بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Active audiences in the 21th century
this article would like to probe the idea of active audiences in the light of the
social and political tensions arising around the world, the discussion will
gyrate around the systems interconnected to the new media; politics, culture,
technology and economy as needed. the challenges facing the active audience in
relation to media have been constantly evolving
and developing in response to influence from various pressure sources, now
as clusters of society with relevant interests are ever so capable "voicing/projecting
" their concerns and gather more "followers" and
"likers" for aiding their causes.
this paper aims to discuss some of the relevant ideas in active audience research
and the transformation that the active audience underwent from being active to being interactive in the
light of new developments in the field
of information communication technologies.
By starting from the future and moving to the past this paper aims to
resurface some of the historical ideas relevant to the development of active
audience research while peering more and more onto the essence of the matter .
the current situation
Today a tweet from lady gaga(@ladygaga) reaches the timeline of 23 million of
her followers instantaneously and effortlessly. however, this tweet although
quite widespread in distribution, only occupies the same space in a shared timeline
with all the average users on twitter, whom many of which do not posses such an
expansive follower base. This shared time line has become a hub/home for celebrities, politicians, radicals and many
members of society with their conflicting or opposing interests and point of
views. the sharing of this mentioned "timeline" has caused a transformation
in the author-text-audience relationship in the web, whereas the author and the
audience have meshed into a new figure that represents both, yet is neither
separately. This is a new development which is contrary to past times where the
lines were still thought of and were represented as blurred with each role
separately defined (Cover, 2006 :140) so it is therefore maybe a valid
assumption that this will add further complexity and tensions between the parties
and users present in media sphere.
The idea of struggle could be tracked back historically to previous discourses
visible in the following example from CNN "In a recent televised
advertisement for CNN.com, it was pointed out that the average computer has 101
keys’. It goes on: ‘We say, you only need three – CNN’" (Cover, 2006 :145).
The evolution of the nowadays ICT have caused audiences to become more interactive
with the mediums of choice (Livingstone, 2004:85) which also becomes a platform
for conflicts as consumer grade cameras and video devices can now compete on a
production level with industry standard production output seen in news and even movie studios,
specially when both the consumer and the corporate media producers use similar
software to output their "content" which ends up in various distribution
points in the web and other places but also in many instances finds its way to
the same the twitter feed previously mentioned. and although keeping track of
user internet practice is a difficult task (Livingstone, 2004:82), in the case
of the social networking, sites like twitter provide new tools for analyzing
social networking behavior and can provide insight on what people value and
consider of importance (Tumasjan et al. 2011:406).
inevitable fights for intangible power
in 2011; every minute, 48hours worth of video uploaded into youtube.com, while
people have watched more than 200 billion videos by October, with 100 billion
photos uploaded to facebook, in a web which has 225 million twitter accounts
tweeting ~250 million tweets per day (pingdom :2011).
This stream of digital information populating the web is a contribution of the
human populous and some artificial intelligence which automatically generates
content, but it rather goes without saying that moving this torrent of
"information" is no longer a problem in the 21st century as Neil
Postman argues in his book Building a bridge to the 18th century
" The problem to be
solved in the twenty-first century is not how to move information, not the engineering of information. We
solved that problem long ago. The problem is how to transform information into knowledge, and how to
transform knowledge into wisdom. (postman; 1999)
What he said has been confirmed by the figures thus far, but something rather interesting comes up
from that quotation; Postman has eluded to the new arenas where the battle for
control will take place. The prioritizing, distribution, promotion, framing,
contextualizing of the data hosted on the web is now to become a hostile ground
between all parties involved (Castells, 2007:238). This however brings unique
challenges for researchers, for example; researchers whom intend to verify
effectiveness of supplied information as in the case of the Gaza conflict (Zeitzoff,
2011:942-943).
What is unique about the current state of connectivity today is although it's
unrealistic to assume that just because people have the capacity to access and
use the internet they will effectively be able to voice out their matters (Tang
and Yang, 2011:676), people have indeed nowadays claimed a new ability; the
ability to give/project/influence symbolic meaning, the difference between the symbolic
meaning initiated by an active audience and the symbolic meaning set by the
author although both a reactive kind of expression, their direction may be
different but the final outcome is ultimately the same. by carefully
manipulating and "spinning" information the new media framing can
drastically alter the course of events to even a degree in which criminals can
be made into statesmen (Mahony and Fair, 2012:41) In the past, while trying to penetrate and
gain a stake in the mass expression digital space users were faced with
obstacles and resistances (Dijck, 2009:43), the said obstacles may have
probably transformed and encoded themselves into the design and foundation of
the new web as a self defense mechanism from unaccounted information outbreaks.
This is evident in the how some websites like YouTube would tailor the catering
of the content based on algorithms and rankings of videos that are performing
well in accordance with YouTube policies (Dijck, 2009:45), Also the embedding
of intricate copyright enforcing acts on sites like YouTube specifically or on the
wider internet level where service providers can send Cease and desist orders
to users amidst distribution of copyrighted content or websites and account
deactivation, additionally Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption has
become adopted in games and digital books alike. These techniques ensure some
level of security for corporate interest and businesses but undermine the
agency and intervention powers of the end user in order to conform users to an
accepted and agreed upon mode of behavior (Gillespie, 2005;653).
The struggle between the various ends here is reinforced by capitalist ideology
which has been against intervention policies from the government (George, 2009)
, now the capitalist systems faces consumers whom possess growing powers of
intervention, while the active audience now to become active mimic the role of
the content producers (Castello and Moor, 2007;139), so maybe as a growing
response to this trend the portrayal of Happiness in media as an abundance of
wealth is to normalize the idea that an individual`s worth is measured by their
consumption/purchasing power rather than anything else, which if is accepted as
a norm would be considered as a handicap for the powers of intervention that
the audience has producing even more pressure on media participants as their
social profile of acceptance and credibility is tied with their social status
and visible material position and that extends into these notions translated
into the virtual space where individuals are ranked by their reach and are even
targeted by larger organizations to be representatives or bouncing boards for
their products and services as they would serve as a bridge to twitter followers,
facebook fans, or Blog readers.
Light, Knowledge.
“Someday, in the distant future,
our grandchildren's grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours
in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to
know the difference between light and knowledge.”
- Aristocles, son of
Ariston, of the deme Collytus (plato)
Plato, and formerly postman drew emphasis to a difference between what is to be
considered as information and what is to be considered as knowledge. Understanding
what is the primary unit which is later defined as either knowledge or
information is important in order to be aware of any inherited systems bound
into it, and as the web space develops this primary unity is what is now
referred to as "content" which
is a term inspired from the mass-media industry (Fortuano, 2005).
This unit according to Plato falls under an either or definition whereas some
content will be absorbed as information and some other different kind of
content will be absorbed as knowledge, for its time it is quite an interesting
insight, however the rigidity of a binary system to judge something that is
mediated via the field of spectrum which has more an abundance more than 2
possibilities, does not serve the content justice, especially in the case of
multimedia which can be a hybrid between both knowledge and information and
could even harbor the potential to react to user input. I would propose that
information and knowledge cannot be separate from one another. Additionally,
this reception and organization depends on numerous factors in which the
definition could change drastically by exposure to content from different relative
positions in society, or in the ability to mobilize this content to be used as
a tool to build or collapse symbolic meaning, all which may tie in with Knowledge
Gap Theory
[1].
Inter/Active Boundaries
In his book (Almeizae` - الميزياء : Merit-ology[2] ) Hassan AlAjami
introduces a philosophical concept of an implicit world which exists via
extrapolation from any given entity of information in the real world (Al
Ajamai, 2008:53) this notion proposes a very interesting approach once applied
to audience research, as it instead of researching the visible and the material
focuses on the hidden, it would equate to studying the dark matter in the
universe in order to understand its relation to the celestial objects. However,
away from the stars and space The equivalent of the dark matter in audience
research may be the "Inter/active limits". What I mean by
inter/active limits are the set of restrictions that in the case of media
manifest themselves in things like the differences between the repository of
acquired knowledge between members in society which drastically affects their
ability to interact with information…
During long periods of history,
the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which
human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not
only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.
(Benjamin; 1999)
This mentioned space of human sense perception if illustrated may look
like this :
Figure 1 : illustration of Walter Benjamin's Quote
So what is contested now by and large is the setting of "definitions"
which in turn determine both Human/audience interaction and sets their
perceived/hidden limits. However due to the nature of the Audience today
(interactivity) these limits have also inherited the interactive nature. Commodification
of cultural objects therefore is tampering with the Human sense perception in
order to influence action/reaction, this motion if we follow [figure:1] starts
from World then moves to definition and ends with human, However as active
audiences respond, a new motion begins from the opposite direction wherein the human is now reproducing his own
definition and projects it to the world, in here there may be a case for ideas
like [ if enough people believe A = truth, then A = truth, even if A is
actually false] The obvious example here is the previous misconception that the
world is Flat.
Numbers in this equation is a form of inter/active limit, and what is unique
about numbers in this example about the world is that it wasn’t just a matter
of which position of the conflict held more followers, it was the case of
convincing the right individuals with the truth of the matter in the right time
and circumstances to allow for a systematic propagation of a new idea, although
the right individuals only represent a marginal figure and even though that the
majority of the populous were against it.
In modern times audiences have received a level of sovereignty and they are
able to project definitions, conceptions and assumptions about the world, that
also turns them to important elements in the shaping of culture, and as key
players they often times fall into the definition of what is regarded as a
"celebrity" which would as a status grant a boost in information
integrity and could positively influence the opinion of (fans/followers) as the
source credibility model suggests (Erdogan, 1999).
The definitions of what is information and knowledge will continuously expand
as new interfaces and modes of interaction develop and technologies like touch sensitive
surfaces and virtual reality apparatuses like the new Google glasses. This will
further more require a reexamination of the
boundaries as these developments will also herald the arrivals of new
forms of individual types like this rendition of technological advancement
brought forth presumption as a blend of production and consumption.
And finally the quarrel over human attention for gaining benefits will
hopefully one day in the near future be replaced with a quarrel on matters that
will bring us closer rather than separate us.
Knowledge Gap Theory : as the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, higher socioeconomic status segments tend to acquire this information faster than lower socioeconomic-status population segments so that the gap in knowledge between the two tends to increase rather than decrease. (Tichenor, et al. 1970)
Merit-ology as the author defines it is the school of eastern philosophy that regards every object, thought or idea to possess a singular essence or merit that sets it apart from everything else.
هذا والله أعلم.
تم بحمد الله
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