This is part 2 of a three part study that seeks to explain the problems that Mainstream Media (MSM) face. I suggest that this is because there has been a failure to recognize that there has been a paradigm shift brought on by Digital technologies.
I argue that the Digital Paradigm has a particular impact upon information and communications technologies. And it seems to me that MSM have lost sight of the real meaning and impact of the Digital Paradigm. MSM has adopted “digital” simply as a means of distributing content and incidentally gathering metrics of program performance. There seems to me to be a lack of appreciation for the fact that digital communication technologies operate at a much more fundamental level and impact upon our use, understanding and expectations of information.
In the first article I considered the first information technology – the printing press – and examined why it was that this technology brought about a paradigm shift in the way Early-Modern audiences dealt with information. It introduced what I call the properties of the new technology which only incidentally deal with content but more importantly have an impact upon the use of and responses to information.
This article takes the properties of the print paradigm and explains how these are modified and enhanced (and in some cases replaced) or are added to by further properties that characterize the digital paradigm. I have given examples throughout of the way in which a new paradigm can impact on the law. These examples are illustrative.
Identifying Digital Qualities
Using Eisenstein’s approach, the qualities present in the digital communications paradigm and which distinguish it from the pre-digital era, can be identified, although in so saying, the inventory that I have compiled is by no means complete. Nevertheless, these qualities all underlie the way in which content is communicated. They are not necessarily unique to the Digital Paradigm because, in some respects, some of them at least were present in some form in the pre-digital era. For example, some of the qualities identified by Eisenstein that were unique to print, such as dissemination, data collection, information reorganization, amplification and reinforcement have a continued manifestation in information communication technologies since the advent of the printing press.
As new technologies have arrived, some of these qualities have been enhanced. Certainly the quality of dissemination has undergone a quantum leap in the Digital Paradigm from the Print Paradigm.[1]
My tentative inventory comprises 13 qualities which dramatically, paradigmatically, differ digital technologies from those that have gone before. The taxonomy for these qualities suggests three major classifications based upon the nature of the qualities. These classifications I have described as “Environmental”, “Technical” and “User Associated.”
Environmental Qualities
These qualities arise from the context within which digital technologies develop. They relate to change and the drivers for change. One of the problems with digital technologies is their disruptive nature. They challenge thinking about the nature of information, our relationship with it and how we communicate it. This disruptive quality is neither good nor bad. But it does mean that settled methods of doing things, and more importantly thinking are constantly being challenged.
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