via The Atlantic – Social media’s small, positive role in human relationships
Tufekci makes some excellent observations (extrapolated from a large amount of data) on the benefits of social media. It’s a refreshing counter to the panicky things we hear from friends.
For most people, the choice is not leisurely walks on Cape Cod versus social media. It’s television versus social media.
I worry at times about my peers who feel they must define society and social interactions as one sort of thing: face-to-face conversation. Sorry, but conversations and interactions mediated by technological tools have existed for decades. Non-social media (anti-social media?) like television, newspapers, books, recorded audio, are far more dangerous in creating isolation and blocking out social contact. Social media promote relationships, enable communication, demand conversations.
I’ve heard arguments about the forcing of voyeuristic habits – turning ‘friends’ into objects of observation – and the like, but call bunk on them. You make decisions. If you choose to watch, that’s not the fault of the medium. Place blame and responsibility where it is due.
I am almost finished with my grad thesis, so I thought I would post the abstract here for the world to read.
Coming into the age of globalised media coverage, major media events once limited to a specific country are now shared across the world. The semiotic and representational systems employed in the media coverage of these events shape our understanding of international relations, power structures, and public opinion. Royal weddings and political demonstrations have recently found a transnational audience, binding them together in a common cause or celebration. This project analyses the local appropriation of global media events, the media coverage that facilitates adoption, and the semiotic translations involved in the process.
Hofmann told the Guardian: “Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist.
From The Guardian (via @nickdenardis)
Design is a prospective enterprise. The question it asks is: “what, in this environment, with this kind of audience, with these resources that are available for implementing my design, given these social, economic, ‘political’ constraints, and with my interests now at this moment, is the best way of shaping that which I wish to make, whether as ‘message’ or as any object of design?”
by Gunther Kress via IIID Gunther Kress: Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media.
The new magnetic or world city will be static and iconic or inclusive.
Reversal of the Overheated Medium. Understanding Media.
