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 ›
Media ecology
Paul Levinson on the power of power and advertisers over media
The US Senate vs. Twitter, or Violating the First Amendment vs. Violating the Spirit of the First Amendment. (A prominent media theorist and author of “Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium”, Paul Levinson from Fordham University in New… Read More ›
Sourcing: news supply in the media. The switch from news to opinions and from bureaucrats to “experts”
Herman and Chomsky thought that government and corporate bureaucracies subsidized the media by supplying news, as it was rather expensive to have correspondents everywhere. And they were right. But now it costs almost nothing to get evidence from wherever you… 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 ›
Factoid. Validation by dissemination
According to assumed standards of journalism, news is disseminated because of its significance. But, in fact, news becomes significant because of its dissemination. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). Contemporary news media and news critics have… Read More ›
Old media and COVID-19: news demand surges, business crumbles
Because of the quarantine, newspapers are going to die tomorrow, not in 10 years. The forever-altered tactility of the millions will harm the press even more than the temporary physical isolation from its readers. Radio will struggle but survive and… Read More ›
Figure/ground analysis of Trumpism
Donald Trump as the president of the USA will be gone sooner or later. However, the conditions that made Trump’s ascension to the presidency possible will continue to impact politics and culture. These conditions can be generally described as societal… Read More ›
The Pyramid against the Cloud: Institutions’ perplexity regarding the Net
“Beyond Washington DC, Donald Trump, and impeachment, there lies a great big world – and that world, at the moment, is being convulsed by a remarkable number of revolts against political authority”, writes Martin Gurri. Indeed, who would have thought…. Read More ›
AI to Bypass Creativity. Will Robots Replace Journalists? (The Answer Is “Yes”). Part I: Intro
Journalism is a creative human practice. This, according to widespread opinion, makes it harder for robots to replicate. However, writing algorithms are already widely used in the news media to produce articles and thereby replace human journalists. In 2016, Wordsmith,… Read More ›
