Digital Culture and Social Media
“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t
understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” — Eric
Schmidt, former executive chairman of Alphabet Inc.
Until the end of 2017, Eric Schmidt was the executive chairman of Alphabet Inc.
Alphabet emerged out of Google to become a large holding company that would
manage Google and several related properties including YouTube and Calico (a
biotech company). Schmidt has a Ph.D. in computer science from Berkeley. He serves
on advisory boards for Khan Academy, an education company with strong ties to
YouTube, and The Economist, a global news magazine with both digital and print
products. Schmidt’s résumé suggests he is intellectually outstanding and that he cares
about technology, education and the mass media. If one of the biggest brains of our
time, and the former leader of one of the few corporations with direct influence on the
way the internet is shaped, describes the internet as “anarchy,” it’s a good indication
that things are in flux in the digital world.
Of course, we should analyze critically any statements coming from someone
whose primary purpose it is to maximize profits for their company. At the time he made
these statements, Schmidt was running Google. The loyalties of executive-level
leaders presumably rest with the corporation that signs their checks and provides their
stock options. Google has an interest in making you feel that the internet is a confusing
place since their search engine is one solution to the confusion. (However, if you rely
on autocomplete, Google’s suggestions may not only be confusing; they may even be
morally reprehensible.) Still, Schmidt’s characterization of the internet as a place of
anarchy is accurate. And as we seek to define digital culture and to discuss the cultural
relevance of social media in this chapter, we must recognize that there is no grand
plan. The only constant in digital culture is change, which may sound cliché, but the
underlying ICT structures shift so often that it can be difficult for cultural trends to take
hold.
Digital Culture Defined Scholars argue whether we can understand what the
spread of digital networks will mean for relatively well-established cultures in the
tangible world, or predict with any certainty how cultures will evolve on digital
platforms. There are two basic schools of thought. The first argues that existing
cultures might find themselves essentially recreated in digital form as more and more
life experiences, from the exciting to the mundane, play out in digital spaces. The
second school of thought posits that the dominant digital culture emerging now is a
separate culture unto itself.
It seems likely that neither version of these imagined forms of digital culture will
dominate; instead, we will likely see a combination of the two. Parts of existing culture
will appear online as they do in the physical world and parts of digital culture will seem
completely new, previously unfathomable because they could not or would not appear
in the tangible world. Before we delve in with prognostications about where digital
culture is headed, let us first define our terms. Digital culture refers to the knowledge,
beliefs, and practices of people interacting on digital networks that may recreate
tangible-world cultures or create new strains of cultural thought and practice native to
digital networks.
For example, an online fandom and a real-world fan club are both made up of
people who are geographically separated but share a common interest. If a fan club
were to “go online,” networked communication platforms might make the experience
better than it was in the physical world. Before the advent of the internet, most fan
clubs produced a newsletter, offered connections with pen pals, and provided early
opportunities to buy tickets and merchandise. Online, fans can create deeper
relationships with one another. They can connect and communicate on official
channels or make their own unofficial groups where they need not communicate
through a central authority or gatekeeper. Fan and star interactions can be direct, one-
on-one interactions on multiple social media channels. There may be an official,
organized fan group, but many other avenues can appear on relatively open platforms
with few rules. The cultural product at the core of a fandom might still be a “legacy
media” product. Legacy media are any media platforms that existed prior to the
development of massive digital networks. Yes, there are people who are “Instagram
famous” or “YouTube” famous, but the biggest stars in our cultural world still have
many ties to legacy media. Musicians, film stars and comic book heroes come to mind.
What other types of “legacy media” stars have huge online fandoms? Online fandoms
may simultaneously expect less centralized authority over the fan experience and
more direct access to their heroes. They often expect to see transparency during the
creative process, such as Instagram or Twitter posts with “secret” messages for
longtime followers or behind-the-scenes videos as albums and movies are made.
Fandoms might demand to hear key information first or to have special access via
social media.
Similar things could be said of fan clubs in the age of snail mail. Essential
elements of the culture of fandom — gaining access to artists and finding friends in a
community — have not changed as much in kind as they have in degree. Is this an
example of the transition of an existing cultural form (the fan club) to digital
environments, or is online fandom something truly different from a snail mail fan club?
This is a good question to debate in the classroom. It is worth noting that there are
also niche fandoms that probably would not exist without the aid of digital networks.
With virtually unlimited communication space, there is room for incredibly rarified fan
groups to form on platforms such as Tumblr, and they are not always socially positive
communities. In many cases of hyper-specific fandoms, it is difficult to argue that these
cultures existed in the physical world and simply “moved online.” Being digitally
networked is what makes it possible to find people with particularly narrow shared
interests, for better and for worse.
Even with the presence of niche online groups, digital culture cannot currently be
separated from the influence of physical-world cultures. We can say two things about
the relationship between online and physical-world cultures at this time. First, the
growth of interaction on digital networks influences “traditional” cultures. Second,
longstanding cultural traditions are influencing digital culture as it takes shape. The
ethics and norms established in the physical world shape our views about behavior
and values in digital networks. The term norm refers to a behavioral standard. Mutual
influences of what is considered “normal” in online behavior and well established
physical world norms are emerging in a dynamic fashion. Sometimes they clash. One
example is online dating. Dating in real life (IRL) is changing as more and more people
use dating apps and websites. Previously, dating was limited to the people you were
likely to meet. You could meet friends of friends. You could meet people at school, at
parties, at bars or on blind dates. Your options were limited geographically and by how
outgoing you were, how much time you wanted to spend looking, and who you trusted
to set you up. The personal ads in newspapers were often considered sad places for
losers. Using a mass medium to find your true love was often considered a risky last
resort. When online dating first became available, it was often compared to posting
and perusing digital personal ads. This was a cultural perception based on previous
experiences, behavior and expectations from a pre-Internet culture.
Over the course of approximately ten years (1998-2008), what once was
considered odd, creepy or desperate in many parts of the Western world came to be
considered commonplace. Apps and sites like OkCupid, Tinder, Match.com and
eHarmony have millions of users. Culturally, many of us have accepted this new digital
form of dating. It’s not for everyone, but online dating does not carry the stigma it once
did.
Even Tinder, which has a reputation as a “hook-up” app, maintains popularity and
cultural significance as it is referenced often on other media platforms. Whatever it
may be in a given culture, sexual morality still exists, even if new technologies make
hooking up easier and new capabilities challenge old norms of what dating should be.
This is the dynamic at the heart of this chapter. Digital technology can influence
knowledge, beliefs and especially practices around dating. This can, in turn, shape the
way people think about dating in general, not just in digital environments. The “old”
cultural norms and morals can still be applied to judge those who use digital apps for
casual hookups, but the new culture can push back, so to speak, and change how
people think about dating even if they never use dating apps themselves. We have
discussed how the digital culture and physical world culture dynamic functions, but we
have not yet defined digital culture. For that, we must look to scholars who have spent
years trying to pinpoint what emergent digital culture seems to be. Individualization,
Post-nationalism, and Globalization We turn to Mark Deuze, a scholar from the
University of Amsterdam, for a complete definition. He seeks to provide a preliminary
definition of “digital culture” in his 2006 article, “Participation, Remediation, Bricolage:
Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture.” In his analysis of academic
literature, Deuze finds that scholars often make assumptions when trying to explain
how digital culture works. The main he identifies is the idea that culture moves to digital
networks more or less intact. There was, a decade ago, a lack of explanation about
what happens to culture in digital environments.
How much might culture change when certain practices move online? How often
can existing cultural beliefs and expectations be transferred intact? Deuze does not
think digital culture is merely a recreation of physical world culture in online spaces,
but he does not have a good answer for what has been emerging. He analyzes
independent media sites, blogs and radical online media outlets to see what these
new forms of communication demonstrate about digital culture. That these forms are
not meant to represent all culture but rather a cultural vanguard. They are (or were)
the tip of the spear of newly evolving digital cultures. These sites are often progressive
politically, so this is not as much a prediction of what will happen with all digital culture
as it is a discussion of what is possible. Deuze maintains that the real practice of digital
culture is “an expression of individualization, post-nationalism, and globalization.”
Deuze finds individualization in blogs most frequently written by one person and
focused on a specific topic or small geographical region. Individualism, as it is used
here, refers not only to an individual’s ability to act as their own publisher online but
also to a social condition in which individuals are free from government control. It
means that even in authoritarian nations such as North Korea, Russia, China and Iran
that try to control the behavior of their citizens, individuals may seek freedom of
expression on the internet, although it comes at a greater risk. Beyond Deuze’s
observations, evidence of individualism online comes from partisan news sites such
as The Drudge Report and HuffPost. Both are named for individual founders. They are
digital mass media outlets that started largely as personal points of view. The
importance of individualized expression on social media is clear. We appear as
individuals on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr. This increases our
reach. Each of us can potentially connect with every other individual on a given social
media platform, but these platforms also raise questions about surveillance and
privacy.
Eric Schmidt once said about online privacy and Google, “If you have something
that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
While this might make sense in a free society, there are many places in the world —
North Korea for example — where government surveillance can utilize corporate
invasions of privacy to crack down on dissent and severely limit freedom. Suppose
someone living in North Korea would like to use a social media channel such as Twitter
to connect with like-minded people without government officials finding out. Should
Twitter protect those users? What if a state threatens legal action or violence against
Twitter employees? Would social media channels give up their users? There is a
difference between government surveillance (that is, state-sanctioned data gathering
and analysis on massive scales) and corporate data aggregation for targeted
marketing purposes. Usually, by accepting the Terms and Conditions of apps and web
services, you opt in to having your data stored, crunched and analyzed by
corporations. Legally, you are responsible for that decision. Technically, the data
gathering platform is not supposed to identify you as an individual, but so-called “safe
harbor” laws can be ineffectual. Should Google protect your searches and refuse to
divulge information about your habits to governments, even if they share that data with
other companies for marketing purposes? Should Google give you a way to hide your
online activity? Is there a way for the liberty-loving Southeast Asian to have his privacy
protected while still enabling Western governments to watch out for terrorists? These
questions relate to larger issues of freedom and individualism in digital culture.
Throughout its history, the United States of America has taken pride in its First
Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights as guarantees of liberty. After the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, many Americans accepted new levels of scrutiny, particularly in
digital environments. Support for strong leaders increased until very recently.
Concerns about the global rise of authoritarianism have people questioning
government surveillance and corporate surveillance as they may limit our ability to
engage as individuals in digital culture.
Eric Schmidt’s statement implies that privacy in digital networks is limited. This
sentiment is echoed by Mark Zuckerberg, who has suggested that privacy is dead.
What this means is that physical world behavior is expected to adapt to the demands
of digital culture because the capabilities of digital culture also carry with them unique
risks that we are not necessarily adapted to deal with. Our experience with the anarchy
of online mass communication platforms is quite limited. As we learn what government
surveillance and corporate invasions of privacy are capable of, it may continue to
deeply affect our physical world behavior. Many would agree with the sentiment, “If
you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about,” but even advocates for a
more open digital society want their privacy. Zuckerberg bought several properties
around his house to keep his physical location secure. Eric Schmidt does not want
people to know where he lives. He generally does not invite the public into his private
life, and, one might assume, does not want people to examine why his former wife
said she felt like a “piece of luggage” when married to him. Such information about
Schmidt’s personal life is easy to find online and could be used against him, but should
we care? Does it matter in the broader cultural sense? This text argues that privacy
does matter. The vast majority of us are not using digital platforms to break laws or to
interact in negative ways with others and yet we still have aspects of ourselves that
we would like to remain private. Has a parent or guardian ever snooped on your
Facebook account or followed your Instagram? We have incredible freedoms and
amazing digital communication capabilities as individuals living our lives in the new
digital culture. It comes with a price we have yet to grasp.
One of the major cultural challenges of the network society will be to deal with
people in power who would like to use our information against us as a means of
control. It has already happened in some of the countries where the Arab Spring
revolutions took place (Egypt, for one). You never know what you might need to protest
in the future, but we’re beginning to see tools deployed to pre-empt protest and other
acts of dissent. What this means for our efforts to define digital culture is that digital
culture can free us as individuals, but it can also imprison us. We can use the internet
and smartphones to help us to get questions answered and to draw attention to
ourselves in good ways. We can coordinate with others for fundraisers and to have
parties. Digital communication networks are amazingly sophisticated tools that can
help us connect as individuals to form groups to celebrate all sorts of interests, political
and otherwise. On the other hand, if individuals believe they have no privacy, digital
networks could become virtual wastelands where innovative collaboration is hindered
and where corporate commercial speech and government surveillance dominate.
Capitalism depends on risk-taking, and if you kill risk-taking online, you have hindered
the entrepreneurialism that the network society offers. We scholars will study for
decades to come how individual behavior changes and how relationships morph in a
digital culture that discourages behavior we want to keep private while simultaneously
encouraging levels of sharing that border on exhibitionism. How can we maintain
privacy and gain attention, which is so often the currency of the open Internet? This is
an interesting dilemma that arises in an individualistic digital culture.
Post-nationalism is another aspect of digital culture that Deuze notes in his
article. It may seem unrelated to our previous discussion of individualism and privacy
in digital culture, but in fact, it is an analysis of the ways individuals represent
themselves online. Most simply, “post-nationalism” in digital culture means that one’s
country appears to matter less as an influence on behavior and values online than it
does in the tangible world, perhaps because we can be free of our national identities
when engaging in digital networks with people from around the globe. This does not
mean that we should expect to see an end to nationalism in the tangible world. Quite
the opposite seems to be true: As post-nationalism appears in digital spaces,
nationalism is on the rise in global politics. It might seem odd that people drop their
nationalism online but demand it in physical spaces, but if you look at the way culture
is expressed online, it is clear that for many people their nationality has little to do with
their online identities. For example, your country may be important to you, but it may
not be one of the ways you define yourself in social media environments. You can love
America without talking about it all of the time on Facebook or Twitter. Remember as
well that national boundaries may be felt more readily in the daily lives of Africans,
Asians, Europeans and others living in nations that are geographically smaller, more
tightly packed and culturally distinct. In digital spaces, these cultural differences can
evaporate. Although war and immigration are highly influential on the current cultural
climate in the physical world, the perception of evaporating culture in networked
spaces may help drive the sense that physical world cultures are being threatened.
Recent political developments, however, make it somewhat more difficult to think of
digital culture as post-nationalistic given the rise of online nationalism — particularly
white nationalism in Europe and the United States. White nationalism is a brand of
nationalism related to white supremacy, but it is an identity connected to the nation-
state nonetheless. A nationalist’s primary modus operandi in digital culture may not
reflect what nation states ultimately become in the 21st century, but rather what they
wish it were. Even so, there is evidence that some factions will use digital spaces to
promote a return to nationalism. Does this mean that post-nationalism in digital culture
is a false notion conceived in the early 2000s that has no bearing on culture today?
Perhaps, but it is more likely that we are seeing a backlash against the rise of a global
post-nationalist space online.
Digital culture, Deuze posits, reflects a globalized or globalizing world. Behaviors,
interests, and relationships cross international boundaries. The economic structure of
digital networks, including the mass media system, is global. For example,
multinational conglomerate corporations tend to dominate the media industry, not just
in the United States but around the world. Books, academic articles and simple
infographics show that most mass media companies fall under the ownership of large
corporate firms. It is not accurate to say this represents all media or that “the media”
are being controlled, but it is accurate to say a significant level of influence can be
attributed to a handful of media corporations in most developed parts of the world.
Mass media consumers should be aware of the environment in which media products
are produced, but this is not to say that the globalization of mass media is always a
negative thing. When it comes to culture, globalization has its supporters. Here is a
site in English about K-pop music. The music comes from Korea, but the fanbase is
spread worldwide, and the site can reach a global audience only because of the global
nature of digital networks. It works only because computer servers are connected by
wires all over the globe to make this bit of culture, like many others, available to the
entire globe.
There exists a global point of view in both the physical world and in digital culture
which is open to all kinds of cultural production as long as it is interesting, funny and
shows great talent. There are videos that go viral globally, although it is not always
clear why. (If we had the formula, we’d include it here.) All we can say at this time is
that you can reach the world with any online message and, for whatever reason, some
things are globally likable and “shareable.”
Humanity’s recently developed ability to develop a globalized point of view and
to establish a common digital culture is the reason you have heard (and likely tired) of
“Gangnam Style.” Ironically, PSY, who performs the song, is kind of an anti-pop star
within Korea. The song makes fun of the country’s higher class, a conspicuously
wealthy subculture from a place called the Gangnam District. But PSY is a global
success. He is popular, many argue, because he is quite funny and because he is not
the prototypical K-pop hero. He comes from a particular national cultural tradition, but
he also transcends it by being absurd. Thus, as a distinctly individual performer, he
personifies a type of post-nationalism and the globalization of digital culture.
Individualism, post-nationalism and globalization go a long way toward defining the
emergent “digital culture.” For more information, consult Deuze’s original article. Digital
Culture in Practice Deuze makes one more observation not about what digital culture
is but rather how it works. Deuze argues that the production of digital culture will be
carried out through participation, remediation and bricolage. Participation means that
every individual will have the ability to contribute to online media. Professionals and
amateurs will work together much more often than they did on “legacy media” products
and projects. Because people do not want to work for free, they will not flock to an
online platform simply because it has been opened up for contributions. If anyone
could build a Facebook, there would be hundreds or even thousands of competing
platforms. As it stands, there are perhaps ten major social media platforms worldwide,
if “major” means they are home to more than 200 million members.
It is also clear from social networking sites, Reddit, and similar social news
sharing sites that people will contribute to a platform even if it is not necessarily well-
policed or easy to use. In digital culture, it helps to be the first to be big. Success
breeds success in an economy based on attention, and what dominates tends to be
emotional issues, as satirized here. Consistency also seems to help, but what matters
most is the ability to consistently draw an audience. Think of a person trying to become
a YouTube influencer. They must publish interesting content regularly for months or
even years before they develop a following that they might be able to sell to
advertisers. Once the YouTube star does begin to peddle products, they run the risk
of alienating a portion of their audience. Participation is an essential part of digital
culture. It can be easy and fun to do it for free. If you want to make a career out of it,
it takes professional-level commitment, and the resulting content often favors what is
popular and emotionally gripping rather than what is informative or socially beneficial.
Remediation means that old media are made new again in digital spaces. Television
becomes YouTube. Radio becomes podcasting, Spotify and Pandora. Newspapers
become … online newspapers! The new media take elements of the old media and
repurpose them, while “legacy” media firms copycat digital media trends, buy out
media startups, or try to forge new paths at significant expense. In the practice of
digital culture, media are remade in digital environments in a process that combines
the appealing parts of existing forms of media with additional functionalities made
possible by new ICTs and digital networking capabilities. The author’s own research
argues that attempts by legacy media organizations to create new businesses online
face many institutional hurdles. Remediation is constantly happening, but that does
not mean existing media companies can determine how to monetize the practice in a
sustainable way. We should expect considerable remediation innovation to come from
startup companies and individual tech entrepreneurs with few ties to legacy media. A
good example of remediation is taking classic movies or video games and showing
them to young people to record their reactions for YouTube. Reaction videos of all
kinds take media products people are familiar with and show them to the unfamiliar so
that viewers can judge their reactions. This new media product repurposes old content
with an added element designed to pique our interest; however, remediation does not
always add much value.
Group culture is what we used to refer to as a “subculture.” It is the knowledge,
beliefs and practices of a subset of people considered to be part of a larger culture.
Group culture is distinct in some ways from the shared, broader common culture.
Group culture might center on religious beliefs and practices, ethnic norms and
interests, or food, music and other forms of material production. Groups can be as
large as all Chinese-Americans and as small as the remaining St. Louis NFL fan
culture. You have a say in defining your personal culture — the knowledge, beliefs and
practices held most dear to the individual. You may find yourself identifying with many
group cultures or taking most of your interests from the dominant common culture. Do
you take your cultural cues about what to think about and talk about from television,
social media or small group cultures with which you identify? This much is your
prerogative. You can choose your personal culture. It is based both on what you
believe in and what cultural products you consume. America, ‘Merica, Los Estados
Unidos, Etc. There is a common culture in America, but there is no single, dominant,
common culture across global digital networks. There may be a tendency for people
to believe that the group cultures they interact with most often online constitute the
“real” digital culture, but as yet there is no clear consensus about what our shared
digital culture is or even if we will develop one. Algorithms in search engines and social
media platforms determine much of what we find when we search the internet and
what we see when we look at news and information feeds from our friends. Do
algorithms constitute common culture? They may shape it, and they may be influenced
by user preferences, but they are not always designed for truth, accuracy or
information literacy. They are most often designed to give consumers whatever makes
them consume more of what the platform wants them to consume. Google usually
wants you to spend money with its advertisers. Facebook wants your time and your
data so it can sell your information to third party advertisers.
What shapes digital culture is often in a “black box”: It is the proprietary
information of very large corporations, and the public may or may not have access to
the code. Even if we did have it, it would be difficult to explain exactly how algorithms
work. There are times when the corporations that deploy algorithms seem surprised
by how they function in the hands of massive numbers of users. Major events that cut
across algorithms and show up on almost everyone’s news feed and in almost
everyone’s search results are still likely to have an impact on common culture. Major
events are likely to shape personal, group, and common culture if they are significant
enough. What kind of cultural impact does a given event have? It depends. The impact
of a school shooting near Miami might be felt differently in Florida than in California
because of proximity and because the gun laws in each state are quite different. In
other words, something can enter the common culture but still be perceived quite
differently by individual members of the public.
By now you should understand that the cultural impact of messages in the mass
media at each level — personal, group and common culture — is related to the shared
knowledge that existed before the event. Events are often going to be perceived
differently by people identifying with different small group cultures within a larger
common culture. Events will usually be interpreted differently by individuals within a
small group culture, depending on an individual’s beliefs about and personal
experiences with the issue at hand. A person’s response to current events as they
appear in the mass media is also related to the existence and strength of shared
beliefs about the way they think things ought to be. We call those beliefs cultural
norms. There is no single, agreed-upon set of norms that everyone in a given group
culture adheres to. If you have lived your whole life as part of the dominant culture,
and you do not recognize the existence and struggle of various cultural groups, it can
be difficult to recognize reactions in digital media spaces that do not relate much to
what you see in your physical world. Conversely, if you have grown up being
oppressed as part of a small group, you may find it hard to understand how others
identifying with the dominant portion of a common culture can miss the cruelty present
in some cultural norms they don’t think twice about.
Exposure to other groups’ cultures in a network society can bring about both
greater understanding and greater anxiety. This is something that will be worked out,
for better or for worse, over the next several decades as digital culture evolves.
Figuring out how groups with different cultural interests, norms, and values can get
along while being constantly exposed to one another’s views in the freefor-all of
network society is the challenge of emergent digital culture. One response is to run to
echo chambers, to partisan spaces that feel safe for certain group cultures and for our
personal cultural beliefs and priorities, but this practice can only deepen the divide
between cultural groups. In the early years of working to establish a common culture
in the network society, we have managed to inundate ourselves with information from
all manner of cultural groups and to isolate ourselves from views that contradict our
own group cultural norms. This is anarchy. This is culture without a strong social
structure to hold it together. The question facing mass communication scholars that
members of our common culture also face is whether the institutions of the physical
world can or should try to control how digital culture is shaped. You have the power to
decide if digital culture should be regulated and how. This may be the most important
civic responsibility you have, but it is also a matter of cultural power. Social Media and
Social Capital What do you think it means for society that networked communication
platforms can make anybody a mass communicator? One answer is that there is great
potential for social change because society, as Dewey said in Chapter 1, is not just
transmitted by communication, it exists in it. That means every individual with a
computer or a smartphone has the potential to disseminate messages that influence
broader society. Think of the Arab Spring revolutions of 2010-2012. Think of
#Ferguson protests in the summer and fall of 2014. Think of the way candidate Donald
Trump bypassed mass media outlets to reach voters and to set a separate news
agenda in 2015 and 2016. Individuals and small groups are now able to coordinate
and to lead social movements using networked communication technologies.
You have probably heard the term “social movement.” In a sense, a social
movement is a change in society brought on by communication. What is different about
the world of networked communication is how interpersonal messages and message
campaigns can shift in an instant to being mass messages or massive campaigns.
This makes digital networks battlegrounds because networked public communication
platforms are centers of power now more than ever. Just as they can influence and
even disrupt social structures, individuals and small groups can shape culture using
social media channels. This makes our communication system as ripe for abuse by
outside forces as it is for use by legitimate citizens. Governments, corporations and
rogue dictators all have an interest in learning our secrets, and they could potentially
hold them against us. We cannot underestimate how important this is will be in the
mass communication field. Individual, group and broader social secrets — including
consumer behavior, political behavior and even personal thoughts and interests — are
easier to discern and possibly manipulate than ever before because of the vast
amounts of data collected about us from our social media and other internet habits.
This can have a profound effect on our behavior and on our society, and we are not
prepared as a society to defend ourselves against attacks. Before you get discouraged
about digital culture and privacy, and before you get inundated with all of the
possibilities and implications of digital culture, consider Clay Shirky’s Ted talk, “How
social media can make history.” Shirky outlines the power of social connectivity and
applies the concept of social capital. The basic definition of social capital is the
potential to get help, not just financial assistance, from the people around you when
needed. Social media platforms can be great places to build social capital. Thus, they
have the potential to be constructive or disruptive. It depends on how you use them.
Watch the video for a complete definition. Interpersonal communication, organizational
communication and mass communication are separate areas of academic interest, as
stated in the first chapter, but our ability as consumers and as producers to alternate
from one to the other is as powerful as it has ever been. Being connected to each
other almost at all times by digital networks creates the capacity for relatively quick
mass social action. People are beginning to use this power to pull society in different
directions. Large numbers of people can be organized and we could see social shifts
and rifts develop more quickly than they can be put back together. It will be up to
individual users and groups of users to decide how to respond to such social and
cultural changes.
A major shaper of culture and society is the news media. There will be separate
sections on the evolution of news in later chapters, but in the context of digital culture,
it bears noting that the role of news media within broader media landscapes is also
shifting. Apart from the ability of social movements and cultural movements to arise
and take shape on social media platforms, there is also the potential for public opinion
to be influenced quickly and deeply when mass media outlets operated in the same
digital networks as influential individuals and groups. You may contribute to news
information by volunteering. One of the biggest stories to gain national attention in
2014 that was filmed and posted by a citizen journalist was the story of Eric Garner,
who was seen being put into a chokehold by NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo. Reports
said that Garner had asthma and that he died of a heart attack. Here the term “citizen
journalist” refers to a person who is not a paid professional but who delivers news to
audiences nonetheless. It is doubtful that the story would have received national
attention had it not been for the video bystander Taisha Allen took with her mobile
phone. When she shared that video, and it went viral on social media channels, she
made the mass media story possible. Allen probably had several reasons for sharing
the video of Garner, and she was probably aware of the potential social and cultural
impact of the video. You do not have to be a media literacy expert to know that such a
video would receive broad attention and generate controversy. Allen chose to share
the video because she thought people needed to see what had happened. Further
solidifying the cultural significance of the video, within days of the story breaking, Spike
Lee had re-cut a scene from his groundbreaking film Do the Right Thing where the
character Radio Raheem is choked to death by an NYPD officer. He interspersed his
original film clip with bystander video of Eric Garner’s death. This almost instant
connection between a post made by a citizen using social media and a bit of modern
classic film speaks to the rising power and cultural influence of amateur media.
Individuals can affect major producers in a mutual effort to shape social norms and
structures as well as cultural influences. We should expect more and more
professionals to make these kinds of connections with amateurs and bystanders in the
future. Mashups of professionally made mass media messages and citizen-generated
messages are likely to proliferate. Can you think of video footage from individuals
present during major news events that shaped the news and public opinion? The
events in Ferguson, Missouri followed a similar path as the Eric Garner story: Social
media accounts of the killing of Michael Brown were shared virally almost immediately
after the incident. Social media activity on YouTube, Twitter and other channels helped
shape the way events unfolded. This drove the way the story was covered in the
national media in the early reporting, but backlash inevitably followed.
Much of the work done by citizen journalists will be controversial. Media
professionals working in news and other fields will have to use discernment in deciding
which views to share because in a sense sharing is promoting, even if one disagrees
with the sentiment of the tweet, video, or post. No piece of media that is meaningful
on a cultural level is going to be captured and disseminated with universal agreement
about its importance or its meaning, but for society to function and for culture to serve
its purposes we need to agree in a general sense on what’s real and what is not. The
real danger in the rise of the power of individuals and small groups in digital culture is
that they can pull larger groups away from looking for fact-based discourse.
