With the limited access to authorship in the predigital eras, the linear and structured written narrative fostered “long-range” rationality. Non-literate media, starting with radio, TV and now the internet, favour “short-sighted” emotionality.
Marshall McLuhan
Media and responsibility for their effects: instrumental vs. environmental views
When used by a person, a fence is an instrument to protect and defend, a further extension of the skin, beyond clothes and huts. However, when used by a culture, a fence is an environmental force that transforms a nomadic… Read More ›
McLuhan and resettling into the digital
“McLuhan foresaw that electronic media gave humans the quality of a disembodied, angel-like spirit, which happens to us right now when we literally resettle to social media or video games and operate our digital selves.” Mike Hodgkinson published in Post… Read More ›
Negativity bias takes the lead when news is paid by readers, not advertisers
Bad news plus good crowd makes good engagement. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). A teaser on the main page of the New York Times’ website on May 14, 2020 read: Almost 3 million U.S. workers… Read More ›
Polarization studies are media studies
Fake news is not the principal problem in the new media environment. The impact of fake news is already mitigated by the users’ growing immunity and also by the growing noise that diminishes the potency of fake news’ impact. A… Read More ›
Postjournalism: Discourse concentration
The topics and discourses that do not support polarization will not circulate in the media for long or will be completely ignored. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). The polarization of stances requires the commonality of… Read More ›
Interjections and emojis: the digital reversal of literacy back to the origin of language
Radio and television returned vocal signals and gestures into communicating socially significant content. The postmodernist replacement of feelings with intensities goes hand in hand with the replacement of literacy by orality and the retribalization of culture by electronic media. A… Read More ›
The post-truth world: how social media destroy the absolutism of the “objective” truth
Monotheistic religion, scientific ethic, and writing alienated truth from personal experience. Social media return truth from priests to people. Nobody likes it. In 2016, Oxford Dictionary declared ‘post-truth’ to be the Word of the Year. The dictionary explains the adjective… Read More ›
Transcending Human Sensorium
People still act in virtual reality in a mostly natural way, as “physical beings”, which is obviously predefined by their (our) previous experience. Moreover, the content of the virtual reality is still the physical reality. This reflects McLuhanian ideas of… Read More ›
Altering Human Sensorium
Artificial flavours, augmented senses, immersive media, augmented reality, virtual reality By shaping the media environment, media are able to tune the human sensorium according to their “bias”. Equipped with ideasthesia/synesthesia, the sensorium follows the environment. In its turn, thanks to… Read More ›
