Older media and social media

It is important to understand the relationships between older media and social media. By older media, I mean the industry-produced form of mass communication available in the US before digital social media became a thing, such as:

• television,
• radio,
• newspapers,
• books,
• magazines...etc

Older media can be referred to by other names, for example, traditional media. And then there are subcategories of older media: broadcast media are one subcategory of older media, including television and radio, that communicates from one source to many viewers at once. Print media are a subcategory of older paper-based media such as newspapers, books, and magazines, that many users access individually.

Social media has inherited many qualities and functions of older media and forms of communication.

Here's one quality social media has inherited from older media: When your phone camera snaps a digital photo, it probably makes this sound or something like it. That sound is the sound of a shutter opening and closing. It is a sound that analog (non-digital) cameras have to make in order to function.

Digital cameras don't have shutters; they function through chips that sense light coming into the lens. So why do so many digital cameras make that shutter sound? Because developers wanted your device to signal to you that the photo was taken, and that sound has become associated with picture taking in our society. Media scholar Henry Jenkins calls this type of blending of old and new media technological convergence. (Convergence just means coming together while moving through time.) Technological convergence is one of several types of media convergence that Jenkins writes are crucial to understanding our media world today.

Our technologies are full of convergences with older, traditional media helping us make sense of new media. Some signs of technological convergence go away over time as we become more comfortable with technologies. For example, cellular phones were once shaped more like analog phones.

The history of communicating with many at once

Traditional media can be limiting when viewed as the only influence on new social media. Think of a famous athlete's Facebook post seen and raucously responded to by thousands of people. How could that have been possible through traditional media like a paper newspaper or radio broadcast? It couldn't. But now imagine it in this ancient amphitheater in Syria (below). That athlete could have shouted an insult at an opponent, and gotten roars of approval and disapproval from the crowd. Spectators may even have gotten into fights with one another. Those types of interactions, once possible - and perhaps even common - in ancient amphitheaters, certainly happen in social media, but they have a long history.

Marshall McLuhan referred to this with the phrase, "The medium is the message." When developers consider new features, they have to consider what is present in the culture that will interact with those media. If new ways of interaction must be introduced, it increases the likelihood those media will confuse users.

See one interesting way people are looking at new gestures developed in the digital age here.

Are we "the audience" anymore?

It is with traditional media in mind that New York University Journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote The People Formerly Known as the Audience in 2006. He claimed that these people were taking over the media by using social media, and that his statement was their "collective manifesto." He claimed the people were speaking out to resist “being at the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak”.

Do you think you are part of "the people formerly known as the audience?" Do you still feel you are an audience in the age of social media? Or are there different terms we should use now?

It is a new era from the turn of the millennium, certainly. Rosen reminds us that broadcasters used to refer to viewers as "Eyeballs." Think about what that metaphor means. An eyeball has only two powers: To look, and to look away. There are plenty of media content creators who still only care about whether or not people are looking. But far more now allow users to “take part, debate, create, communicate, [and] share.” It increases their viewership, for one thing. And whereas the traditional media model involved advertising to the individual, the new model involves persuading the individual to advertise your product to their contacts. We will learn more about branding using social media in Chapter 7.

Web 2.0 as user contributions - and the basis for online cultures and publics

The term Web 2.0 refers to sites that afford user contributions, such as likes and votes. O’Reilly media coined the term Web 2.0 in 2004; You can read about that here. They were referring to social media sites popping up all over the web at that time. These new sites were different than the static sites of the 1990s and 2000s, the “Web 1.0” era. Web 1.0 sites would provide information or maybe some entertainment, but they would not allow user contributions. You might say they were designed for eyeballs only - although creative users found ways to connect on Web 1.0, as we will learn when we learn about the Zapatistas in Chapter 5.

Web 2.0 sites that emerged in the early 2000s offered new capabilities, or affordances, to users. With Web 2.0 affordances, users can weigh in, with likes and votes. They can comment or write their own posts. They can upload content, like images and videos. They can connect with others, and offer their own profiles and content to connect to.

Online cultures

The result is sites that are shaped by user cultures. Culture is a concept encompassing all the norms, values, and related behaviors that people who have interacted in a social group over time agree on and perpetuate. Think about the Web 2.0-enabled social media spaces you frequent. Perhaps when you spend time on Tumblr, you see that people talk about their emotions, and you talk about yours. Meanwhile in League of Legends chat you don't talk about your emotions because you know if you do you will get attacked. On Facebook and LinkedIn, you keep your shirt buttoned high as you have seen is the norm; but on Snapchat, you appear in your robe, and on Instagram you might wear your bikini. Culture encompasses how users talk to each other, present themselves for one another, and take cues from and influence each other as decide what's in and what's out.

Software platform developers do influence culture in their user designs. For example, Facebook has its own shirt buttoned up rather high, with it's plain white background and limitations on user customization of profiles. Online cultures do take some cues from developers, and of course users are restricted or guided by their affordances. But users have a lot of agency as they develop and share cultures within these sites. We will learn more about this in the next chapter.

Future directions in the online world

With so much human activity and cultural expression enabled in Web 2.0, what is Web 3.0? Look this up on the web and you will find no shortage of responses. There is no consensus - no agreement among experts or among users. We don't even know if we are already using Web 3.0, because it is hard to know where Web 2.0 ends.

Surely one valuable perspective on the present and the future of the internet would be Tim Berners Lee - because he invented the internet in 1989. (It was released to the public in the 1990s; read more of that history here.)

Today Tim Berners-Lee has a new mission - to make sure we really are connected by the internet. He describes what drove him to pursue this mission this way:

“Now people feel very disempowered, because the end result is that they’re telling their computer who their friends are, and who’s in the photographs, and planning things and designing things — and those plans and designs and friendships are sucked up and held by these social networks. And they’re not really social networks, they’re silos." Tim Berners-Lee

Lee is now working to link data so that information online is not unjustly restricted by governments, corporations, or the many others with interest in controlling information. You can read more about this new mission in this TechCrunch article. The data you create as you move across online spaces is often controlled and owned by those spaces.

“Right now we have the worst of both worlds, in which people not only cannot control their data, but also can’t really use it,” Berners-Lee said in the project’s announcement last year. “Our goal is to develop a web architecture that gives users ownership over their data.”

Net neutrality

Net Neutrality is a shorthand name for a key set of features that have made the internet what it is today, that became law in 2015, and that is being pulled apart at the time of this writing.

Most users are accustomed to the web working on a level network, in which - regardless of who a web content provider is - we can get their content at the same speed as we can and getting content from much larger companies. The principles behind net neutrality are the reason small start up companies could suddenly become really large; actually, the term "start up" wouldn't exist without net neutrality. Facebook, Snapchat, Airbnb, Amazon, Tinder - almost all of the companies that have changed how we work and live and socialize would likely have been squashed by slow speeds without net neutrality.

After encouragement from many tech experts and a video in favor of net neutrality by President Obama, in 2015 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler signed off to officially classify broadband internet as "common carrier service" like phone service, which is overseen by the government.

There are many who oppose Pai's proposed changes. In July 2017, the FCC's public comment period about the proposed rule change got over 10 million comments, the vast majority of them in support of keeping net neutrality. (There were half as many comments when the 2015 pro-net neutrality rules were under discussion.) Public protests, both online and on-the-ground, have resulted as well. Notable figures in the digital world from the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, to Mark Zuckerberg have spoken out to keep net neutrality.

A concern they commonly express is that losing net neutrality regulation will change the Internet into an uneven field favoring two types of players: Large corporate industries who can afford to pay for higher speeds, and Internet Service Providers (ISP's) like Comcast and Verizon who would get paid. There is also fear that large corporations or whichever content providers are able to afford to pay the most would have the fastest websites. Without some provision for net neutrality, providers like Verizon or Comcast would still have the power to "pick winners," by slowing or blocking any sites such as those of competitors. Imagine an ISP decides to launch some new social network? Without net neutrality regulations in place, ISPs could slow down other social networks like Instagram and Snapchat to try to drive traffic to their own new site. Fears about ISP behavior that would be harmful to customers is based in part on ISP slowing of some types of data before the 2015 regulations, for example Hulu-owner Comcast's slowing of Netflix streamed films - until Netflix paid Comcast an undisclosed sum.

At the time of this writing, the current FCC effort to end net neutrality is moving forward. And now big tech companies have indicated they are prepared to make it a legal battle. Keep up with the debate, updates, and the inevitable off-topic tweets at #netneutrality.

broadcast media

One subcategory of older media, including television and radio, that communicates from one source to many viewers.

print media

A subcategory of older paper-based media such as newspapers, books, and magazines, that many users access individually.

technological convergence

Blending of old and new media. For example, cellular phones were once shaped more like analog (non-digital) phones.

Web 2.0

Sites that afford user contributions, such as likes and votes

culture

A concept encompassing all the norms, values, and related behaviors that people who have interacted in a social group over time agree on and perpetuate.

Net neutrality

A shorthand name for a key set of features that have made the internet what it is today.

Did you get all that?

Let's see how closely you've been paying attention.

What are other examples of qualities that digital media have inherited from traditional media? Try to think of some that don't make the new media work better.

Can you give an example of a site that allows you to create and share? Or one that still treats you like little more than "Eyeballs"? Explain.

Fill in the blanks with the same word. Technological (?) is when new tech devices inherit qualities of older devices - and is one of several types of media (?).

1. determinism
2. mania
3. studies
4. convergence

Professor Jay Rosen wrote "The People Formerly Known as the Audience" to represent the use of social media as:

1. eyeballs
2. taking over the media
3. static
4. All of the above
5. None of the above

Today the inventor of the internet is pursuing what new mission?

1. Making websites static as they were originally intended
2. Working with Facebook to provide users new types of photo albums
3. Linking data so users can be truly connected to all other users and information
4. All of the above
5. None of the above

Excellent - you've finished Chapter 2! As always, we'll look deeper in the next Chapter, Chapter 3.