Beyond Internet and Mass Media

Gustavo CardosoISCTE-IUL

Lisboa ISCTE-IUL, 5th July 2010

Television, Radio and Newspapers, as they developed,

become to be known during the XX Century as Mass Media

and assumed the central role in the media system

giving rise to a new communicational paradigm.

That communicational paradigm, of mass communication

was the communicational model of industrialized societies

under a industrial model of development

and under what was coined as later modernity.

From Bell to Touraine and Poster to Castells

the role of information and communication in social change

in our societies

has been discussed during the last forty years

The birth of the Internet in 1969 and the long road of forty years,

from laboratories and scientific appropriation to homes and

businesses

and the generalization of personal and organizational appropriation in daily lives,

when combined with Mass Media,

how would the Internet change the Mass Media, and what could

we expect?

Seeing Change

orOur Communication in a New

Communicational Model

Hello information, goodbye news!

In communication, innovation is (almost always) incremental

The three cultural industry narratives

Users as distributors

Open creativity or Open source of life

iLife with your iPhone

Radio’s third life

Television is a narrative, not a technology

From newspaper to news agency

Democracy and everyday life immersed in mediation

All are signs of change

How to make sense from them?

From Mass to Networked Communication

Networked Communication

Communicational Model of the Network Society

Networked Communication

Shaped by 3 forces

(1)

Communicational Globalization Processes

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

First by Sattelite TV

Latter by the Internet

(2)

What mediation ?

Self Mass Communication

multimedia interpersonal communication

one to many mediated communication

Mass Communication

Non mediated face to face

This is our communication

Self Mass Media +

Multimedia Interpersonal Communication

+ One to Many Mediated

Communication +

Mass Communication =

Networked Mediation

(3)

High Interactivity

Low Interactivity

ChoiceDifferent interactivity dimensions

HIGH / LOWCommunicational Environment Approach towards interactivity

Networked Communication

If it is true that we build communicational models into our

societies,

it is equally true that they give rise to

communicational paradigms that

format what a given media system will be

Do we have a new communicational paradigm ?

1) Rhetoric based on moving image

2) New dynamics of accessibility

(ranging from availability to mobility)

3) social value of user generated content

4) Coexistence of multiple role models types of newscasts.

5) Innovation in entertainment models

But also in how do we tell our storieschange in reserve (Eco)

erosion of frontiers separation (Silverstone)

transcendence interruption

Each Age has it’s own

predominant genres

Ways to say the same differently

Different technologies for the same purpose

and modes of representation

(i.e.)

news

debates

Soap operas

and also different ways to

express the singularity of individuals

i.e.

Popular music

How to write

How to talk

(or to send messages)

How to share contents

Although those show the search for different types of order

and struggle for power and control over our own

simbolic and material space and time,

the media act diferently accordingly to different times and

spaces.

Both news and entertainment have changed in their nature

across time

Networked Communication

Is about mediation and networks

And mediation is about the role of screens, and its contents, in our communication.

With different “screens” we develop different interactivies.

“Screens” are the product of technology, mediation processes,

consumption, production and regulation.

Let’s think of “screens”, not technology.

Think of the way in which we interact with them

THINK SCREENS IN BROADCASTTHINK SCREENS IN SEARCH

BROADCASTbroadcast and zapping for low interactivity practices

SEARCHsearch and browse, for high interactivity practices

2 Networks of practises

With 2 Central Nodes

Networked Communication ?

Who builds the network? We do.

We are the “hypertex” that links technologies and uses

Pursuing personal or collective projects

News, Fiction, Opinion and Commercials

Networked Communication

is

Network building

between Mass Media

and Multimedia Interpersonal Communication

and Self Mass Media

and One to Many Mediation

not forgetting face to face

a space where

the “user” and “audience” meet

when it happens mediation changes

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/17-08/by_media_diet

our media diets change

media matrixes change

new media systems develop

where the “user” has a new central role

the user as distributor

the user as innovator

the user as classificator (of experience)

In the Aftermath? Or the Networking of a new communicational model?

So what is Communication today ?

A Remix of technology, contents and uses.

a suggestion

A remix because in communication we are remixing the older and the new through

mediation

a technologic remix because we are combining multiple screens in

our practises

a content remix because on “those” screens contents are

diverse and different

Broadcasting will still be around in some, but not in all screens.

Sometimes we will be

“push” audiences, that still zapp through contents in broadcasting

and watch/read/listen to them

Other times we will be

“pull” users who, pre-choose contents, through complex and

thorough search, in order to (use)watch/read/listen now or at

a future given moment

That is: the difference between pushing the “on” button and do zapping – i.e. the phenomena

that produces audiences!

and to access, search and browse – i.e. the phenomena that

produces users!

can this explain what communication is today?

From Media to People

The Media is not the Message

All societies are characterised by communicational models and not

just informational models.

The three preceding models

in chronological order in terms of its cycles of social affirmation

The first model is defined as interpersonal communication.

Which takes the form of the two-way exchange between two or

more persons in a group.

The second model, which is equally deeply rooted in our societies, is one-to-many

communication.

where an individual sends one single message to a limited group of persons

A third model, with which we have less

experience in historical terms, is mass communication.

Where thanks to the use of specific mediation technologies, one single message can be sent to a mass

of people.

In the 1970’s, McLuhan argued that the

media were the message.—

Meaning that any single medium induces behaviours, creates psychological connections, and shapes the

mentality of the receiver; regardless of the content that medium transmits.

Castells, in turn, suggested we could think of the

“message is the media”

i.e., the media are shaped depending on the message one is trying to get across, and seeking that which

best serves the message and the audience at which it is aimed. (2005)

Eco suggested that “the media precede the message”,

i.e. when the technological acceleration produces multiple new channels that exist before there is content to be placed there creating a new challenge of an economic character,

thus rendering transmission feasible without having equated what is to be transmitted (2002)

Should we discuss if networked communication introduces a third

dimension into the dialectic between media and message?

In the network, whatever the media chosen, if the message is not the most

appropriate, for a given group, it will be remixed by the people.

“the people is the message” vs.

“the media is the message”

?

the people is the message?Gustavo Cardoso, 2010