Josh Braun🧵Again, I've assigned Alice Marwick's work to students and, as ever, it's a great tool for thinking with. This time I'm reading it alongside Heather Haveman's historical work on nineteenth-century magazines, which makes for an interesting comparison. On the historical front…
As improved distribution through the postal network made it a relatively simple matter to distribute publications nationally, a sense of imagined community took hold at the national level, wherein people felt — in ways both good and bad — that they were lumped in with the masses.
This context collapse paradoxically made people feel a need to assert the uniqueness of their local communities, which led, in turn, to a viable market for many regional publications focused on local affairs.
Social media, too, connects us with such efficiency that it can lead us to feel part of an undifferentiated mass. Marwick discusses how contemporary social media platforms collapse social context in ways that also make people feel a heightened need to assert their group identity.
Oftentimes they will do so in ways that are productive, using the platform to explore their tastes and "find their people." Or lucrative, creating a personal brand that makes them identifiable to niche audiences and employable as experts on a topic.
But, as Marwick discusses, the perceived need to assert one's affiliations can also lead to anti-social behaviors: participation in networked harassment aimed at out-group members as a way to assert in-group status, sharing disinfo as a means of signaling one's politics, etc.
I look forward to exploring connections like these with nuance if I can ever finish up my book, but in sum: As media networks throw us together in unanticipated ways, there will always be a need to figure out how to deal productively with humans' us-and-them impulses.
Sources:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051211021378
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164403/magazines-and-the-making-of-america
Why Do People Share Fake News? A Sociotechnical Model of Media Effects
In 2017, Peter Daou launched “Verrit,” a partisan news site targeted to Democratic voters disappointed with the results of the 2016 election. The site consists of single quotations, facts, and stat…
Just realized this has been a #commodon thread.
John Sullivan@josh Good luck with the book! Just sent off the first draft of mine. Almost killed me. Sending good wishes.
@John47 Congratulations! When is yours out? And what’s the topic?
@josh podcasting in a platform age. That's the title. Had considered submitting it to your series on distribution. Explored your great piece on distribution in there. Working with a podcast series with Bloomsbury Academic.