No Current-Events Reading for This Week — Instead, Study the Final Review Sheet Below (Next Post) and the Social Network Guide, also Below
Viewing Guide for The Social Network
This is a motion picture, not a documentary. I can’t vouch for the factuality of everything in it, but the broad parameters accurate.
We are now studying the future of news and no film I’ve seen gives more insight into the reasons behind the growth of social media.
Some points to note when you watch the film:
- No matter how “new” and technological advanced “new” media are, they are typically designed to replicate the gratification of old-fashioned interactions. Facebook was a technological replication of the college social experience, allowing people invited into an inner circle to make connections among those they had invited or had invited them. LinkedIn was developed after its founder was working on a project and was trying to find Americans who knew something about business practices in Japan. When he stumbled on a list, and discovered that the people on the list were also helpful in recommending others who would be handy contacts, his idea essentially hatched itself.
- Viability of new media takes time. It took centuries for the printing press to realize its full potential as a source of income (aside from its use for printing money). Radio needed many years for advertisers, and customers, to connect over the airwaves. Part of the delay involved settling legal and licensing issues involving use of recorded music over the radio. Obviously, the pace has been accelerated exponentially in terms of digital communication, but even Facebook took a couple years to evolve into a profitable incarnation. And note that AOL took six or seven years to achieve profitability and has endured nearly a decade of slow decline.
- There probably won’t be One Big Thing that saves Internet-based media. In recurring cycles we see hopes pinned on iPads, mobile apps, and the like. While these are certainly viable options and may additively contribute to the resurgence of journalism, tectonic developments in media are hardly ever pegged to the One Big Thing, and in fact the Big Thing may have sat on the shelf for a generation before the times were right for its maturity. Television was a technical reality in the 1920s, but social and economic circumstances (including the end of World War II) that led to its ascendancy took a while to percolate. And as we’ve demonstrated in the previous chapter, even the inventors of game-changing media technology often did not realize the direction in which it would move.
Keep an eye out for how the economics of media were turned on their heads because of the digital environment, and what new models may emerge.