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 ›
Media ecology
The news media: watchdogs prefer the paywalled garden
“What happens when journalism is everywhere?”, Mathew Ingram asked in 2011. Nine years and one Trump term later, the answer is here. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). On November 15, 2011, soon after midnight, the… Read More ›
Postjournalism: from the world-as-it-is to the world-as-it-should-be
By the end of the 20th century, the business model of the media took its last and most optimal form: the media sold news downwards whilst simultaneously selling the audience upwards, to advertisers, creating a “supportive selling environment” (Herman) or… 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 ›
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 ›
