đ WEEK 3 POST: The Internet Changed Everything Or Did It? đ€
Hot take from this week's reading: the internet did NOT completely revolutionise society. I know. Controversial.
Ralph Schroeder's Social Theory after the Internet (2018) basically argues that scholars have been overcomplicating and over-hyping what the internet actually does. Here's the breakdown.
The problem? Most communication theories were built for either mass media (TV, newspapers â one to many) or interpersonal media (phone calls â one to one). The internet does BOTH simultaneously, so old theories just⊠don't fit anymore (Schroeder, 2018).
Schroeder looks at three big theories and explains why each falls short:
Castells' network theory â ignores how different countries (China, Sweden, Malaysia) have completely different media systems.
Mediatization theory â useful but too vague; doesn't distinguish between politics, culture, and the economy.
Actor-network theory â so focused on individual contexts that you can't generalize anything useful.
Instead, Schroeder (2018) proposes we look at the internet's role across three separate social orders:
đïž Politics â the internet lets leaders bypass traditional media gatekeepers (hello, politicians going live on TikTok), but it also fuels populism and disinformation. Dobber et al. (2022) found that micro-targeted political ads online can directly influence how people vote. Scary.
đ± Culture & Everyday Life â Schroeder (2018) calls this "tethered togetherness", we are constantly connected to people and information via our phones. Not revolutionary, just⊠more intense. The anxiety of leaving your phone at home? That's tethered togetherness.
đ° Economy â big data allows companies to target us with disturbing precision. Every ad that feels like your phone was listening? That's the economic internet at work.
The key takeaway: the internet intensifies existing social patterns, it doesn't replace them. It's a powerful tool shaped by the society it operates in.
References
Dobber, T., Fathaigh, R. Ă., & Borgesius, F. J. Z. (2022). The regulation of online political micro-targeting in Europe. Internet Policy Review, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.14763/2022.1.1614
Schroeder, R. (2018). Social theory after the internet: Media, technology and globalization. UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787351226
Staab, P., & Thiel, T. (2022). Social media and the digital structural transformation of the public sphere. Theory, Culture & Society, 39(4), 1â19. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221103527
In this weekâs reading of the Social World as Communicative Construction, Couldry and Hepp mentioned that the social world is constructed through communication. These communicative practices have been moulded by long-term processes of institutionalization and materialization, otherwise known as media. Â As such, since communicative practices are inherently social, our everyday reality is deeply interwoven with media, and thus being âmediatizedâ. In this reading, it was also pointed out that the world is experiencing an increasing mediation of our communicative streams. There has been a shift from direct communication to mediated communication as the common and normal means of sustaining social relations. As such, with media, face to face communication is no longer the only channel for social interactions to take place. Overall, with mediatization and the increasing reliance on media, the social world that we live in is now constantly being shaped and constructed by media.
The way Couldry and Hepp explained how media and communication construct the social world that we live in made me reflect about my everyday life and how much media has shaped the reality that we currently live in. It is indeed true that our lives now revolve around media and that we heavily rely on media. This is especially evident in the past year when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and many countries had to go into lockdown, rendering social activities not physically possible. As such, our social activities and interactions have all been shifted online and we have all adapted quickly to this shift.
For instance, due to travel restrictions, we no longer can visit friends and family who are overseas, or even visit friends and family who are in Singapore as well due to the circuit breaker measures. As such, we rely a lot on Facetime, Skype and Zoom, to maintain relationships and keep in contact with our loved ones. Besides restricting interaction amongst people, this pandemic has also put a stop to many large-scale events such as concerts and sporting events. However, utilising media, we have been able to still bring these experiences to people online. For instance, during the lockdown in the world as well as circuit breaker in Singapore, many music artists held livestreams of concerts to still bring people the experience of attending music concerts, albeit online. Additionally, these livestream concerts held on online platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are usually accompanied with a live chat box, allowing participants who are online to interact and chat with each other. A more relevant example to me of how media has constructed the social world would be the live-streaming of Inter-Hall Games (IHG) matches in NUS. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, spectators are not allowed to physically go down to watch and support their halls in the various matches. However, with media, we do not miss out on catching the matches as each hall will livestream the match via Instagram as well as provide real-time updates on Telegram channels. Additionally, supporter who tune into the livestream can interact with each other through the live chat.
Hence, I resonate with Couldry and Heppâs idea of how the social world is constructed and deeply interwoven with media, leading to mediatization.Â
1. The Mediated Construction of Reality (Samantha Teng)
As established by Couldry and Hepp (2017), we must understand âthe social world as fundamentally interwoven with mediaâ. When we consider the role of the media in our lives, the context of the digital age must be taken into account.
When we consider the role of the media in our lives, the context of the digital age must be taken into account. Through the proliferation of media, mediated communication practices are highly prevalent and have set the norm of interaction between parties. As communication becomes increasingly entwined with technology, technology has adapted likewise to include more features imitating in-person communication. These advances contribute to the social construction of reality.
Unlike the idea of social constructivism by Berger and Luckmann (1966) depicting social reality as what individuals perceive to be real and practices taken for granted, Couldry and Hepp deferred from such. Individuals play a main role in the construction of their own reality, embedded in daily processes and historical changes. By institutionalisation and materialisation, we develop our reality through these systemic mechanisms. As such, the mediatisation of reality has occurred. Considered to be a form of intersection between the differentiated domains of our social world, the media emphasises and sustains human communication. To reconcile the intersubjective nature of our social reality, the media has facilitated communication across time and space, creating a shared understanding and prompting reflection and action.
In my opinion, I resonate strongly with the notion of differentiated yet interlinked social spheres, where the media provides an outlet to cross the blurred barriers between them. This highly correlates with the communities and culture that Tumblr has created. The features of Tumblr reveal the inherently social nature of humans in the established anonymity of users. Uninhibited by social norms and pressures with identity, users interact freely and enthusiastically with each other, crossing into different social domains. Tumblr promotes diversity and the creation of a range of niche communities to fit any individualâs interests. Using its tagging and replies features, the social media platform provides a convenient method to communicate with others regardless of distance or time differences. The difference between Tumblr and other social media platforms can be attributed to its unique culture that has stood the test of time. Hence, it facilitates the shared understanding of its users who use the media.
An example of the tags and topics that can be displayed on the platform.Â
Being a patron of the website for many years, I can testify to the mediated quality of Tumblr as a website and communication channel. I am confident to say that my usage of Tumblr has contributed to the development of my character and values. This reflects the individual construction of my own reality through the medium of media. Therefore, Tumblr is a n apt example for the mediatisation of our social realities.
In the reading, Couldry and Hepp mainly argue that the social world (an intersubjective world produced by everyday realities and differentiates into domains) is mediatizedâ changed in its dynamic and structure by the role that media continuously plays in its construction, and therefore posits that mediation of the communication practices at every level contributes to the construction of the social world.
In our time, the assimilation of technology in our lives over time builds an internet culture that is infused with our everyday social realities. The idea of an 'etiquette' or certain rules that govern how we should act on social media can be extrapolated from Durkheim's idea of 'social facts', which was described to be "any way of acting ... which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations"â in other words, certain ideas or forces that influence the ways individuals act and the kinds of attitudes people hold. One such unspoken 'rule' would be that it is unacceptable to like a person's post if it is a rather dated one â liking someone's picture posted a long time ago is almost always an excruciatingly painful mistake, and brings about the awareness that you are intentionally looking through the person's old photos. This 'rule' was never explicitly discussed, but is often universally felt and agreed onâ articles have even been written about the 'SOP' when such unfortunate incidents happen! Some instructions include unliking the picture immediately, liking one of their latest pictures etcâ funnily enough, I have actually done these exact steps before, in a desperate attempt to conceal my 'stalking', and I am rather amused to find out that a stranger possibly from across the other end of the world would react in the same way. (check out this article for reference) More importantly, such examples emphasise how social media creates new norms and conventions that have become a part of our social reality, and materialized into new 'procedures' or 'routines' â thus continuing to reinforce and reproduce mediatized norms.
Therefore, to say that our social world is mediatized is undoubtedly true â new dynamisms, new forms of social interaction, and alongside it, new norms and conventions are continually being created as we evolve alongside the changes in the media age.Â
Couldry and Hepp suggest that media is not merely a tool that society adopted for use in daily life and communication, that it has become an integral part of our social worlds and deeply woven into its fabric. Media is not only defined by its utility or affordances, in fact, it defines, to varying degrees in different regions, our own reality. They claim that since communication is essential for us to construct our institutions, practices, and coordinate behaviour, anything that involves communication, namely media, will play a major role in moulding our reality. Reality in this sense does not mean the physical world as it is, separate from human perception. It refers to the social worlds that for all intents and purposes, are our reality, through shared experiences and beliefs.
It is precisely this enmeshed relationship of media, communication and social constructs that Couldry and Hepp puts forward the term mediatization â where the layers of mediated communicative practices all contribute to constructing our social worlds.
Mediatization is a new concept to me, but upon reflection, it becomes obvious how mediatization accurately describes how the world has been shaped and framed by the increasing variety and ubiquity of media channels. Media pervades every aspect of my life â Facebook provides the latest on trending news, Instagram to keep up with my friendsâ lives, Telegram and Whatsapp to organise gatherings with friends and family respectively, and my laptop for e-learning.
A great portion of my reality now is framed mainly within my phone and my laptop, without which I would be, in some sense, crippled, as most other Singaporeans would be. There is no equivalent alternative if I want to keep up with the social lives of my friends or to get fast headlines from the comfort of my bed. This dependency on media devices has already become an almost inextricable part of my life. The lack of a choice in my personal life is a microcosm of society in todayâs new media age. Singapore itself is declaring that it will become a Smart Nation, which essentially means a hyper-connected city where being plugged-in one way or another becomes the norm.
This is a salient example of how media is tied to so many layers of our lives, and of how much mediatization has taken place. As much as we think we have control over media, by going on a digital detox or coming up with little rules to separate ourselves from our devices, it eventually becomes only a matter of degree about how much and how often we are plugged-in. The inseparability of media and day-to-day life, not of habit but of necessity, is evidence of how everything has become mediatized, and the myriad of media will (or in fact, has already become) a mainstay in our personal and professional lives.
The humorous image attached is tangential, but I hope still appropriate.
RM: Immediately in The Drowned World, you have the fictional theory of âneuronicsâ playing a really important role. You have to buy into that theoretical position to be compelled by the story. This is what theory fiction means to me. Itâs not a genre but more a question, or even a problem: in what different ways can the two cross over, and in what ways to they need each other?[1]
Two questions come to mind when discussing the above quote by Robin Mackay, itself a response to Simon Sellarsâs Applied Ballardianism (which has dethroned Negarestaniâs Cyclonopedia as the archetypal âtheory-fictionâ text). 1) What is Ballardâs role in the development of this âquestionâ of theory-fiction? And 2) What does theory-fiction mean in relation to this text?
First of all, Ballard is responsible (directly and indirectly) for many of the concepts that were incorporated and built upon in the earliest ruminations on theory-fiction. I am here thinking of Mark Fisherâs Flatline Constructs, which places Ballard in a rhizome connecting him to Baudrillard, McLuhan, Freud, William Gibson, âDeleuze-Guattariâ and others. Central to both Fisher and Sellarsâs understandings of theory-fiction is Ballardâs characterisation of inner space, as a Spinozistic interpretation of bodies as capable of both affecting and being affected. As sites of pure Event, bodies are inseparable from the landscapes they inhabit, and so Ballardâs âinnerâ is in fact a folding-out onto âouterâ ground; a cybernetics, or, more precisely, a geo-traumatics. In The Drowned World, we see the submerged landscape producing psychological and physiological symptoms within the bodies it contains; in The Atrocity Exhibition, the same kinds of changes are apparent, though this time, they are brought about via immersion within the âmedia landscapeâ. Ballard conceives of mediatization as a generalisation of trauma, evoked through the repetition of violent and unprecedented images, and for which the body experiences schizophrenic breakdown and overspill of affect. Ballardâs T- character(s) in The Atrocity Exhibition attempt a form of âcatastrophe managementâ through repetition and re-enactment of televised events: the Kennedy assassination, the Monroe car crash, and so on. These rituals are simultaneously themselves responses to the traumas brought on through mediatization, attempts (by Ballard and his characters) to represent these events and their associated affects as the only legitimate and rational response, and a continuation of the logic of breakdown â a positive experiencing of the trauma mode as a deterriorialization, leading to inorganic breakthrough.[2]
These ideas are what make Ballardâs key works (The Drowned World, The Atrocity Exhibition, and Crash) theory-fiction: the texts cannot be approached without engaging with them on these terms. Sellars would concur. His explanation for the experimental form adopted by Applied Ballardianism is that it is the result of trying to faithfully capture and respond to a particular Ballard quote: âThe most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume it is a complete fiction â conversely, the one small node of reality left to us is inside our own heads.â[3] The book â and perhaps by extension, Ballard himself â also interpret theory-fiction in another way. âWe live in a world ruled by fictions of every kindâ, says Ballard.[4] Our thoughts and perceptions are always-already pervaded by the fictional âmodeâ, including any âtheoryâ we might derive from or within it. Given this, the role of effective writing is to âinvent the reality.â[5] Hence the shift from Ballardâs earliest fictions â the ones that fabulate an extraordinary natural event (The Drowned World, The Crystal World, et al) â to the immediate (or im-mediate) traumas of unnatural (sub)urban life (Crash, High-Rise).
Sellarsâs book reads as an account of trying to âinvent the realityâ of its writerâs psychic life in the most authentic conceivable manner â as a âmemoir from a parallel universeâ. But it succeeds as theory-fiction in a third sense, not directly related to the two outlined above. The novelâs (?) parallel narrator begins by attempting to render Ballard as a latent philosopher, who uses the shell of fiction in order to disseminate deep-seated âtruthsâ about the real world (Def. 1). Yet â and itâs no spoiler to reveal this, all fiction requires dramatic tension after all â this task does not play out as the narrator expects. The planned exercise quickly becomes a living-out of Ballardâs âextreme metaphorsâ, an experiencing and intensifying of psychic traumas across the fault lines of the narratorâs entire life. âWhy did I always shove aside the positive implications of Ballardâs work, the message of resistance it carried, in favour of the dark desires that had driven his characters to reach that point? I suppose it reflected my own cynical worldview, my own fatal inwardness that ensured I found little joy in anything.â[6] Ballardâs own moralistic framework guaranteed that he himself, when faced with a precarious juncture, would always take the blue pill: âDangerous bends ahead. Slow down.â Sellarsâs doppelganger, without the framework, the grounding of thought and desire, is free to take the path to psychosis. âDangerous bends ahead. Speed up.â[7]
It is this exposure of a lack of grounding in the narratorâs interpretation of his deep assignment that, perversely, re-inverts Applied Ballardianism into a cautionary tale. In every interview, Sellars is adamant: âItâs a mistake to read a political agenda into Ballard â or Applied Ballardianism. I donât advise it.â[8] But the book, and itâs authorâs message, Negarestani shows, are hardly apolitical; instead, their engagements with politics demonstrate a
playing precisely [of] the multi-level game with different political resolutions at different levels. [âŠ] Depending on the resolution at which the game is played, the book is replete with fundamentally different sociopolitical visions of our world. There is no contradiction here, only competing actual worlds which â and perhaps it is simply a bad habit â we are accustomed to calling the world. It is the conflict between world versions and their respective visions that is, in fact, the very constitutive element of what we name ârealityâ.[9]
Sellars has characterised the book as an exercise in failure, failure of the very idea of applying Ballardianism â at least in the sense his narrator attempts, as an ideal for living. As his life becomes mediatized by the very media warning him against its dangers, the narratorâs journey amounts to an exploration of inner space in the termâs most restricted sense: as a solipsism, or phenomenology. Now the character sees orbs in the sky, ghosts on airfields, Ballardian ley lines, everywhere. Cast adrift from the media Events central to Ballardâs texts, the narratorâs theory-fiction has folded back in on itself, as conspiracy theory. Itâs no wonder that he briefly turns to the Mandela Effect as a potential re-grounding agent, for unifying his cognitively dissonant memories.
To recapitulate, we see Applied Ballardianism as theory-fiction in a threefold sense. Firstly, it is a theoretical exploration of the ideas of Ballardâs fiction, conveyed in the âtruly authenticâ form of (quasi-)Ballardian fiction. Secondly, it is an extension and  critique of these Ballardian concepts (his original theory-fiction): specifically, of the traumas brought about by the ungrounding and deterritorializing effects of immersion within the media landscape. Thirdly, and finally, it is an expression of the traumatic effects of Ballardâs theory-fiction on the individual, and a warning against untethered free-falls through inner space. I believe that Sellars is saying, in effect, that dissociation must bottom out somewhere. The ground awaits any such schizoid free-fall, and this ground may resemble any number of things: conspiracist paranoia, hard concrete, hikikomori, windshield glass⊠Yet, I donât see all theory-fiction as bad religion. If we can keep our grounding in sight, we might be able to foresee and avoid what lurks behind the cracks in reality, and at the same time, produce the condition for original thought and expression.
Notes
[1] Simon Sellars & Robin Mackay, âSo Many Unrealitiesâ, Urbanomic (10th December 2018), available online at https://www.urbanomic.com/document/so-many-unrealities/.
[2] Mark Fisher, Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (New York: Exmilitary Press, 2018 [1999]), pp. 84-96.
[3] J.G. Ballard, from the 1995 introduction to Crash. Cf. Sellars & Mackay. The quote appears in Applied Ballardianism: Memoir From a Parallel Universe (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2018), pp. 39-40.
[4] Ballard, introduction to Crash.
[5]Â Ibid.
[6]Â Applied Ballardianism, p. 239.
[7]Â Ibid, p. 223.
[8] Sellars, âSimon Sellars on Applied Ballardianismâ, interviewed by Tadas Vinokur for Aleatory Books (17th December 2018), available online at https://www.aleatorybooks.com/simonsellarsinterview.
[9] Reza Negarestani, âMene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (Reading Applied Ballardianism)â, Toy Philosophy (9th August 2018), available online at https://toyphilosophy.com/2018/08/09/mene-mene-tekel-upharsin-reading-applied-ballardianism/.
Source:
RM: Immediately in The Drowned World, you have the fictional theory of âneuronicsâ playing a really important role. You have to buy into tha
Environciousness comes from environment and consciousness and it means care, concern and protection of the environment.
Mediatization
Mediatization comes from Media and realization and it is the brainwashing of people hooked on social media.
Mediaocracy
Mediaocracy comes from media and cracy (rule) and it is the practice thatâs happening in India where media firms are bought by the ruling government and its coterie business houses and used to promote the ideology of the government and also the downplaying of sensitive issues that affect the government.
Blog post 4: Commodification of Cultural (Vanessa Teo)
In the article by Horkheimer and Adorno, the authors argue that capitalism has invaded the modern society to the extent that culture has been commodified and transformed into a key instrument for the market forces of capitalism. The authors posit that since capitalist companies run and sustain the media industry, the culture industry has also consequently been morphed into an economic tool, and hence leading to uniformity of media that is solely profit-focused. This means, in order to maximise profits and returns, the media industry has been streamlining the production of media content to the mainstream preferences of audiences, further entrenching the homogeneity of media produced globally. Through breaking down and analysing the sections of the media industry and the different forms of art, from music to film, Horkheimer and Adorno highlight how the capitalist economy has been sustained by the consumerism culture that plagues the media industry. Due to the extent to which culture is enmeshed with the economy, the authors argue that the media industry is simply a capitalist system that sells mindlessly reproduced, repetitive culture to apathetic crowds seeking amusement.
I agree that with the commodification of culture in the media industry, it is inevitable that the products of the media industry have been inundated by uniformity. In striving to cater to and sustain a large customer base, media and cultural content producers end up repeating and repackaging previously used content, especially content that is popular among potential consumers. This is seen in American pop culture, which has been reduced to a common formulae for money-making success, respecting the thirty-two bars or the compass of the ninth (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2012), which illuminates how while songs tend to sound similar, even classified now as âmainstream musicâ because of how widespread and identical sounding the music that falls under the same category is. This phenomena is observed, especially with the arrival of the Hallyu wave that is taking the world by storm. K-pop, representative of Korean culture, received global recognition and success, and has also created a population desperate to consume content and music that conforms to K-pop culture. The concept of synchronised choreography, coupled with catchy electro-pop music, has been the well-known formulae of success for K-pop groups, and hence a hallmark of K-pop culture. This is reproduced over and over in the K-pop industry in Korea, catering to a global audience that immerses themselves in this culture and specific music genre. The ever-enlarging international appeal of K-pop groups, coupled by the success of K-pop group BTS, has lead to entertainment companies in Japan and China emulating Koreaâs formula for economic success by creating identical boy bands to BTS with similar music and dance concepts. The most controversial part of this particular case was about how their clothing style, member roles (e.g. 4 singers and 3 rappers) were even identical, highlighting just how individualistic style was negated in this âimitationâ. While this initially lead to a lot of backlash regarding lack of creativity and originality, the backlash eventually quelled due to the lack of outright copyright issues and the boy groups received public adoration and economic success like the companies had originally planned.Â
This strengthens the authorsâ argument by illustrating how the media industry caters itself to a mindless population through conforming to an atypical culture, leading to a largely homogenised media industry void of individual style. While imitation and repetition is initially criticised, it is, after all, what drives the economy. The economic success of repetition in the global media industry to sustain and expand their audiences highlight yet another growing concern: cultural homogenisation. Cultural homogenisation is potentially dangerous as it threatens to erode unique national identity and culture. Cultural homogenisation is a process through which audiences are vulnerable to as the process through which the audienceâs preferences are homogenised and mainstreamed is often subtle. The unassuming masses often do not realise how the media content that they are exposed to in their daily lives are subconsciously homogenising their media preferences. This alludes to the perspective that while the media industry is dependent on the economy, the capitalist nature of the economy may erode cultural diversity in the media industry. Hence, it is crucial to monitor the intersections of the culture industry and capitalism to ensure that the media industry is not supported by the capitalist economy at the price of culture erosion.
References:
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/2150759/k-pops-global-success-sparks-surge-asian-copycat-groups
