CCI 506 - week 2 presentation

All media are social, in the sense that they establish and maintain relations between and among humans as individuals and collectives, increasingly across space and time. No medium is more social than any other medium. But each medium is social in distinctive ways.

Jensen KB. What’s Social About Social Media? Social media + society. 2015

https://www.freeiconspng.com/img/37850”>Free Download Of Network Tools Icon Clipart

Technology is a social system.

What do we mean by this?

Its meaning and usage are derived socially: How do we interact with each other through media and technology?

How do we interact with technology and how does technology interact with us?

Technology can read our bodily rhythms and cycles – smart watches used to monitor heart-rates, steps taken, time slept; we can download apps that help us understand our own natural cycles; algorithms are developed to better ‘understand’ our viewing habits, our interests, how much time we spend looking at particular information on the web, what sort of political views we might hold.

HP touchscreen technology 2020 - https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/how-do-touch-screens-work

Touchscreens as imagined by Stanley Kubrick in 1968 for his film: 2001: a Space Odyssey

The ‘brain’ of HAL9000 as imagined by Stanley Kubrick in 1968 for his film: 2001: a Space Odyssey

We related to technology through personification, creating ways for technology to ‘speak’ with us, ‘touch’ us, ‘relate’ to us. These terms or concepts we often use when thinking about technology help us to incorporate technology into the most private aspects of our lives.

Previously media was broadcast from a centralised television or radio station to people’s personal televisions or radio devices. Engaging with this media was determined by being available at the time of broadcast.

The arrival of a new generation of digital media that is no longer based on the broadcasting logic is challenging the knowledge about traditional mass communication.

Scolari CA. Mapping conversations about new media: the theoretical field of digital communication. New media & society. 2009

Supporters of digital media often insist that everything has changed and that society is moving forward to a new digital world. From this point of view, which is sustained by a network of authors and successful publications such as Wired magazine, digital technology will create a more democratic and equal society.

Scolari CA. Mapping conversations about new media: the theoretical field of digital communication. New media & society. 2009

https://assets.entrepreneur.com/content/3x2/2000/20190731085835-shutterstock-1160579023.jpeg

So-called social media are distinguished by their potential for peer-to-peer, peer-to-many and many-to-many communication, Nancy Baym argues that technology, in particular social media, is not inherently more social than other forms of communication or information distribution. She says that: Any medium that allows people to make meaning together is social. There is nothing more “social” about “social media”than there is about postcards, landline telephones, television shows, newspapers, books, or cuneiform.

Baym NK. Social Media and the Struggle for Society. Social media + society. 2015

https://www.perusal.in/assets/images/event/1d2127c4c3bc6f9b1f35634dba92bb18.png

Social media have been associated, not least, with classic political or normative considerations: To what extent may these media empower their users as social agents in their various private and public capacities?

Jensen KB. What’s Social About Social Media? Social media + society. 2015

A compressed timeline of online social media and media content platforms over the last 17 years. https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/what-you-can-count-on-in-this-crazymarketing-world/

The term cyberculture brackets together a relatively diverse range of approaches to new communication technologies.

The cybercultural tone ‘is by and large optimistic (...) and can fall into utopian assumptions about the emancipatory possibilities of digital media, such as virtual reality and certain Internet media’ Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I. and Kelly, K. (2003) New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. 228).

As Lister suggests above, remaining uncritical of communication technology, or ‘cyberculture’ and the impact it has on our lives can be problematic. However social media and content sharing are perhaps the most dynamic spaces to challenge dominant economic and political interests. While sometimes on the edge of the law, file sharing organisations such as the Pirate Bay, have challenged copyright law and the ability of different Western governments to enforce it.

Social media can be understood as a special vehicle of civil society, manifesting a third force in society, beyond state and market. In the tradition of grassroots presses and public-access broadcasting, social media provide opportunities for interests and movements that fall outside, or are opposed to, political and cultural establishments and bureaucracies to gain a voice.

Baym NK. Social Media and the Struggle for Society. Social media + society. 2015

Social Media too, as well as using personal data from users for commercial interests, has been used by social and political movements – such as the Arab Spring and more recently Black Lives Matter – as spaces in which to organise gatherings, share information and gather support.

https://en.shafaqna.com/65396/the-political-impact-of-social-media-onthe-middle-east/

For your first task, use mind-mapping techniques to draw a broad context around your chosen concept.

Understand from where this concept emerged and what impact it has on us technologically, socially and perhaps politically.

As previously mentioned, here are some possible concepts which could provide a starting point for your critique, what would you add to this list?:

• Digital communication • New media • Interactive media • Interactive communication • Hypermedia • Connectivity • Networking • Open source • Interactivity • Time based media • Intelligent technology • Artificial intelligence • Cyberculture • Virtual communities • The Internet • Post-human • Cyborgs • Cyberfeminism