cause is Effect: Practical McLuhan."
@amicusadastra
@McLinstitute
To not look miserable, Trump shut down his blog after a month.
The blog attracted
- 1st day - just 159k Fb and Twitter users
- 2nd day - 30k
- daily afterwards - barely 15k .
1/
All the political or cultural disruptions are in fact media effects. They are caused by the reversal of literacy and retrieval of orality by digital media.
The future will plunge us into a struggle between print literacy and digital orality.
Humankind has never before had such an amount of friendship and people’s mutual "awareness"
Dunbar’s number, which reflected our mental faculty to be meaningfully connected with others in the physical tribe (village), was smashed by the digital facilitation of tribal “friendship”
Karl Marx – media determinist.
100 years before McLuhan and Innis:
“Is Achilles possible when powder and shot have been invented? And is the Iliad possible at all when the printing press and even printing machines exist?”
All emancipated authors are equal but some are more equal than others.
Heavy authors contribute their content.
Lazy authors contribute their attitude and engagement.
Platform capitalism is based on facilitating lazy authorship. -->
@Discourse_Mag
Circa 2014, ad revenue in the media plummeted below reader revenue.
Being forced to seek financial support from the audience, not advertisers, the media no longer need to beautify reality. Now the news media are incentivized to dramatize the agenda.
An interesting take in the context of
@mgurri
's crisis of authority. When institutions are distrusted and rebelled against, they acquire anti-Midas touch: everything they touch gets denied, too.
It was a huge mistake for liberals to make masks, expertise, and "the science" a cultural identity marker, which then further politicized everything having to do with COVID. Anti-vaxx sentiment is fueled by distrust. And it's understandable that they wouldn't trust us
Municipal workers paint over "No war" on the ice of Neva river, St. Petersburg, Russia.
"No war" is considered anti-Russian propaganda by the authorities.
They used to paint over grass to make it greener in the Soviet Army garrisons. But painting over the ice is something new.
@MazMHussain
True.
As Kennedy wouldn't have ascended without TV.
As Hitler without radio.
As Lenin without print.
(The trick is to continue this logic into the future, not the past, which is easy)...
... as AOC(-ish) without TikTok(-ish)
Media Ecology Convention starts with a huge crowd in the Toronto Reference Library: "The social cost of the information age" talk.
#MEA2019
#MediaEthics
@MediaEcology
A great structural analysis of the changes in media business that made journalism mutate into
#postjournalism
Unique, because done in the form of case study: "How Stewart Made Tucker" - why parody on news became news.
by
@JonAskonas
in
@tnajournal
-->
All the disruptions we identify as the consequences of political or cultural degradation are media effects: the reversal of literacy and retrieval of orality by digital media in the form of digital orality.
The near future is defined by the struggle between literacy and orality.
1st internet era, the Age of Web 1.0 – how to find right info.
2nd internet era, the Age of Web 2.0 – how to find right people.
3rd internet era, the Age of Web 3.0 – how to not let wrong people find wrong info.
Fake news is news that is ‘wanted’ to be shared; falseness is its secondary trait. Not every lie is shareable...
When the significance of the message is validated by dissemination, the scale of dissemination is the message.
#Postjournalism
-->
As per Martin Gurri:
"It isn’t hard to imagine a Big Brother iteration of HAL saying with that bland voice, “I’m sorry, Dave, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to talk like that.”"
@mgurri
via
@Discourse_Mag
"By all appearances, the reporters watched some videos, discerned the narrative being presented to them, and wrote a book report on it. This is journalism in the same way that television recaps are journalism."
Brilliant analysis by
@lwoodhouse
The cause of journalism mutated into a political cause. The hybrid is easy to recognize – the media 1) offer subscription to content and 2) simultaneously ask to support a cause they aim to promote.
#postjournalism
-->
On social media, everyone seeks affirmation from others on a scale unheard of in history. Not only is the agonistic mentality making a comeback from the oral era, but it also threatens people’s mental health.
The establishment strikes back. Population 200 mln. Not the first case in the world, but still - the number of "government has announced an indefinite suspension of Twitter" will grow.
1) Looking for direction, a guy found a picture of his 2-year ago passed great-grandparents leaving their favorite restaurant hand-in-hand, as they did for almost 80 years.
Trump's downfall came when the COVID-19 pandemic snatched away media attention and became an even more towering story. The model was the same, however. In many ways, COVID-19 was covered as the Donald Trump of diseases.
#Postjournalism
Parenting as cultural resistance to media effects
...For example, for parents merely to remain married is itself an act of disobedience and an insult to the spirit of a throwaway culture in which continuity has little value....
...Similarly, to insist that one’s children learn
@Noahpinion
Major change in discourse formation.
In 2012-2014 ad revenue in the media dropped below reader revenue. The media started wooing the digital audience in teh hope for subscriptions. At the time, the early social media audience was young, educated, urban, progressive. The media
Journalists might have had progressive predispositions, but the advertising business model kept it at bay. With advertising gone, the natural biases of journalists became unchecked; the struggle for digital subscriptions even amplified them.
@bungarsargon
Today is Albert Camus' birthday.
"There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that"
Interesting!
1) TikTok beats Google and Facebook.
2) Instagram is gone (out of top-10).
3) WhatsApp is in.
4) Further shortening of the quantum of content.
Democracy will die in a cacophony of yelling and screaming. The romantic motto of WashiPost has nothing to do with it: Because of the internet, the opposition to journalism is not the darkness of underreporting but the cacophony of overreporting.
Resembles today’s Academia: literacy is practiced in journals and books for the inner circles, while the Mass is conducted in “digital orality” on social media and TV with the flock expected to recite.
"If Homer was wiped out by literacy, literacy can be wiped out by rock. We’re playing the old story backwards... The stakes are civilization versus tribalism and groupism, ...and private responsibility versus the group or tribal mandate."
In the future, there will be no need for keys, passwords and security codes. The environment will be recognizing you; it will be immediately aware of your presence - and your personality.
It has already started happening.
Journalism now is not about getting out and checking if there is rain
but about what people must think of whether rain is good or bad.
#Postjournalism
- Get your paperback or Kindle copy!
Postman thought that Huxley run the West and Orwell the East.
New media impose filters not before publishing, like old media, but after. The ideas are allowed, expressed, and plentiful but suppressed in dissemination if not fit.
This setting mixed Orwell and Huxley everywhere.
"These 2 extreme groups are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the 7 groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society."14/🧵
The transformation to visual space from acoustic space occurred in ancient Greece. What took several thousand years to complete has taken us several decades to reverse: the West now bathes in the emotions of postliteracy.
Marshall and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media, 1988.
An excellent podcast by
@bariweiss
with
@mgurri
. It shows how Martin's concept of the revolt of the public has unveiled its potential to be not just an interpretative lens but also a methodological tool for a predictive dissection of reality.
True, it's hard to overestimate how timely Trump and especially the pandemic appeared to help the establishment to regain control over society, sometimes even above those levels they had had before.
A great essay by
@mgurri
Democracy is not what "people demand".
Democracy is what a tiny fraction of educated people with a certain cultural and religious background demanded at a certain period of media evolution (the alphabet - citizen democracy; printing - representative democracy).
The political and moral authorities will never voluntarily abandon the rights given them by COVID. The pandemic is the second strongest power generator after the war.
Humankind had about 300 mln authors in 5,000 years of written civilization.
All of a sudden, this number has skyrocketed to 4.85 bln in just 40 years.
It is not free access to information but free access to self-expression that changes the world. -->
Orality dictated allegiance to the real tribe.
Literacy afforded allegiance to an abstract idea.
Digital orality encourages allegiance to the idea of an abstract tribe.
"If Homer was wiped out by literacy, literacy can be wiped out by rock. We’re playing the old story backwards... The stakes are civilization versus tribalism and groupism, ...and private responsibility versus the group or tribal mandate."
In terms of media determinism, we are eye witnessing the end of an era based on print with its linear narrative and rational thinking.
The future has no obligation to be nice to us. The end of an era is unavoidably accompanied by shocks and upheavals.
#Postjournalism
Neil Postman:
"Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. ...One significant change generates total change…
A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything. In the year 1500, fifty years after the printing press was
This book explains digital tribalization.
Digital media reverse literacy and retrieve orality.
Digital orality tests our tolerance by bringing others closer and even more intrusively than oral culture did – right onto our most intimate space, our screens.
"Journalists operate under a delusion that they’re the unelected representatives of democracy and have this mythical understanding of what they do."
An amazing interview with
@nikkiusher
Luca De Biase
@lucadebiase
, an Italian award-winning journalist and writer, talks about journalism in the digital ecosystem at the Toronto MU School of Journalism
@JournalismTMU
, supported by the McLuhan Foundation
@paologranata
, and St. Michael’s College in the UoT.
Postjournalism was the last gasp of the industry indeed. Donations in the form of subscriptions need more polarization - need Trump (even the pandemic was not a sufficient trigger.)
"With fewer Trump attacks on the news media, fewer people subscribe as a gesture of support"
"Why are journalists losing their jobs in record numbers? Blame the Trump slump" “A greater sense of normalcy may be good for people’s mental health, but not news profits.” cc
@Andrey4Mir
McLuhan, 40 years before social media:
"The Global Village is at once as wide as a planet and as small as a little town where everybody is maliciously engaged and poking his nose in everybody else's business."
“Random act of journalism” in the 2000s described the willingness of bloggers to report the news.
Mass coverage of events by ordinary people was, as the media analyst
@mathewi
put it, “what happens when journalism is everywhere.” ->
@CityJournal
The news media no longer sell news, because people usually already know news from the social media newsfeeds. The media just validate that news. News production is replaced with news validation.
#Postjournalism
1. Overproduction of elites (humanities) in 2000s as a cause of social unrest bc tons of frustrated intellectuals had no decent jobs.
2. Sharp decline in humanities now.
(Takeover of corporate HR by humanities still not accounted for.)
by
@Noahpinion
->
...The year 1969 saw the premiere of Sesame Street on TV. ..adults extolled the virtues of the program. They proclaimed that it was teaching children to read.
I would say “No. It’s teaching children to watch television.”
The medium is the ... you know.
“Man works when he is partially involved. When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure .” (c) Marshall McLuhan
(Playing Paolo Granata's board game “The medium” at the Convention of the Media Ecology Association.)
@MediaEcology
#mediaecology2018
@paologranata
@LanceStrate
The media that rely on ad revenue requires an audience that consists of happy and economically able consumers. The media that rely on reader revenue need frustrated and politically strangulated citizens. The media not only address these audiences; they create and reproduce them.