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Postmodern media

1 comment on Postmodern media

Postmodern media
: I just read this on Terry Heaton’s very good essay about postmodern video news from the people. It fits the discussion about music below (as well as yesterday’s from AlwaysOn).

Postmodernism is the Age of Participation. The need to learn has been replaced by the need to apply, and that means all of the rules of our culture are being rewritten, including those for television news. Postmoderns (Pomos) trust their experiences, and if they’ve not experienced it, they want to hear it from somebody who has. This means information that is up close and personal and that includes many perspectives, not that which is provided by arms-length experts or delivered in some hyped manner that’s a mile wide and an inch deep. Pomos also don’t want their information sanitized, because they don’t trust the sanitation workers. Part of that distrust is based on Postmodernism’s rejection of hierarchy and elitism and a desire for control over their own lives.

Pomos also want to talk to each other and share the “news” that’s relevant to them, and this is already occurring on the Internet through blogs and social networking. In the expanding circles of what’s important to me, that which is closest and those who are closest are most relevant. The Net facilitates that need like nothing since the telephone. Who would argue that the news of my loved ones is more important to me than the news of my nation?

In the end, we’ll see that the whole top-down media culture, whereby information is trickled down to the masses through institutional channels, is replaced by one that is much more user-centric and connected. Involvement in all of life at the local level will increase, including participation in the political process.

These are, indeed, exciting times.

1 response to “Postmodern media”

  1. michael ledeen Avatar
    michael ledeen

    Does that mean it’s more about feelings than about facts? That would not necessarily be a very good thing, because it presumes that we can somehow “recognize” the truth by how we feel about it.
    That’s a dangerous business, since real knowledge and understanding should be able to change our feelings, not the other way round.
    I think that what happened is a bit different, frankly. For many years now, most sensible people have had the sensation that the networks and the big papers were not giving them the straight story. But they had nowhere to go for the truth. Then came the net and talk radio and cable and they felt better, because they were able to at least define the parameters within which the truth probably lay.
    It reminds me of our years in Rome, Italy. We used to read six or seven newspapers a day, because each represented a political party or group, and so the “news” was different in each one. After a while we noticed which paper was reliable on which issues, and which journalists were reliable…I think a similar process is going on now, with the blogs and the talk radio and the cable. We are in the process of sorting them out as we discover the trustworthy ones.
    The truly great thing is the speed with which we can do our fact-checking online. But here again, it can’t be done without some touchstone, some reliable source(s).
    I think as time passes, there will be a winnowing-out, and the unreliable ones will get dissed. At least I hope so. Otherwise we’ll just have cacophany.