Why polarisation is a media effect and what we can do about it. Populism and polarisation are structurally embedded into this social-economic symbiosis. This media hardware can and must work only with this cultural software. Excerpts from the paper. Full… Read More ›
Social media
Review of Andrey Mir’s “Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers”
The full title of Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers. The Media after Trump: Manufacturing Anger and Polarization by Andrey Mir says it all: the delivery of news on Twitter and social media to an increasing majority of people has… Read More ›
Rage on social media: signaling intensities instead of feelings
Signaling intensities instead of feelings has become a built-in setting of social media that encourages socializing through rage. For platform owners, it is a good thing, the bread and butter of business. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of… Read More ›
The quantum theory of media
“The future of the book is the blurb,” as McLuhan once said. The news teaser, not even the article, is now the quantum of media content. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). What is the unit… Read More ›
Scheduling the extinction of newspapers
Newspapers are in decline because of economic and technological factors, but their life span is measured by demographic factors. They will exist as an industrial product for no longer than the mid-2030s. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of… Read More ›
Ownership of the media: it is not what you think it must be
Traditional media owners may still control the news media, but they no longer control the news. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). Under the idea of ownership as a filter of the Propaganda model, Herman and… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›