Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

(Ann) #1
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Preface to the 8th edition

Meanwhile, back on the ground


Less sensational than the hacking saga, but of equal interest and sometimes of concern in the
study of media trends, is what Graeme Turner calls ‘the demotic turn’. In Ordinary People and the
Media: Th e Demotic Turn (Sage, 2010) Turner writes: ‘For a start we can say that the institutional
model of the media has given way to a more thoroughly commercial and industrial model; that, in
many instances, the idea of a national media is giving way to a more conjectural blend of national,
transnational and sometimes even local formations; and that the media audience is mutating from
a model of receptiveness we might identify with broadcasting, towards a range of more active and
more demotic modes of participation that vary from the personalized menu model of the YouTube
user to the content creation activities of the citizen journalist or the blogger.’
As for whether increased public (demotic) participation is, as some commentators believe, also
empowering (see digital optimism), whether the new media are a force for democratization,
Turner remains sceptical, believing that outcomes ‘are still more likely to be those which support
the commercial survival of the major media corporations rather than those which support the
individual or the community interests of the ordinary citizen’.
Th e demotic turn is a shift ‘towards entertainment’ and this ‘may prove to have constituted
an impoverishment of the social, political and cultural function of the media; the replacement
of something that was primarily information – as in, say, current aff airs radio – with something
that is primarily entertainment – as in, say, talk radio – is more realistically seen as generating a
democratic defi cit than a democratic benefi t’.
Th is edition of the Dictionary recognizes the options and the possibilities with regard to tech-
nology and cultural change, but also acknowledges that the pace of change of one is more rapid
than the other. It is undoubtedly true that the Internet has opened portals to individual and group
participation and interactivity that permit a diversity of viewpoint and expression rarely, if ever,
experienced in the past.
Cyberspace is a constellation of bloggers, a territory of streams emerging from and fl owing into
and across contemporary life, and on a global scale. Salem 9, blogging from Iraq, fed an informa-
tion-hungry Western society glimpses of life in an invaded and occupied country that traditional
news reporting could not match. During the so-termed African Spring of 2010–11, blogger Slim
Amamou’s invitation to join the interim government of Tunisia was described by Jo Glanville in her
Index on Censorship (No. 1, 2011) editorial, ‘Playing the long game’, as ‘one of the most remarkable
acknowledgments of the role of digital activists in civil society, not to mention the symbolism of his
appointment in a country that has stifl ed free speech for decades’.
Yet for every optimist such as Glanville there is a pessimist such as Evgeny Morozov, whose
Th e Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World (Allan Lane, 2011) puts the case that the ‘twitter
revolution’ might do more harm than good to the cause of democratization.
Th e jury is out, as it is on the effi cacy of what has come to be termed citizen journalism (see
journalism: citizen journalism). Th is raises lively issues concerning the relationship between
amateurs and professionals, particularly in the light of the cost-cutting in news services by
traditional media organizations intent on putting profi t before public service; the result, Graeme
Turner’s ‘impoverishment of the social, political and cultural function of the media’.
Equally we note the concerns of Tim Wu, inventor of the term net neutrality (and author of
Th e Master Switch: Th e Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Knopf/Atlantic Books, 2011), when he
posits the theory that traditional media moved from the freedoms of the open prairie to corporate
enclosure and that this process may be being repeated in the Network Society. Already, he writes in
his introduction, ‘there are signs that the good old days of a completely open network are ending’.
Acquisition, alliances, expansion, synergies are pursued with missionary zeal by the new leviathans.
Industries become empires. Jostling for attention becomes jostling for control, not unlike that
exercised by governments rarely hesitant about legislating against freedom of expression.

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