@eileenb As @woozle noted, when epistemic (media) systems gain significance, the attract attention:

"Because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place."

Or more accurately: as there are /returns/ to influencing an audience, those influencers will appear: direct & brand marketing, propagandists, polemicists.

So yes, the brands ... will come, like it or not.

https://redd.it/5wg0hp

@woozle @eileenb I see a fairly common progression of interests within a new media channel. Not necessarily in the following order, but close:

1. Technicians -- "shop talk"
2. Artistics and creatives, avant garde.
3. Organisations for internal use: business, government, academia, religion, etc.
4. External comms, management, monitoring, discussion.
5. Direct marketing.
6. Mass entertainment.
7. Mass marketing.
8. Propaganda and polemicists.

Merely changing platforms changes nothing.

@crecca How, specifically?

I'd like to see some specific examples.

@dredmorbius uh, I'm not media specialist, unfortunately. But I'll try.

Change of nature implies something more than growth, scale, and so forth. But, I'd argue, changing breadth of definition is changing the nature. And, to focus on one thing from the list, propaganda has changed its definition to include things that are not deceitful intentionally. This was enabled by medium, because sender is no longer just government, or political party.

@crecca If you're referring to "useful idiots", the ... tradition is ancient.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

Sun Tzu's "doomed spies": https://suntzusaid.com/book/13

Dating to 5th century BCE, or 2,500 years ago. Twitter and Facebook adoption at the time were somewhat smaller than today.

I'm not a media specialist either. I've come to realise that media are significant, and am making up for lost time.

Most of what I'm discussing I've learnt the past 6 months.

@dredmorbius No, I'm not, the point of origin of the propaganda is different, among other things. Message is different. Receiver is different.

In broad terms, the media that you use is affecting the message deeply, transforms it, according to the rules of the media. This is an old theory, though.

And regarding social media specifically – this is not very useful term here, and I find it artificial still.

@crecca I strongly suspect you're far less disagreeing with me than failing to understand me.

There are elements of information which are the same, despite medium. These are constant, through and far beyond human and pre-human history.

There are elements which are different: scale, time, reach, total informational volume. Access, somewhat.

Under those lenses, what we're seeing now has exceedingly clear antecedants, and relations and understanding can be drawn.

@dredmorbius I'd much rather admit you're right than admit I misunderstood something.

And you're not wrong! It's important to acknowledge the constants. But I can't yet get behind the notion that everything stays the same, when every where I look I see constant (sic) change and chaos.

Even though the flux is not obvious. "The history likes to repeat itself". "You can't change human nature". Bullshit.

Media is a mold for information.

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