PLUS CA CHANGE‘Issues and Approaches New Media’

By Denise Teal

OUTLINE

Summary of the Reading Approaches to New Media by Tony Flew.

How do culture and technology influence each other?

In the News – Archbishop’s comments on Social Media

Discussion

BEYOND HYPE AND COUNTER-HYPE

“computing is not about computers any more, it’s about living” Negroponte, Being Digital 1995

“we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire ” Barlow

“force for freedom and individualism, culture and morality” Gilder

“the land of knowledge and the exploration of that land can be civilisation’s truest and highest calling” Tofler

BEYOND HYPE AND COUNTER-HYPE

To judge by the overheated tributes to computer technology that have become increasingly common in the press... one would be led to conclude that the Internet is the most important invention since fire, [and] that a laptop computer dwarfs the automobile in its societal impact… My advice to the somewhat overly enthusiastic technophiles... is simple: Get a grip.

Michael Hammer as quoted by Robert B. Seidensticker in Future Hype, 2005

BEYOND HYPE AND COUNTER-HYPE

1. The kind of research and theoretical tradition used.

2. Empirical new media tends to be a research practice of those seeking to manage change rather than effect it.

3. The recurring significance of optimism as a form of myth that needs not only to be unmasked but also learned from.

APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Technological Determinism.

According to technological determinists, particular technical developments, communications technologies or media, or, most broadly, technology in general are the sole or prime antecedent causes of changes in society, and technology is seen as the fundamental condition underlying the pattern of social organization Chandler, Daniel (1995): 'Technological or Media Determinism’ URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tecdet.html [2/8/09]

APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Technological Determinism cont.

the partial truth of technological determinism is this, that “once particular technologies are widely adopted and used, they acquire a degree of lock-in that shapes society in a wider sense”. Flew (2008)

APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Social Shaping of Technology

Points to the need to analyse ‘the socio-economic patterns embedded in both

the content of technologies and…

…the process of innovation

APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Social Shaping of Technology Diffusion of Innovations Model

Seeks to model the adoption and spread of innovation through communication via particular channels over time.

Focuses on social uptake of new tech and has a pro-innovation bias (Rogers, 2003)

APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Social Shaping of Technology Political Economy Model

Focuses more on the politics and power relations embedded in technological development.

APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Social Shaping of Technology Theories of Culture and Technology

Says that technologies are … processes that structure the world in particular ways.

Seeks not to separate technology and the social into separate domains.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: IDENTITY AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS ONLINE

Social Psychology of new media or Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has generated strong interest in…

How to best target marketing Managing concerns about access New forms of community, sociality and identity

formation

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: IDENTITY AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS ONLINE

Early speculations about CMC.

Rheingold – seeing possibility of reinvigorated sense of community and citizen participation in public life. (1994)

Turkle stated that through identity and play within CMC “…people are increasingly comfortable with substituting representations of reality for the real” (1995)

Flew goes on to demonstrate that time passing moderated opinions in favour of more empirically based assessments.

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

Significance of culture as “communication mediated through technologies” appears as we compare the three levels of defining of ‘technology’

Physical objects, tools, artifacts Content – software, defined by its use. Systems of knowledge and social meaning

With the three levels of defining of ‘culture’

Culture with the arts and aesthetics As in ‘way of life’, lived experience, community, social

groups Underlying structural system

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Political economy approaches to new media start from a perspective of economic and industrial dynamics, focusing on the extent to which access to resources influences directions new media developments take Access to investment capital Access to political influence Access to technologies themselves

This approach is skeptical that new media has led to fundamental changes in socio economic structures.

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Cultural Studies approaches to new media start from communications and culture The relationship between producers and users. The communication going from one to many to

many to many causes the producers to renegotiate the relationship which brings change.

Tends to be more positive about the transformative potential of new media.

HOW DO CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER?

Facebook and MySpace can lead children to commit suicide, warns Archbishop Nichols

Wynne Jones, Daily Telegraph

HOW DO CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER?

the sites are leading teenagers to build "transient relationships" which leave them unable to cope when their social networks collapse.

relationships are already being weakened by the decline in face-to-face meetings and conversations over the phone

as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community.

"If we mean by community a genuine growing together and a mutual sharing in an interest that is of some significance then it needs more than Facebook.

HOW DO CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER?

Social media is becoming a replacement for social engagement and this is a bad trend.

social networking has made the already existing problems more visible

Responsible use of Social Media - that should be the idea.

There are key interpersonal lessons not learned when relying on social media,

HOW DO CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER?

The issue isn’t the medium in which the harassment occurred, but the harassment itself.

Ben Parr, Mashable

HOW DO CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER?

Question:

Has Social Media augmented or diminished your IRL (in real life) social interactions?

HOW DO CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER?

Straw Poll on Facebook:Of the old, old friends you've

reconnected with on Facebook... how many of them have you since met up with in person?

If you have not met up, do you plan to in the future?

HOW DO CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCE EACH OTHER?

Would meet -distance prevents – 4

Would not meet up – 3

Have met up with >5 will do so more – 4

Met up with one or two – 8

Only really keep up with existing friendships from that period – 2

CONCLUSIONS

Plus ca change, ces’t plus la meme chose.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

REFERENCES

Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Changeby Robert B. Seidensticker 2005, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (San Francisco, CA)

Facebook and MySpace can lead children to commit suicide, warns Archbishop Nichols Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Daily TelegraphPublished: 9:45PM BST 01 Aug 2009http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5956719/Facebook-and-MySpace-can-lead-children-to-commit-suicide-warns-Archbishop-Nichols.html

REFERENCES

Facebook Leads to Suicide, Warns UK Head of Roman Catholic Church, Ben Parr, Mashable August 2nd 2009 http://mashable.com/2009/08/02/suicide-facebook-catholic-church/