Electra:
But never will I cease from dirge and sore lament, while I look on the trembling rays of the bright stars, or on this light of day; but like the nightingale, slayer of her offspring, I will wail without ceasing, and cry aloud to all, here, at the doors of my father.
Sophocles – “Electra” Scene 1
“When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We see the world through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
Marshall McLuhan “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” (Sphere Books, London 1967).
The mourning that Eugene O’Neill claimed becomes Electra still persists in the marbled halls of the Mainstream Media.
Shayne Currie’s Media Insider for the Herald of 10 July is headlined among other things “‘Untold stress’: Magazine title pleads for help”.
The untold stress is suffered by the proprietors of Ponsonby News. They are having trouble keeping the publication afloat. Mr Currie reports that the free monthly community publication is 35 years old but like many media organisations is struggling following an advertising revenue drop.
Apparently Ponsonby News is, like some of the larger media organisations, holding out the digital equivalent of a begging bowl. But unlike the media majors who have advocated for a State contrived solution in the form of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, Ponsonby News has set up a Givealittle Page. They need $30,000 in donations and Mr Currie reports that $7500 had been pledged.
Mr. Currie suggests that the publisher Martin Leach would like to continue with a hard copy publication although the Givealittle page recognizes the reality of life in the Digital Paradigm – the publication may have to go online only.
The other mournful piece comes from the Ashburton Guardian which is dropping from three editions a week to two. Apparently their problems have been compounded by NZ Post which is ending weekend rural deliveries.
The co-owner of the Ashburton Guardian, Daryl Holden, was one of many mainstream media people who made submissions to the Select Committee on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. His was a sincere and fact-filled submission in favour of the Bill, but reflected a common trend throughout – a total lack of understanding by MSM of the fact that we are now in the Digital Paradigm. This has changed utterly the way in which people receive information. It has changed utterly the expectations that people have of information and its delivery.
Some organisations are, like the Government, trying to cut the costs associated with their services and their business model. Mr Currie reports that:
“NZME has confirmed a proposal to cut 11.7 fulltime-equivalent (FTE) roles across the company’s regional and community news network.
NZME has previously stated its moves are cost-neutral, as it looks to build resources in those two cities, as well as specialist areas such as business and political journalism, to reflect audience demand.
Stuff has also cut a number of community mastheads, and has been restructuring in various divisions, including lifestyle, motoring, travel and commercial.”
But this is merely shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic. Paradigmatically different ways of information communication and acquisition have changed the way in which we use and respond to information.
A paradigm is a certain understanding of reality.
It is a school of thought or framework which forms a world view – a shared way of perceiving aspects of reality.
For example, there can be economic paradigms, scientific paradigms and philosophical paradigms.
A paradigm is formed when there is general consensus that the worldview is good enough for the collective to gather around and from which it may progress.
Hence the paradigm becomes more than an agreed theory of understanding but a much wider societal worldview. The shift to digital systems as a means of communication and the transporting of information and digital products represents such a worldview.
I suggest that the Digital Paradigm and an understanding of the new media for communicating information present some fundamental challenges to our assumptions about the way we communicate and may well revolutionise some established communications institutions. News media are one such instiutution,
Elsewhere I have challenged the often advanced and convenient escape route that suggests that what the Digital Paradigm offers is merely content in a different delivery system which may be “functionally equivalent” to that which has gone before.
I argue that escape route is now closed off in light of the fundamentally different manner by which content is delivered in the Digital Space.
In the same way that printing provided a paradigmatically different system of recording information than had been present in the scribal culture, which resulted in the development of a culture surrounding print and printed material and fundamentally changed the mentality of Early Modern readers and scholars with repercussions that transformed Western society, so the advent of digital communications systems is having a similar effect.
The fact of the paradigm shift from what could be broadly defined as pre-digital communication systems – which largely reflect print processes and culture – may be observed from an examination not of the content communicated – the message – but the underlying qualities of the manner in which the message is deliver – what McLuhan would refer to as “the medium”.
As we consider the qualities of new information communication ecosystem it will become clear that this is a complex and at times contradictory process for within the Digital Paradigm there are a number of tensions that result in nuanced conclusions rather than absolutes.
Marshall McLuhan articulated two aphorisms that aptly encapsulate certain realities about the impact of the media of information communications. “The medium is the message” - perhaps his most famous and yet opaque statement – emphasises the importance of understanding the way in which information is communicated.
According to McLuhan, we focus upon the message or the content that a medium delivers whilst ignoring the delivery system and its impact. In most cases our expectation of content delivery is shaped by earlier media.
We tend to look at the new delivery systems through a rear view mirror and often will seek for analogies, metaphors or concepts of functional equivalence to explain the new medium that do not truly reflect how it operates and the underlying impact that it might have.
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” is the second aphorism that summarises the impact that new media may have.
Having developed the delivery system, we find that our behaviours and activities change. Over time it may be that certain newly developed behaviours become acceptable and thus underlying values that validate those behaviours change.
In the case of information delivery tools, our relationships with, expectations and use of information may change.
McLuhan’s first aphorism is that content alone does not cause these modifications. My suggestion is that it is the medium of delivery that governs new information expectations, uses and relationships. How does this happen?
One has to properly understand the tool – or in the case of information communication, the medium – to understand the way in which it impacts upon informational behaviours, use and expectations.
It seems to me that these are lessons that Mainstream Media have yet to learn and understand. Otherwise they, like Electra, will never cease from dirge and sore lament.