media ecology

Question 1

neil postman - the natural and digital enviroment

Answer 1

• two kinds of environments (natural and media)
• The digital environment impacts our behaviour and culture within the natural environment
• focus on dystopian and utopian fictional case studies and how they reflect our society (Her, Wall-E…)
• Technological determinism - advancements in technologies impact our society and our behaviour

Question 2

neil postman - ‘the humanism of media ecology’

the 4 questions

Answer 2

To what extent does new media …

1. …contribute to the uses and development of rational thought?
2. …contribute to the development of democratic processes
3. …give greater access to meaningful info?
4. …enhance or diminish our moral sense, our capacity for goodness?

Question 3

Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is The Message

Answer 3

• content does not exist outside the way it is mediated
• encoding and decoding
• mediation changes the INTERPRETATION of the message

Question 4

Marshall McLuhan’s Triad of Media Effects

Answer 4

ENHANCES: What does it amplify

REVERSES: when pushed to the extreme, reverses into the opposite intention

RETRIEVES: what does it bring back

OBSOLECES: makes an older medium obsolece

Question 5

Sherry Turkle: Alone Together

Answer 5

• we avoid engaging with our emotions by engaging with technology
• AI doesn’t have human experience
• control (edit/delete/post)
• customise our lives, choose what we pay attention to
• the illusion of companionship (paradox: more friends online, more lonely)
• “We expect more from technology and less from each other”

Question 6

Henry Jenkins (As)
Textual Poachers and Participatory Media in relation to Media Ecology

Answer 6

• an example for media as utopia
• how has online media changed fandoms
• In what ways can fans engage in participatory culture and textual poaching (fan fiction…)?

Question 7

Clay Shrinky: End of Audiences

Answer 7

Prosumer culture
Audiences are no longer passive
Audiences EXPECT to be able to interact
Audiences WANT to engage in dialogue and decisions made by industries
Audiences PRODUCE their own media products to challenge the industry

Question 8

Use of Data

Answer 8

The Social Dilemma Documentary on Netflix:
- Surveillance capitalism - analyse the data and persuade the consumer into their own ideologies - which can be for financial or political power.(Profit and Power)

• Positive intermittent reinforcement (stream keeps refreshing - becomes habit to keep checking)
• Algorithms cannot detect “fake news” - they are programmed to get engagement and personalise the streams.
• Business model is the problem - capitalism with economic and shareholder investment. Not considering ethics. Financial incentives run the world. No fiscal reason for the companies to change and that’s why we need regulations.
• Law runs waaaay behind technology. the law most often protects the companies over individuals.
• We are the product. Our attention is the product. Attention extraction model.

Three goals of tech companies:
Engagement (keep you online)
Growth (add friends)
Advertising (make money)

Question 9

TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

Answer 9

• is a reductionist theory that assumes that a society’s technology progresses by following its own internal logic of efficiency, while determining the development of the social structure and cultural values

Case study - technological determinism, triad of media effects: new iPad commercial - a metaphor for how media has crashed artistic tools that humans have used for centuries. Hugh Grant wrote: ‘destruction of the human experience. courtesy of silicon valley’. However knowing new trends such as ASMR crushing videos on Tik Tok makes you understand this.