Emerging Media Thoughts

(sample post on Keen article)
On the one hand Keen is the classic example of an internet-troll: he makes outrageous claims, framed in hyperbolic logic, and places them in direct view of those most likely to disagree. And although I don’t have personal access to his psyche my guess is he does this far more for his own edification than fostering any nuanced dialogue or discourse about the matters he claims to be concerned about. And that is perhaps part of the problem, for behind his not so delicate approach lies some points worth considering, even if he doesn’t fully develop them as much as requires. Consider the question in Cult of the Amateur that Keen asks about the future of individuation in the media landscape “Where does it end? WIth a channel for every one of us, in which we are the solitary broadcaster and the sole audience?”(33). While Keen glosses this, and uses it as a rhetorical flourish to the end of a chapter, the idea repercussion of having such a fragmented viewing audience ought to be considered.

Take for example a recent poll by the Pew Research Center which found that Fox News Viewers are far more likely to believe the “Death Panel Myth.” Forty percent of Fox viewers believed that the government health plan would decide whether or not the elderly would be allowed to live, compare this to MSNBC viewers, who only 27% of whom were likely to believe the “Death Panel Myth.”

Now we could assign this to the networks, placing blame at the foot of Fox News, but we can also see how this is representative of a larger problem: audience fragmentation. That is, if I am conservative and agree with Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. I am more likely to watch Fox. And if I am a liberal I am more likely to watch MSNBC where I can watch Maddow. This means that I am likely to watch a network that shares my views rather than a network which presents views contrary to mine, or even say views that represent a middle/common ground.

The result is that when any two individuals get together they are likely to actually hold not just two different opinions on any matter, but actually two different sets of facts on which they would base such opinions. In other words they would have no common ground from which to draw in order to have a conversation about health care. This is in part what Keen is talking about when he references the echo chamber, and multiple this by ones entire cultural references and one comes to understand how there any two individuals are increasingly likely to not share the same cultural references, whether this is in the news, or art, or entertainment.

But here is the catch. Keen places the blame here at the foot of the internet. See the internet causes fragmentation, and hence death of our common culture. But as the above example shows, there is nothing here that is specifically about the internet. This is about cable news. Indeed audience fragmentation began before the rise of the internet with cable channels and conservative talk shows. So while there might be audience fragmentation, the internet is not the cause of this fragmentation, indeed it is only part of a changing media ecology. Sure conservatives visit Red State, and Liberals visit Daily Kos, but this is also true with respect to MSNBC and FOX. By limiting his critique to the internet and casting broad strokes, Keen misses this important, and crucial nuance.