Lecture 8: Digitalisation

Lecture 8: Digitalisation

1. Digital vs. Analogue

   • Analogue refers to “old” electronic media from 1850s to 1950s: Photography (Film), Phonography, Cinema (Film), Radio, Television (non-digital)
     • radio waves were analogous to the original act of communication - they resembled or corresponded to it
   • Digitalisation involves the breakdown of the act of communication into binary code that can be read and stored by computers
     • made communication more transportable and manipulable
     • made different media potentially interconnectable

2. Digital Optimism

   • Claim 1: Digitalisation and the internet allow for substantially greater levels of control/creativity/participation on the part of non-professional users/audiences
   • Claim 2: The power of industrial, professional and instituitional cultural production is eroding, and a more democratic and vigorous system of communication is about to arrive
   • 3 Themes
     • Digitalisation empowers users
       • Increasing use of blogs, tweets, self-publishing, and self-recording gives users the ability to become producers themselves --> line between the producer and the consumer is beginning to fade
       • Users can decide what content they want to make and how they can create it - no longer under the oppression of evil publishers
     • Digitalisation emancipates content
       • Users producing and disseminating their own content provides alternative views to events and issues
     • Digitalisation enables active participation
       • Rather than being passive, consumers interact, shape and manipulate cultural products presented to them

3. Criticisms of Digital Optimism

   • Digital Divide
     • Unequal access to the internet and web
       • lack of skills, confidence or motivation to use digital technologies
         • not everyone has the ability to create compelling content that others want to consume
         • technology makes hard skills (taking a photo, coding a website) easier but soft skills (design thinking) takes time and effort to train and develop
       • between developed and developing countries, and within individual countries
   • Dominance of a few websites
     • Search engines are the key way to access content, but SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) services enable companies to use meta-tags, keywords and backlinks to move their pagerank up --> more marketing budget = more people will see
       • despite proliferation of media sites, only a few sites recieve significant traffic *self-reinforcing effect - highly ranked sites increase their popularity because they are ranked highly
       • most music available digitally is not purchased - only hits are accessed and downloaded
   • Commercialisation, surveillance and free labour
     • users are exploited into making websites (tumblr, wordpress), modifying software (open source), or providing subbing services (fan subs)
       • BUT fansubs get something out of their labour as well: social capital, advertising click-through, community, passion
         • need to balance social gains with financial trade-off
     • online viewer activity: act as free and efficient feedback and free marketing for programmes --> viewers exploited as they don't get paid
     • online advertising
       • fundamentally damaging to cultural production and founded upon an unethical way of understanding the behaviour and values of ordinary people --> inadequate measures to protect consumers
     • capture and selling of information about users
   • Commodification of sociality
     • Sense of community and social trust is commodified on sites like facebook