new media and development essay

21 Advantages & Disadvantages of New Media (College Essay Ideas)

When writing a college essay on new media, make sure you cover the following points. These points can help you add depth and detail to your essay.

To write a strong essay, I recommend paraphrasing the following points and turning each point into a full paragraph . Provide clear examples and reference a source for each paragraph. You can use the sources listed below, but remember to use your college’s referencing style when citing your sources.

There are both pros and cons of new media. So it’s important to give a well-rounded analysis that shows you have considered your essay from both old and new media perspectives.

Old Media vs New Media

Here’s the difference between old and new media:

• Old media are media that were owned and controlled by large companies and disseminated through one-way communication methods. Examples include newspapers, film and television.
• New media are media that can be produced and distributed digitally by anyone with an internet connection and generally involve two-way communication. Examples include blogs, social media (like Facebook and Twitter) and online forums.

My favorite definition is from Logan (2010, p. 4) :

“The term ‘new media’ will generally refer to those digital media that are interactive, will incorporate two-way communication, and involve some form of computing.”

New media like Facebook and Twitter have made communication, socialization, sharing and interacting easier for people with an internet connection. We can now not only be the consumers of information but also information producers . Sharing news, thoughts and opinions to a global audience is no longer something only the rich and powerful can do. Anyone with a Twitter handle how has global reach.

Advantages of Old Media

1. Old media have broad reach. Old media were designed as a form of mass communication that was to be broadcast to the masses. From the invention of the printing press in 1440 to the 1980s, print media such as newspapers, then radio, and finally television, followed this same broadcast formula. One message was broadcast to an entire population of a nation. People of all ages got their news from a small amount of publications that had extremely broad reach across a population.

2. Urgent information is broadly dispersed. A follow-up benefit of this broad reach of old media was that information of public importance was distributed rapidly. Still today, when a public disaster occurs, most people turn to old media of television and radio to get important information from authorities. This information is often controlled by, distributed by, and policed by the government so everyone gets the same information about how to protect themselves during times of emergency.

3. The people who control news dissemination are authorities and experts. Old media has important gatekeepers (Carr, 2012) to ensure the quality and authenticity of information. Published information is parsed by editors and producers to ensure it is true. People along the information supply train are trained and experienced journalists, and their editors provide checks and balances to what is distributed in newspaper, radio and television broadcasts. By contrast, new media can be produced and disseminated by anybody with an internet connection, leading to misinformation. This is one possible con of the internet .

4. Extreme views do not spread easily. Because of the control that gatekeepers exert over old media, unfettered media bias , extreme and radical opinions are curtailed. Untrue information can be prevented and filtered and offensive information can be bleeped out to protect children. Unfortunately with the rise of social media, our world has become increasingly polarized and radicalized (Thompson, 2011) . This is largely due to the fact those gatekeepers aren’t there to provide quality control for information anymore.

5. A sense of community and social cohesion develops. Benedict Anderson (1983) theorized that the emergence of the printing press led to the concept of the ‘nation’. He said that when people of a nation all started to read the same information each day, they began to see themselves as a community. Before then, our sense of community was to people in our villages. After that, we saw ourselves as an “imagined community” who share a common set of values and culture.

Related: Imagined Communities Pros and Cons

Disadvantages of Old Media

6. Minority views can be marginalized. There is extensive literature that shows that people of color, women, and other minorities have had their views curtailed and silenced in old media. Instead, dominant views are perpetuated by old media. Critical theory and post-structuralism (inspired in large part by Michel Foucault) have long stressed that media has produced unfair stereotypes and narratives about minorities. Old media were complicit in the reproduction and normalization of ‘dominant discourses’, and have long silenced minority or unpopular opinions.

7 The government and oligarchs often control the message. Throughout the 20th Century, the ability to share information was controlled by a small group of people. This helped them to maintain their power. In Manufacturing Consent , Herman and Chomsky (2010) highlight how corporate America and media oligarchs (such as Rupert Murdoch) have had a mutually beneficial relationship where they perpetuated untruths and propaganda in order to maintain their positions of power in society. To a greater extreme, in socialist nations, governments literally censor the ‘old’ press and only allow favorable media coverage.

8. Old media don’t get much instant feedback. Today, when you broadcast something on the internet, it gets comments and re-tweets to provide the writer with instantaneous feedback. This isn’t the case with traditional media like television , which broadcast information without an instantaneous response (one exception might be talk back radio). Interestingly, many major communication models in the 20th Century that had a linear structure (e.g. the Laswell model and the Shannon-Weaver model ) are largely outdated due to the two-way communication features of new media.

9. People don’t listen to or respect old media anymore. The declining trust in expertise and authority is widely a result of the emergence of new media. As previously marginalized and even extreme voices have been magnified by new media, people have started turning away from old media and considering it to be elitist and untrue. Whether these claims are accurate or not, the declining trust in old media means it doesn’t have the clout it once did.

Advantages of New Media

10. Information production is no longer just for the elites. In the era of blogs, social media , and instant communication, elites and the powerful no longer hold a monopoly on mass dissemination of information. Anyone with an internet connection can now have their beliefs and opinions broadcast to anyone around the world who wants to listen. This removal of gatekeepers has allowed us to become not just information consumers, but also information producers.

11. People can find their ‘tribe’. With the rise of the internet, people can connect to people who share their interests from around the world. This has led to the rise of a multitude of internet subcultures where people get together on forums and associate with their ‘tribe’. Now, subculture groups (goths, LGBTQI youth, punks, etc.) who feel out of place among their friends from school can go online and connect with people who share their experiences.

12. National borders are less of a barrier. In the 20th Century, our ability to communicate was often restricted to people in our local community. This limited who we could associate with. The rise of dispersed tribes could have the effect of undermining traditional cultural groups (based around national identities, etc.) and instead allow us to link up with our dispersed sub-cultural groups around the world.

13. Minority views and opinions can gain traction. People from minority groups that were traditionally excluded from old mass media platforms have found platforms to share their opinions online. Together, they have been able to form groups large enough to have their voices heard. Silenced voices have risen up – from the #metoo movement to the Arab Spring – to change our world for the better.

14. We can stay in touch. Prior to social media platforms like Facebook, we often lost touch with people form out past. But now, thanks to social media, we can watch people from a distance and share our major achievements, milestones and life changes to stay in touch with people on our distant periphery.

15. News is instantaneous. Thanks to news apps, Twitter, etc., news spreads faster than ever. We no longer need to wait until the 6pm news to access our news. As part of this instantaneous access to knowledge, we now have what’s known as the “24 hour news cycle”. Consumers have an insatiable appetite for news, so new media have to pump out an ongoing stream of ever more sensationalized news articles.

16. News producers get instant feedback. As soon as a piece of news is pumped out, tweets fling back and comments are provided to show feedback. Digital analytics software identifies which headlines get the most clicks and can show how long people spend reading each article . These qualitative and quantitative big data coalesce to help news producers to create content that best serves their consumers.

Disadvantages of New Media

17. Misinformation spreads like wildfire. Without traditional gatekeepers of knowledge such as editors and publishing houses, there is nobody controlling which information is disseminated. Misinformation has become widespread in the 21st Century thanks to social media (Allcott, Gentzkow & Yu, 2019). This causes fringe conspiracy theories and even doctored images to influence people’s political and social views.

18. We can live in an ideological bubble. New media often allow us to ‘subscribe’ to our own news networks and favorite information producers. Without the need to have widespread mass appeal, new media target dispersed niche and ideological markets. Conservatives begin to only consume conservative media; and liberals only consume liberal media. People begin to only reinforce their personal views, causing social polarization.

19. There is fierce media competition. While in the past there were three or four major news organizations, now there are diverse and numerous sources for news. Small news websites with fresh takes for niche audiences popped up, crowding the market with information. In this crowded media market, there is competition in all niches, and brands need to have a fresh take to get attention.

20. There is a wider customer base for companies large and small. While competition is more fierce than ever, there is also a bigger customer base than ever before. Websites target global audiences and have global reach. A savvy media producer or social media marketer can expand their market globally – beyond what traditional media was generally capable of.

21. Children can access inappropriate information more easily. New media gives on-demand access to information. While in the past adult content was broadcast late at night, today it can be accessed day and night. Scholars like Neil Postman (1985) argue that there is a “disappearance of childhood” as a result of how media is changing. As children have greater access to adult information, the innocence of childhood is being decayed earlier than ever.

For your essay you might have to take a position on whether new media has been a ‘positive’ or a ‘negative’ force in society. In reality, there is no clear answer here: it’s been both positive and negative, in different ways. But we can clearly see that it has changed society significantly. It plays a huge role in political campaigns and changing how companies communicate with potential consumers. By outlining all the different facets of the advantages and disadvantages of new media, you can show the person grading your paper your deep and nuanced knowledge of the impact of new media on society.

Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., & Yu, C. (2019). Trends in the diffusion of misinformation on social media.  Research & Politics ,  6 (2).

Anderson, B. (2006).  Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism . New York: Verso books.

Carr, J. (2012). No laughing matter: the power of cyberspace to subvert conventional media gatekeepers.  International journal of communication ,  6 , 21.

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2010).  Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media . New York: Random House.

Kellner, D., Dines, G., & Humez, J. M. (2011). Gender, race, and class in media: A critical reader. New York: Sage.

Logan, R. K. (2010).  Understanding new media: extending Marshall McLuhan . New York: Peter Lang.

Postman, N., (1985). The disappearance of childhood. Childhood Education ,  61 (4), pp.286-293.

Thompson, R. (2011). Radicalization and the use of social media.  Journal of strategic security ,  4 (4), 167-190.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Holistic Education: Definition, Benefits & Limitations
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Humanism in Education: Definition, Pros & Cons
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Behaviorism in Education: Definition, Pros and Cons
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 31 Major Learning Theories in Education, Explained!

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What is New Media?

Know before you read At SNHU, we want to make sure you have the information you need to make decisions about your education and your future—no matter where you choose to go to school. That's why our informational articles may reference careers for which we do not offer academic programs, along with salary data for those careers. Cited projections do not guarantee actual salary or job growth.

This article was updated on Aug. 30, 2023 with additional contributions by Mars Girolimon.

New media doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific mode of communication. Some types, such as an online newspaper, are also “old media” in the form of a traditional printed newspaper. Others are entirely new, such as a podcast or smartphone app. It becomes even more complicated to define when you consider that as technology continues to advance, the definition continually changes.

New media is any media — from newspaper articles and blogs to music and podcasts — that are delivered digitally. From a website or email to mobile phones and streaming apps, any internet-related form of communication falls under its umbrella.

“I think a degree in new media is of value because it helps hone the skills necessary to succeed in this industry, like writing, graphic design, video production and marketing,” said Christine Bord , an adjunct instructor in Southern New Hampshire University’s (SNHU) liberal arts program . “This is also a very competitive field, and many employers are looking for candidates who have a degree in media and marketing.”

What Are Examples of New Media?

According to PCMag , new media refers to the "forms of communicating in the digital world, which is primarily online via the Internet." The term encompasses all content accessed through computers, smartphones and tablets.

That's in contrast to “ old media ,” which PCMag defines as all forms of communication that came before digital technology, including “radio and TV and printed materials such as books and magazines.”

It also constantly changes. As new technology is developed and widely adopted, what is considered "new" continues to morph. Once upon a time, DVDs and CDs were the latest way to watch movies and listen to music. Now, streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify are more popular.

Just a few examples of new media include:

• Mobile apps
• Social media networks
• Streaming services
• Virtual and augmented reality

“I think the most important thing to know about new media is that it is always changing,” Bord said. “Though this does make it a challenging field because professionals have to be aware of the constant changes in trends and technologies, it also makes it a very exciting and dynamic field to enter.”

Careers in New Media

But you don’t have to work in one of these roles to leverage skills you develop in a new media degree program. Robert Krueger is an adjunct in SNHU’s master's degree in communication . He said students often go on to work in communication roles at government agencies, hospitals and nonprofits.

“We also see a lot of journalists making the transition to communications, as well as high school teachers taking the next step by aspiring to become a professor at the college level,” Krueger said.

Thanks to developments of the internet age, you can earn an online degree at your own pace  to launch a career working with digital content.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks many positions that new media professionals work in, including:

Social Media Specialist

Social media specialists are experts at representing a company or brand in the public sphere through social media networks such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Instagram and more. They create and post content and communicate with customers.

Working in social media requires an ongoing commitment to learning and professional development because the landscape is constantly changing. There are always new tools to discover or new platforms to explore, so it's important to keep upskilling and stay on top of the latest trends.

Social media specialists usually have a bachelor’s degree in social media marketing or a related program, and they have familiarity with social media platforms and best practices. If you already have a degree in a different field, you might opt for a graduate certificate in social media marketing to learn the skills you'll need to move into a role as a social media specialist.

Moving up the career ladder, you could also become a social media manager and oversee social media marketing campaigns.

According to BLS, specialists working in marketing roles made a median salary of $78,880 in 2021.*

Graphic Designer

Because graphic design is performed virtually, the career is inherently tied to new media. However, the digital images graphic designers create have applications throughout new and old media alike.

As a graphic designer, you would be charged with creating visual images using computer software to market products and services and to tell stories. You would work with images and text and decide how they work together to effectively communicate via a website, for example, according to BLS.

In 2021, graphic designers made a median salary of $50,710 , BLS reports.*

To become a graphic designer , you'll typically need a degree in graphic design or a related field, according to BLS.

While earning this degree, you'll delve into branding and web design and learn to use graphic design software like Photoshop. You'll also create a portfolio of work and prepare to land a job or find clients as a freelancer.

"Since graduating, I already accomplished a goal and dream with my degree," said Navarro. "I had the honor of being a part of a company's rebrand and designed the logo that is now on their storefront building."

She said everything she learned from her degree program came into play during this experience, and now the storefront is like a marker of her achievements.

"Any time that I drive past Small Town Couture, I am reminded that this opportunity, the logo design for their store, my capabilities, potential and success were gained from my degree at SNHU," Navarro said.

Marketing Manager

Marketing managers are executives who plan marketing and advertising campaigns based on market research and analysis and develop strategies to promote products and services to customers. As a marketing manager, you might also be charged with hiring promotions and marketing staff, meeting with clients and collaborating with other executives in a company — including public relations, sales and product development — to coordinate the role of marketing strategies within the larger company goals.

Marketing managers need a bachelor’s degree and usually have prior experience working in other marketing, promotions or advertising roles, according to BLS. Some employers emphasize the need for strong analytical, decision-making, organizational and communication skills and creativity.

Marketing managers made a median salary of $133,380 in 2021, and the position is expected to grow by 10% through 2031, according to BLS.*

The dawn of the internet age inspired so many developments in the field of marketing, and the field only keeps evolving along with technology and culture.

Through a digital marketing degree , you'll learn about all the different types of digital marketing , from search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click and social media marketing, to content marketing, email marketing and affiliate marketing. There are so many avenues to explore and roles associated with each specialization.

In addition to those positions, Krueger said the value of a new media degree can open up some industries that might not be obvious to you.

“Just as the saying goes about every business needs an accountant, I think that no business exists without a communications professional,” he said. “Most recently, I have come across many new media professionals who work in-house for large financial institutions and law firms.”

Bord agreed and said virtually every business needs to have a digital presence and should be interested in hiring media professionals.

“If you can think of an industry, chances are there is a new media position available within it,” she said.

Before Olivia Backus '23 started her bachelor's in marketing at SNHU, she was working in cosmetology and looking for a change.

"The schedule just did not work and I realized I liked the marketing process more than the job," said Backus. 

With this realization, Backus decided to earn a degree that would help her transition to a new career in marketing — and that's exactly what she did. 

"I graduated in January and I got a marketing coordinator job right out of school," she said.

From here, Backus hopes to move up into a position as a marketing director, but she's enjoying the benefits of her current role for now — including its salary. 

"I can now financially provide for my family and that is something I have not been able to do before," Backus said.

Photographer

Photographers are a good example of a profession that has had to adapt from “old media” as technology evolved. Instead of film and a developing room, photographers today are armed with digital cameras and are adept at working with a wide range of computer software.

There also are several types of photography you can specialize in, such as:

• Aerial or drone photography
• Commercial photography
• Fine art photography
• News photography
• Portrait photography

As a photographer, you might work for a business or even start your own business and work for yourself.  

Before you get started as a professional photographer, you'll need to learn how to compose a shot, work with lighting and use photo editing software like Photoshop and Lightroom. 

While a college degree isn’t required, many aspiring photographers choose to attend post-high school training programs to develop their skills. Many entry-level photojournalist positions do require a photography degree , according to BLS, and business and marketing degrees can also be helpful for self-employed photographers.

In 2021, photographers made a median salary of $38,950 with a higher than average 9% job growth through 2031, according to BLS.*

Public Relations Specialist

Public relations (PR) specialists also help maintain and improve a company’s public reputation and image but generally do so by working with media members in person and via press releases and other measures. They can take a lead role in corporate communications, too, including speeches given by company leaders.

To work in PR, you'll likely need a public relations degree or an education in a related field, such as journalism, communications, English or business, according to BLS. You'll also rely heavily on interpersonal, organizational and communication skills .

If you're passionate about communicating with the public, PR might be your calling.

"I really love public relations," said Analiece Clark '23 . After earning her communication degree from SNHU, Clark said her workplace is helping her move to a public relations role. She's hoping to move up from there and also is interested in international relations.

Video Editor

The internet has opened so many doors to create, upload and share video content  — with that in mind, the growing opportunities for video editors should come as no surprise. 

BLS reports a much higher than average 12% growth rate for film and video editors and camera operators from 2021-2031, who earned a median annual salary of $60,360 in 2021 and typically hold bachelor's degree in a related field.*

Not only do video editors work on the shows and movies you watch on streaming services like Disney+ or Netflix, many work with content creators and influencers on YouTube videos and TikTok reels, too. There are also roles for video editors to work with these platforms and others in the digital marketing world.

According to BLS , video editors typically hold a bachelor's degree in communication or a related field.

While there are still some opportunities to work in print media, many writers today find work in the digital sphere.

In addition to writing online articles, blogs and newsletters, there are growing opportunities in scriptwriting thanks to the internet. That not only includes screenwriting for TV and movies on streaming services but writing for video advertisements, podcasts, YouTube videos and other types of audio or video content.

If you have a mind for marketing, you could also become a copywriter and work on advertisements, product descriptions, integrated campaigns and other marketing materials.

According to BLS, writers and authors, including scriptwriters and copywriters, made a median salary of $69,510 in 2021 with average growth in the profession projected through 2031.*

After earning her MFA in Creative Writing at SNHU, Emily Jones '20MFA said she overcame her impostor syndrome and developed the expertise needed to move forward in her career. 

"I now know exactly how to apply for a teaching job. I know exactly how to pursue freelance clients and budget and market myself," Jones said.

Writers often work from home and many with advanced writing degrees like Jones also teach online writing courses.

New Media Skills

By studying and working in new media, professionals in the field can develop strong and marketable skills that are valuable across a vast range of industries. From writing, editing and design to marketing and public relations, these skills can help you market yourself to too many types of employers to list.

“While studying new media, students will learn theoretical and tactical skills in social media, video, digital marketing, public relations and other areas of communication,” Krueger said. “We look to prepare students to be leaders in their field, which is why we focus on how to strategize and offer consultation to CEOs and C-suite members when given a seat at the table.”

As a professional in this field, you can bring value to a company or organization by applying your technical and soft skills to adapt to an ever-changing digital landscape. 

“Students in this area bring know-how in the art of messaging and that intersection with technology,” Krueger said. “As a professor who also works for a large global company, I assure you these are the skills that make communicators succeed out in the field.”

Discover more about SNHU’s online communication degree : Find out what courses you'll take, skills you’ll learn and how to request information about the program.

*Cited job growth projections may not reflect local and/or short-term economic or job conditions and do not guarantee actual job growth. Actual salaries and/or earning potential may be the result of a combination of factors including, but not limited to: years of experience, industry of employment, geographic location, and worker skill.

Joe Cote is a staff writer at Southern New Hampshire University. Follow him on  X, formerly known as  Twitter @JoeCo2323 . 

Mars Girolimon '21 '23G  is a writer with a master's in English and creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Connect with them on LinkedIn and X, formerly known as  Twitter .

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About southern new hampshire university.

SNHU is a nonprofit, accredited university with a mission to make high-quality education more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Founded in 1932, and online since 1995, we’ve helped countless students reach their goals with flexible, career-focused programs . Our 300-acre campus in Manchester, NH is home to over 3,000 students, and we serve over 135,000 students online. Visit our about SNHU  page to learn more about our mission, accreditations, leadership team, national recognitions and awards.

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1.3 The Evolution of Media

Learning objectives.

• Identify four roles the media performs in our society.
• Recognize events that affected the adoption of mass media.
• Explain how different technological transitions have shaped media industries.

In 2010, Americans could turn on their television and find 24-hour news channels as well as music videos, nature documentaries, and reality shows about everything from hoarders to fashion models. That’s not to mention movies available on demand from cable providers or television and video available online for streaming or downloading. Half of U.S. households receive a daily newspaper, and the average person holds 1.9 magazine subscriptions (State of the Media, 2004) (Bilton, 2007). A University of California, San Diego study claimed that U.S. households consumed a total of approximately 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008—the digital equivalent of a 7-foot high stack of books covering the entire United States—a 350 percent increase since 1980 (Ramsey, 2009). Americans are exposed to media in taxicabs and buses, in classrooms and doctors’ offices, on highways, and in airplanes. We can begin to orient ourselves in the information cloud through parsing what roles the media fills in society, examining its history in society, and looking at the way technological innovations have helped bring us to where we are today.

What Does Media Do for Us?

Media fulfills several basic roles in our society. One obvious role is entertainment. Media can act as a springboard for our imaginations, a source of fantasy, and an outlet for escapism. In the 19th century, Victorian readers disillusioned by the grimness of the Industrial Revolution found themselves drawn into fantastic worlds of fairies and other fictitious beings. In the first decade of the 21st century, American television viewers could peek in on a conflicted Texas high school football team in Friday Night Lights ; the violence-plagued drug trade in Baltimore in The Wire ; a 1960s-Manhattan ad agency in Mad Men ; or the last surviving band of humans in a distant, miserable future in Battlestar Galactica . Through bringing us stories of all kinds, media has the power to take us away from ourselves.

Media can also provide information and education. Information can come in many forms, and it may sometimes be difficult to separate from entertainment. Today, newspapers and news-oriented television and radio programs make available stories from across the globe, allowing readers or viewers in London to access voices and videos from Baghdad, Tokyo, or Buenos Aires. Books and magazines provide a more in-depth look at a wide range of subjects. The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has articles on topics from presidential nicknames to child prodigies to tongue twisters in various languages. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has posted free lecture notes, exams, and audio and video recordings of classes on its OpenCourseWare website, allowing anyone with an Internet connection access to world-class professors.

Another useful aspect of media is its ability to act as a public forum for the discussion of important issues. In newspapers or other periodicals, letters to the editor allow readers to respond to journalists or to voice their opinions on the issues of the day. These letters were an important part of U.S. newspapers even when the nation was a British colony, and they have served as a means of public discourse ever since. The Internet is a fundamentally democratic medium that allows everyone who can get online the ability to express their opinions through, for example, blogging or podcasting—though whether anyone will hear is another question.

Similarly, media can be used to monitor government, business, and other institutions. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposed the miserable conditions in the turn-of-the-century meatpacking industry; and in the early 1970s, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered evidence of the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. But purveyors of mass media may be beholden to particular agendas because of political slant, advertising funds, or ideological bias, thus constraining their ability to act as a watchdog. The following are some of these agendas:

• Entertaining and providing an outlet for the imagination
• Educating and informing
• Serving as a public forum for the discussion of important issues
• Acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions

It’s important to remember, though, that not all media are created equal. While some forms of mass communication are better suited to entertainment, others make more sense as a venue for spreading information. In terms of print media, books are durable and able to contain lots of information, but are relatively slow and expensive to produce; in contrast, newspapers are comparatively cheaper and quicker to create, making them a better medium for the quick turnover of daily news. Television provides vastly more visual information than radio and is more dynamic than a static printed page; it can also be used to broadcast live events to a nationwide audience, as in the annual State of the Union address given by the U.S. president. However, it is also a one-way medium—that is, it allows for very little direct person-to-person communication. In contrast, the Internet encourages public discussion of issues and allows nearly everyone who wants a voice to have one. However, the Internet is also largely unmoderated. Users may have to wade through thousands of inane comments or misinformed amateur opinions to find quality information.

The 1960s media theorist Marshall McLuhan took these ideas one step further, famously coining the phrase “ the medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964).” By this, McLuhan meant that every medium delivers information in a different way and that content is fundamentally shaped by the medium of transmission. For example, although television news has the advantage of offering video and live coverage, making a story come alive more vividly, it is also a faster-paced medium. That means more stories get covered in less depth. A story told on television will probably be flashier, less in-depth, and with less context than the same story covered in a monthly magazine; therefore, people who get the majority of their news from television may have a particular view of the world shaped not by the content of what they watch but its medium . Or, as computer scientist Alan Kay put it, “Each medium has a special way of representing ideas that emphasize particular ways of thinking and de-emphasize others (Kay, 1994).” Kay was writing in 1994, when the Internet was just transitioning from an academic research network to an open public system. A decade and a half later, with the Internet firmly ensconced in our daily lives, McLuhan’s intellectual descendants are the media analysts who claim that the Internet is making us better at associative thinking, or more democratic, or shallower. But McLuhan’s claims don’t leave much space for individual autonomy or resistance. In an essay about television’s effects on contemporary fiction, writer David Foster Wallace scoffed at the “reactionaries who regard TV as some malignancy visited on an innocent populace, sapping IQs and compromising SAT scores while we all sit there on ever fatter bottoms with little mesmerized spirals revolving in our eyes…. Treating television as evil is just as reductive and silly as treating it like a toaster with pictures (Wallace, 1997).” Nonetheless, media messages and technologies affect us in countless ways, some of which probably won’t be sorted out until long in the future.

A Brief History of Mass Media and Culture

Until Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press, books were painstakingly handwritten and no two copies were exactly the same. The printing press made the mass production of print media possible. Not only was it much cheaper to produce written material, but new transportation technologies also made it easier for texts to reach a wide audience. It’s hard to overstate the importance of Gutenberg’s invention, which helped usher in massive cultural movements like the European Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. In 1810, another German printer, Friedrich Koenig, pushed media production even further when he essentially hooked the steam engine up to a printing press, enabling the industrialization of printed media. In 1800, a hand-operated printing press could produce about 480 pages per hour; Koenig’s machine more than doubled this rate. (By the 1930s, many printing presses could publish 3,000 pages an hour.)

This increased efficiency went hand in hand with the rise of the daily newspaper. The newspaper was the perfect medium for the increasingly urbanized Americans of the 19th century, who could no longer get their local news merely through gossip and word of mouth. These Americans were living in unfamiliar territory, and newspapers and other media helped them negotiate the rapidly changing world. The Industrial Revolution meant that some people had more leisure time and more money, and media helped them figure out how to spend both. Media theorist Benedict Anderson has argued that newspapers also helped forge a sense of national identity by treating readers across the country as part of one unified community (Anderson, 1991).

In the 1830s, the major daily newspapers faced a new threat from the rise of penny papers, which were low-priced broadsheets that served as a cheaper, more sensational daily news source. They favored news of murder and adventure over the dry political news of the day. While newspapers catered to a wealthier, more educated audience, the penny press attempted to reach a wide swath of readers through cheap prices and entertaining (often scandalous) stories. The penny press can be seen as the forerunner to today’s gossip-hungry tabloids.

The penny press appealed to readers’ desires for lurid tales of murder and scandal.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

In the early decades of the 20th century, the first major nonprint form of mass media—radio—exploded in popularity. Radios, which were less expensive than telephones and widely available by the 1920s, had the unprecedented ability of allowing huge numbers of people to listen to the same event at the same time. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge’s preelection speech reached more than 20 million people. Radio was a boon for advertisers, who now had access to a large and captive audience. An early advertising consultant claimed that the early days of radio were “a glorious opportunity for the advertising man to spread his sales propaganda” because of “a countless audience, sympathetic, pleasure seeking, enthusiastic, curious, interested, approachable in the privacy of their homes (Briggs & Burke, 2005).” The reach of radio also meant that the medium was able to downplay regional differences and encourage a unified sense of the American lifestyle—a lifestyle that was increasingly driven and defined by consumer purchases. “Americans in the 1920s were the first to wear ready-made, exact-size clothing…to play electric phonographs, to use electric vacuum cleaners, to listen to commercial radio broadcasts, and to drink fresh orange juice year round (Mintz, 2007).” This boom in consumerism put its stamp on the 1920s and also helped contribute to the Great Depression of the 1930s (Library of Congress). The consumerist impulse drove production to unprecedented levels, but when the Depression began and consumer demand dropped dramatically, the surplus of production helped further deepen the economic crisis, as more goods were being produced than could be sold.

The post–World War II era in the United States was marked by prosperity, and by the introduction of a seductive new form of mass communication: television. In 1946, about 17,000 televisions existed in the United States; within 7 years, two-thirds of American households owned at least one set. As the United States’ gross national product (GNP) doubled in the 1950s, and again in the 1960s, the American home became firmly ensconced as a consumer unit; along with a television, the typical U.S. household owned a car and a house in the suburbs, all of which contributed to the nation’s thriving consumer-based economy (Briggs & Burke, 2005). Broadcast television was the dominant form of mass media, and the three major networks controlled more than 90 percent of the news programs, live events, and sitcoms viewed by Americans. Some social critics argued that television was fostering a homogenous, conformist culture by reinforcing ideas about what “normal” American life looked like. But television also contributed to the counterculture of the 1960s. The Vietnam War was the nation’s first televised military conflict, and nightly images of war footage and war protesters helped intensify the nation’s internal conflicts.

Broadcast technology, including radio and television, had such a hold on the American imagination that newspapers and other print media found themselves having to adapt to the new media landscape. Print media was more durable and easily archived, and it allowed users more flexibility in terms of time—once a person had purchased a magazine, he or she could read it whenever and wherever. Broadcast media, in contrast, usually aired programs on a fixed schedule, which allowed it to both provide a sense of immediacy and fleetingness. Until the advent of digital video recorders in the late 1990s, it was impossible to pause and rewind a live television broadcast.

The media world faced drastic changes once again in the 1980s and 1990s with the spread of cable television. During the early decades of television, viewers had a limited number of channels to choose from—one reason for the charges of homogeneity. In 1975, the three major networks accounted for 93 percent of all television viewing. By 2004, however, this share had dropped to 28.4 percent of total viewing, thanks to the spread of cable television. Cable providers allowed viewers a wide menu of choices, including channels specifically tailored to people who wanted to watch only golf, classic films, sermons, or videos of sharks. Still, until the mid-1990s, television was dominated by the three large networks. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, an attempt to foster competition by deregulating the industry, actually resulted in many mergers and buyouts that left most of the control of the broadcast spectrum in the hands of a few large corporations. In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened regulation even further, allowing a single company to own 45 percent of a single market (up from 25 percent in 1982).

Technological Transitions Shape Media Industries

New media technologies both spring from and cause social changes. For this reason, it can be difficult to neatly sort the evolution of media into clear causes and effects. Did radio fuel the consumerist boom of the 1920s, or did the radio become wildly popular because it appealed to a society that was already exploring consumerist tendencies? Probably a little bit of both. Technological innovations such as the steam engine, electricity, wireless communication, and the Internet have all had lasting and significant effects on American culture. As media historians Asa Briggs and Peter Burke note, every crucial invention came with “a change in historical perspectives.” Electricity altered the way people thought about time because work and play were no longer dependent on the daily rhythms of sunrise and sunset; wireless communication collapsed distance; the Internet revolutionized the way we store and retrieve information.

The transatlantic telegraph cable made nearly instantaneous communication between the United States and Europe possible for the first time in 1858.

Amber Case – 1858 trans-Atlantic telegraph cable route – CC BY-NC 2.0.

The contemporary media age can trace its origins back to the electrical telegraph, patented in the United States by Samuel Morse in 1837. Thanks to the telegraph, communication was no longer linked to the physical transportation of messages; it didn’t matter whether a message needed to travel 5 or 500 miles. Suddenly, information from distant places was nearly as accessible as local news, as telegraph lines began to stretch across the globe, making their own kind of World Wide Web. In this way, the telegraph acted as the precursor to much of the technology that followed, including the telephone, radio, television, and Internet. When the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, allowing nearly instantaneous communication from the United States to Europe, the London Times described it as “the greatest discovery since that of Columbus, a vast enlargement…given to the sphere of human activity.”

Not long afterward, wireless communication (which eventually led to the development of radio, television, and other broadcast media) emerged as an extension of telegraph technology. Although many 19th-century inventors, including Nikola Tesla, were involved in early wireless experiments, it was Italian-born Guglielmo Marconi who is recognized as the developer of the first practical wireless radio system. Many people were fascinated by this new invention. Early radio was used for military communication, but soon the technology entered the home. The burgeoning interest in radio inspired hundreds of applications for broadcasting licenses from newspapers and other news outlets, retail stores, schools, and even cities. In the 1920s, large media networks—including the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)—were launched, and they soon began to dominate the airwaves. In 1926, they owned 6.4 percent of U.S. broadcasting stations; by 1931, that number had risen to 30 percent.

Gone With the Wind defeated The Wizard of Oz to become the first color film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1939.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain; Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

In addition to the breakthroughs in audio broadcasting, inventors in the 1800s made significant advances in visual media. The 19th-century development of photographic technologies would lead to the later innovations of cinema and television. As with wireless technology, several inventors independently created a form of photography at the same time, among them the French inventors Joseph Niépce and Louis Daguerre and the British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot. In the United States, George Eastman developed the Kodak camera in 1888, anticipating that Americans would welcome an inexpensive, easy-to-use camera into their homes as they had with the radio and telephone. Moving pictures were first seen around the turn of the century, with the first U.S. projection-hall opening in Pittsburgh in 1905. By the 1920s, Hollywood had already created its first stars, most notably Charlie Chaplin; by the end of the 1930s, Americans were watching color films with full sound, including Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz .

Television—which consists of an image being converted to electrical impulses, transmitted through wires or radio waves, and then reconverted into images—existed before World War II, but gained mainstream popularity in the 1950s. In 1947, there were 178,000 television sets made in the United States; 5 years later, 15 million were made. Radio, cinema, and live theater declined because the new medium allowed viewers to be entertained with sound and moving pictures in their homes. In the United States, competing commercial stations (including the radio powerhouses of CBS and NBC) meant that commercial-driven programming dominated. In Great Britain, the government managed broadcasting through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Funding was driven by licensing fees instead of advertisements. In contrast to the U.S. system, the BBC strictly regulated the length and character of commercials that could be aired. However, U.S. television (and its increasingly powerful networks) still dominated. By the beginning of 1955, there were around 36 million television sets in the United States, but only 4.8 million in all of Europe. Important national events, broadcast live for the first time, were an impetus for consumers to buy sets so they could witness the spectacle; both England and Japan saw a boom in sales before important royal weddings in the 1950s.

In the 1960s, the concept of a useful portable computer was still a dream; huge mainframes were required to run a basic operating system.

In 1969, management consultant Peter Drucker predicted that the next major technological innovation would be an electronic appliance that would revolutionize the way people lived just as thoroughly as Thomas Edison’s light bulb had. This appliance would sell for less than a television set and be “capable of being plugged in wherever there is electricity and giving immediate access to all the information needed for school work from first grade through college.” Although Drucker may have underestimated the cost of this hypothetical machine, he was prescient about the effect these machines—personal computers—and the Internet would have on education, social relationships, and the culture at large. The inventions of random access memory (RAM) chips and microprocessors in the 1970s were important steps to the Internet age. As Briggs and Burke note, these advances meant that “hundreds of thousands of components could be carried on a microprocessor.” The reduction of many different kinds of content to digitally stored information meant that “print, film, recording, radio and television and all forms of telecommunications [were] now being thought of increasingly as part of one complex.” This process, also known as convergence, is a force that’s affecting media today.

Key Takeaways

Media fulfills several roles in society, including the following:

• entertaining and providing an outlet for the imagination,
• educating and informing,
• serving as a public forum for the discussion of important issues, and
• acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions.
• Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press enabled the mass production of media, which was then industrialized by Friedrich Koenig in the early 1800s. These innovations led to the daily newspaper, which united the urbanized, industrialized populations of the 19th century.
• In the 20th century, radio allowed advertisers to reach a mass audience and helped spur the consumerism of the 1920s—and the Great Depression of the 1930s. After World War II, television boomed in the United States and abroad, though its concentration in the hands of three major networks led to accusations of homogenization. The spread of cable and subsequent deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s led to more channels, but not necessarily to more diverse ownership.
• Transitions from one technology to another have greatly affected the media industry, although it is difficult to say whether technology caused a cultural shift or resulted from it. The ability to make technology small and affordable enough to fit into the home is an important aspect of the popularization of new technologies.

Choose two different types of mass communication—radio shows, television broadcasts, Internet sites, newspaper advertisements, and so on—from two different kinds of media. Make a list of what role(s) each one fills, keeping in mind that much of what we see, hear, or read in the mass media has more than one aspect. Then, answer the following questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• To which of the four roles media plays in society do your selections correspond? Why did the creators of these particular messages present them in these particular ways and in these particular mediums?
• What events have shaped the adoption of the two kinds of media you selected?
• How have technological transitions shaped the industries involved in the two kinds of media you have selected?

Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism , (London: Verso, 1991).

Bilton, Jim. “The Loyalty Challenge: How Magazine Subscriptions Work,” In Circulation , January/February 2007.

Briggs and Burke, Social History of the Media .

Briggs, Asa and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005).

Kay, Alan. “The Infobahn Is Not the Answer,” Wired , May 1994.

Library of Congress, “Radio: A Consumer Product and a Producer of Consumption,” Coolidge-Consumerism Collection, http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/ammem/amrlhtml/inradio.html .

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man , (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

Mintz, Steven “The Jazz Age: The American 1920s: The Formation of Modern American Mass Culture,” Digital History , 2007, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?hhid=454 .

Ramsey, Doug. “UC San Diego Experts Calculate How Much Information Americans Consume” UC San Diego News Center, December 9, 2009, http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/12-09Information.asp .

State of the Media, project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media 2004 , http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2004/ .

Wallace, David Foster “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (New York: Little Brown, 1997).

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Review Article
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• Published: 21 February 2018

Media use and brain development during adolescence

• Eveline A. Crone 1 &
• Elly A. Konijn 2  

Nature Communications volume  9 , Article number:  588 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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• Cognitive neuroscience

The current generation of adolescents grows up in a media-saturated world. However, it is unclear how media influences the maturational trajectories of brain regions involved in social interactions. Here we review the neural development in adolescence and show how neuroscience can provide a deeper understanding of developmental sensitivities related to adolescents’ media use. We argue that adolescents are highly sensitive to acceptance and rejection through social media, and that their heightened emotional sensitivity and protracted development of reflective processing and cognitive control may make them specifically reactive to emotion-arousing media. This review illustrates how neuroscience may help understand the mutual influence of media and peers on adolescents’ well-being and opinion formation.

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Introduction.

Media play a tremendously important role in the lives of today’s youth, who grow up with tablets and smartphones, and do not remember a time before the internet, and are hence called ‘digital natives’ 1 , 2 . The current generation of the adolescents lives in a media-saturated world, where media is used not only for entertainment purposes, such as listening to music or watching movies, but is also used increasingly for communicating with peers via WhatsApp, Instagram, SnapChat, Facebook, etc. Taken together, these media-related activities comprise roughly 6–9 h of an American youth’s day, excluding home- and schoolwork ( https://www.commonsensemedia.org/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-tweens-and-teens-infographic ) 3 , 4 . Social media enable people to share information, ideas or opinions, messages, images and videos. Today, all kinds of media formats are constantly available through portable mobile devices such as smartphones and have become an integrated part of adolescents’ social life 5 .

Adolescence, which is defined as the transition period between childhood and adulthood (approximately ages 10–22 years, although age bins differ between cultures), is a developmental stage in which parental influence decreases and peers become more important 6 . Being accepted or rejected by peers is highly salient in adolescence, also there is a strong need to fit into the peer group and they are highly influenced by their peers 7 . Therefore, it is imperative that we understand how adolescents process media content and peers’ feedback provided on such platforms. Adolescents’ social lives in particular seem to occur for a large part through smartphones that are filled with friends with whom they are constantly connected (cf. “A day not wired is a day not lived” 5 , 8 ). This is where they monitor their peer status, check peers’ feedback, rejection and acceptance messages, and encounter peers as (idealized) images 9 on screens 5 , 8 , 10 . Likely, this plays an important role in adolescent development, and we therefore focus primarily on adolescents’ social media use 11 . Most media research to date is based on correlational and self-report data, and would be strengthened by integrating experimental paradigms and more objectively assessed behavioral, emotional, and neural consequences of experimentally induced media use.

Recently, cognitive neuroscience studies have used structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how the adolescent brain changes over the course of the adolescent years 6 . The results of several studies demonstrate that cognitive and socio-affective development in adolescence is accompanied by extensive changes in the structure and function of the adolescent brain 6 . Structurally, white matter connections increase, allowing for more successful communication between different areas of the brain 12 . The maturation of these connections is related to behavioral control, for example, connections between the prefrontal cortex and the subcortical striatum mediate age-related improvements in the ability to wait for a reward 13 . In addition to these changes in white matter connections, neurons in the brain grow in number between conception and childhood, with greatest synaptic density in early childhood. This increase in synaptic density co-occurs with synaptic pruning, and pruning rates increase in adolescence, resulting in a decrease in synaptic density in late childhood and adolescence 14 . Structural MRI research revealed that the peak in grey matter volume probably occurs before the age of 10 years, but dynamic non-linear changes in grey matter volume continue over the whole period of adolescence, and the timing is region-specific 15 . Interestingly, changes in grey matter volume are observed most extensively in brain regions that are important for social understanding and communication such as the medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex and temporal parietal junction 16 . Figure  1 displays the extensive changes in the human cortex during adolescence.

Longitudinal changes in brain structure across adolescence (ages 8–30). a Consistent patterns of change across four independent longitudinal samples (391 participants, 852 scans), with increases in cerebral white matter volume and decreases in cortical grey matter volume (adapted from Mills et al., 2016, NeuroImage 105 ). b Of the two main components of cortical volume, surface area and thickness, thinning across ages 8 to 25 years is the main contributor to volume reduction across adolescence, here displayed in the Braintime sample (209 participants, 418 scans). Displayed are regional differences in annual percentage change (APC) across the whole brain, the more the color changes in the direction of green to blue, the larger the annual decrease in volume (adapted from Tamnes et al., 2017, J Neuroscience 15 )

Given that brain regions involved in many social aspects of life are undergoing such extensive changes during adolescence, it is likely that social influences—which also occur through the use of social media as the internet connects adolescents to many people at once—are particularly potent at this age in coalescence with their media use. Also, subcortical brain regions undergo pronounced changes during adolescence 17 . There is evidence that the density of grey matter volume in the amygdala, a structure associated with emotional processing, is related to larger offline social networks 18 , as well as larger online social networks 19 , 20 . This suggests an important interplay between actual social experiences, both offline and online, and brain development.

This review brings together research on media use among adolescents with neural development during adolescence. We will specifically focus on the following three aspects of media exposure of interest to adolescent development 21 : (1) social acceptance or rejection, (2) peer influence on self-image and self-perception, and (3) the role of emotions in media use. Finally, we discuss new perspectives on how the interplay between media exposure and sensitive periods in brain development may make some individuals more susceptible to the consequences of media use than others.

Being accepted or rejected online

Experiencing acceptance or rejection when communicating via digital media is an impactful social experience. Extensive research, including large meta-analyses, has demonstrated that social rejection in a computerized environment can be experienced similarly as face-to-face rejection and bullying, although the prevalence of cyberbullying is generally lower 22 , 23 (and studies vary widely: prevalence rates depend on how cyberbullying is defined and measured). In all, cyberbullying peaks during adolescence 24 and large overlap has been found between victims and bullies. In part, this overlap could be explained by victimized adolescents seeking exposure to antisocial and risk behavior media content 25 . The next subsections will describe recent discoveries in neuroscience on the neural responses to online rejection and acceptance.

Neural responses to online social rejection

The emotional and neural effects of being socially excluded have been well captured by research involving the Cyberball Paradigm 26 ( https://cyberball.wikispaces.com/ ). Cyberball is a virtual ball-toss game in which the study participant tosses a ball with two simulated players (so-called confederates) via a screen. After a round of fair play, the confederates, who only throw the ball to each other, exclude the participant in the rejection condition. This results in pronounced negative effects on the participants’ feeling to belong, ostracism, sense of control, and self-esteem 26 . Even though the paradigm was not designed to study online rejection as it occurs today on social media, the findings of prior Cyberball studies may provide an important starting point for understanding the processes involved in online rejection. In fact, inspired by Cyberball, a Social Media Ostracism paradigm has recently been developed by applying a Facebook format to study the effects of online social exclusion 27 .

Using functional MRI (fMRI), researchers have observed increased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex and insula after participants experienced exclusion, possibly signaling increased arousal and negative affect 28 . In addition, stronger activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is observed in adolescents and young adults with a history of being socially excluded 29 , maltreated 30 , or insecure attachment, whereas spending more time with friends reduced ACC response in adolescents to social exclusion 31 . This may possibly protect adolescents against the negative influence of ostracism or cyberbullying, although all these studies are correlational. Therefore, it remains to be determined whether environment influences brain development or vice versa. Moreover, ACC and insula activity have also been explained as signaling a highly significant event because the same regions are also active when participants experience inclusion 32 . Furthermore, studies with adolescents observed specific activity in the ventral striatum 33 , and in the subgenual ACC when adolescents were excluded in the online Cyberball computer game 34 , 35 , the latter region is often implicated in depression 36 . Thus, being rejected was associated with activity in brain regions that are also activated when experiencing salient emotions 37 , 38 . These studies may indicate a specific window of sensitivity to social rejection in adolescence, which may be associated with the enhanced activity of striatum and subgenual ACC in adolescence 33 , 36 .

Social rejection has also been studied using task paradigms that mirror online communication more specifically. In the social judgment paradigm, participants enter a chat room, where others can judge their profile pictures based on first impression 39 . This can result in being rejected or accepted by others in a way that is directly comparable to social media environments where individuals connect based on first impression (for example,’liking’ on Instagram). A developmental behavioral study (participants between 10 and 23 years) showed that young adults expected to be accepted more than adolescents. Moreover, these adults, relative to adolescents, adjusted their evaluations of others more based on whether others accepted or rejected them, possibly indicating self-protecting biases 40 (Fig.  2 ). Neuroimaging studies revealed that, being rejected based only on one’s profile pictures resulted in increased activity in the medial frontal cortex, in both adults 41 and children 42 , and studies in adolescents showed enhanced pupil dilation, a response to greater cognitive load and emotional intensity, to rejection 43 .

Adolescents’ expectations and adjustments of being liked and liking others. Social evaluation study in which participants between ages 10 and 23 years rated other peers on whether they liked the other person, whether they believed the other would like them, and a post scan rating of liking the other person after having received acceptance or rejection feedback from the other person. The faces used in this adaptation of figure are cartoon approximations of the original stimuli used in ref. 40 ; to see the original stimuli, please refer to ref. 40 . The left graph shows that adolescents expect least to be liked by the other before receiving feedback (question B). The right graph shows a developmental increase in distinguishing between liking and disliking based on feedback from the other person (question D). (Adapted with permission from Rodman, 2017, PNAS 40 )

Taken together, these studies suggest that adolescents show stronger rejection expectation than adults, and subgenual ACC and medial frontal cortex are critically involved when processing online exclusion or rejection. In the next section, we describe how the brain of adolescents and adults respond to receiving positive feedback and likes from others.

Neural responses to online social acceptance

The positive feeling of social acceptance online is endorsed through the receipt of likes, one’s cool ratio (i.e., followers > following; Business Insider, 11 June 2014: http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-cool-ratio-2014–6?international=true&r=US&IR=T .) or popularity, positive comments and hashtags, among other forms of reward 44 , 45 . Neuropsychological research showed that being accepted evokes activation in similar brain regions, as when receiving other rewards such as money or pleasant tastes 38 . Most pronounced activity was found in the ventral striatum, together with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area, which is consistently reported as a key region in the brain for the subjective experience of pleasure and reward 46 , including social rewards 47 . Likewise, being socially accepted through likes in the chat room task resulted in increased activity in the ventral striatum in children 42 , adolescents 48 , 49 and adults 41 , 50 . This response is blunted in adolescents who experience depression 36 , or who have experienced a history of maternal negative affect 51 . Apparently, prior social experiences—such as parental relations—are an important factor for understanding which adolescents are more sensitive to the impact of social media 51 . In this regard, media research showed that popularity moderates depression 10 and that attachment styles and loneliness increases the likelihood to seek socio-affective bonding with media figures 52 .

Interestingly, several studies and meta-analyses using gambling and reward paradigms have reported that activity in the ventral striatum to monetary rewards peaks in mid-adolescence 53 , 54 , 55 (Fig.  3 ; see Box  1 for views on adolescent risk taking in various contexts). These findings may suggest general reward sensitivity in adolescence such that reward centers that respond to monetary reward may also show increased sensitivity to social reward in adolescence. Social reward sensitivity may be a strong reinforcer in social media use. A prior study in adults showed that activity in the ventral striatum in response to an increase in one’s reputation, but not wealth, predicted frequency of Facebook use 56 . In a similar vein, adolescents showed sensitivity to “likes” of peers on social media 44 , 57 . In a controlled experimental study, adolescents showed more activity in the ventral striatum when viewing images with many vs. few likes, and this activation was stronger for older adolescents and college students compared to younger adolescents 57 . Thus, the same region that is active when being liked on the basis of first impression of a profile picture 48 , is also activated when viewing images that are liked by others, especially in mid-to-late adolescence, possibly extending into adulthood 57 (see also ref. 58 for similar findings on music preference). These findings suggest that heightened reward sensitivity in mid-adolescence that was previously observed for monetary rewards 53 may also be present for social rewards such as likes on Instagram. However, further research is needed to examine whether this is a specific sensitivity in early, mid or late adolescence, or perhaps this social reward sensitivity emerges in adolescence and remains in adulthood.

Longitudinal neural developmental pattern of reward activity in adolescence. Longitudinal two-wave neural developmental pattern of nucleus accumbens activation during winning vs. losing, based on 249, and 238 participants who were included on the first and second time point, respectively (leading to 487 included brain scans in total). A quadratic pattern of brain activity was observed in the nucleus accumbens for the contrast winning > losing money in a gambling task, with highest reward activity in mid-adolescence. (Adapted with permission from Braams et al. 55 )

Online peer influence

In addition to adolescents’ sensitivity to the feeling of belonging to the peer group 59 , the peer group also has a strong influence on opinions and decision-making 60 . Peers can exert a strong influence on adolescents through user-generated content on social media 5 , 61 . Co-viewing, sharing, and discussing media content with peers is common practice among adolescents in line with their developmental stage in which peers become more important than others. For example, adolescent girls often share pictures and comment on the “ideal” degree of slimness of the models they see via media when deciding how a ‘normal’ body should actually look 62 , 63 . Several recent neuroimaging studies, summarized below, have examined how the adolescent brain responds to peer comments about others and self, and subsequent behavioral adjustments and opinion changes. Even though not all of these designs were specific for online environments, the findings provide important starting points for understanding how adolescents are influenced by peer feedback in an online environment.

Neural responses to online peer feedback

Neuroimaging studies in adolescents showed that peer feedback indeed influences adolescents’ behavior. Neural correlates may provide more insight in the specific parts of the feedback that drives these behavioral sensitivities 64 . One way this is demonstrated is by having individuals rate certain products such as music preference or facial attractiveness. After their initial rating, participants received feedback from others, which was either congruent or incongruent with their initial rating. Afterwards, individuals made their ratings again, and the researchers analyzed whether behavior changed in the direction of the peer feedback. Indeed, both adults and adolescents adjusted their behavior towards the group norm 58 , 64 , demonstrating general sensitivity to peer influence. Furthermore, when receiving peer feedback that did not match their own initial rating, participants showed enhanced activity in the ACC and insula, two regions involved in detecting norm violations 58 , 65 . More specifically, increased ACC activity was associated with more adjustment to fit peer feedback norms in adolescents 58 .

Peer feedback effects are not only found for how individuals rate products, but also can strongly influence how they view themselves. Girls are especially sensitive to pressure for media’s thin-body ideal, and peer feedback supporting this ideal is associated with more body dissatisfaction 62 , 63 . We recently showed that norm-deviating feedback on ideal body images resulted in activity in the ACC-insula network in young females (18–19-years), which was stronger for females with lower self-esteem 66 (Fig.  4 ). Interestingly, the girls also adjusted their ratings on what they believed was a normal or too-thin looking body in the direction of the group norm. Together, these findings suggest that peer feedback through social media can influence the way adolescents look at themselves and others.

The Body Image Paradigm to study combined media and peer influence. This paradigm is designed for experiments to study the influence of peers on body image perception. a Participants are presented with a bikini model, and they can make a judgment whether the model is too thin or of normal weight. Their response appears on the left side of the model. Then, they are presented with ostensible peer feedback (the peer norm). b When this feedback deviates from their own judgment, this is associated with increased activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and bilateral insula, regions often implicated in processing norm violations. c Responses are larger for participants with lower self-esteem (Adapted from Van der Meulen et al. 66 )

Neural responses to prosocial peer feedback

Interestingly, however, we also found that peer feedback can influence social behavior in a prosocial direction, for example, by having peers positively evaluate prosocial behavior that benefits the group. Neuroimaging studies of social cognition have demonstrated that thinking about other peoples’ intentions or feelings is associated with activity in a network of regions, including medial prefrontal cortex, the superior temporal sulcus and the temporal parietal junction, also referred to as the social brain network 67 . In an online peer influence study, adolescents could donate money to the group, which would benefit not only themselves but also others. Prior to the study, the participants met the other participants (confederate peers) that were not part of the group that was dividing the money. These peers, however, gave online feedback through likes on the participants’ choices. More likes were given when participants donated more to the group. This feedback was followed by higher donations 68 , and was associated with enhanced activation in the social brain network, such as the medial frontal cortex, temporal parietal junction and superior temporal sulcus 69 . Notably, the change in social brain activity in the peer feedback condition was more pronounced for younger adolescents (ages 12–13-years) compared to mid-adolescents (15–16-years) 69 . Together, these studies suggest that early adolescence may be an especially sensitive period for social media influences in risk-perception 60 as well as prosocial directions 69 . These findings fit well with Blakemore and Mills’ 6 suggestion that, adolescence may be a sensitive period for social reorientation and social brain development, although results vary regarding whether sensitive periods are more pronounced in early or mid-adolescence. Understanding the specific sensitive windows may be important to target future interventions. Therefore, future research is needed to examine whether this is a specific sensitivity in early-to-mid-adolescence, or whether and how social reward sensitivity remains in adulthood.

Precedence of emotions and impulsivity

A third factor that affects how adolescents process (social) media relates to the intense emotional experiences that usually accompany adolescence 70 . Emotional needs may guide adolescents’ media use and processing; for example, feeling lonely may ease the path to connect to a media figure or to rely on social media for one’s social interaction 52 , 71 , 72 . Furthermore, being engaged in media fare may evoke strong emotional reactions, such as when playing violent video games or when experiencing online rejection 73 , 74 . Adolescents in particular appear to be guided by their emotions in how they use and process media 5 . For example, the degree of anger and frustration experienced by early-to-mid adolescent victims of bullying was associated with increased exposure to media fare portraying antisocial, norm-crossing and risk-taking behaviors over time, making these youngsters more likely to become bullies themselves 25 . Another study showed that anger instigated a more lenient moral tolerance of antisocial media content in early adolescents but not in young adults 74 . Furthermore, adolescent victims of bullying who regulated their anger through maladaptive strategies (e.g., other-blame, rumination) showed higher levels of cyberbullying themselves 25 .

Neural responses related to retaliation and emotion regulation

Neuroscience studies can potentially provide more insight in the moral leniency following adolescents’ anger. Neuroscience research on adolescent development has shown that the development of the prefrontal cortex, an important region for emotion regulation, matures until early adulthood 15 , 75 . A better understanding of the interactions between brain regions that show direct responses to emotional content, and brain regions that help to regulate these responses can possibly elucidate how adolescents regulate their behavior related to media-based interactions.

Several studies examined this question by focusing on anger following rejection. Rejected-based anger often leads to retaliatory actions. Several paradigms have also shown that adolescents are more aggressive after being rejected online. For example, they gave longer noise blasts and shared less of their resources with people who previously rejected them in an online environment 41 , 73 , 76 . More activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) after rejection was associated with less subsequent aggression 41 and more giving 76 , possibly indicating that increased activity in the DLPFC helps individuals to control their anger following rejection. Other research showed changes in neural coupling when young men played violent video games 77 . Thus, social rejection can evoke anger, but some adolescents may be better at regulating these emotions than others. Adolescents who regulate these emotions better show stronger activity in DLPFC, a region known to be involved in self-control 41 , 75 .

Applying adaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., putting into perspective, refocusing, reappraisal) possibly requires enhanced demands on DLPFC 78 . Possibly, the late maturation of the DLPFC, together with heightened emotional reactivity, may make adolescents more likely to be influenced by media content. For example, research showed that emotional experiences biased participants’ perception of media footage: despite being told beforehand that the footage contained fiction-based materials, they attributed significantly higher levels of realism to it under conditions of emotional arousal than in a neutral state 79 . Subsequently, participants attributed more information value to the fiction-based footage up to similar levels as to the reality-based clip.

One possible direction to better understand how adolescents deal with emotional media content is by examining parallel processes. It is likely that engaging in media is associated with multiple processes 79 such as the fast processing of emotions associated with engagement, sensation-seeking and emotional responses to media content, as well as more reflective and relatively slower processes, such as perspective taking and emotion regulation 80 . We interpret such parallel processing as coordinated networks of an inter-related imbalance between heightened emotional responsivity and protracted development of reflective processing and cognitive control 75 . For example, adolescents show a peak in neural responsivity to emotional faces in the ventral striatum and anterior insula, compared to children and adults 81 , 82 . In addition, adolescents show protracted development of social brain regions implicated in perspective taking 6 , 83 , and flexible engagement of lateral prefrontal cortex, possibly depending on personal goals 84 . When media encounters are emotionally gripping, such parallel processing may explain why people may take (fake) information from media as real—‘it just feels real’ 79 . The emotional response seems to blur the borders between fact and fake; the instantaneous response based on emotional or accompanying sensory feedback apparently takes (momentary) control precedence over cognitive reflection and biases subsequent information processing 79 . These findings may perhaps also explain how social reality can be perceived in accordance to how the world is represented in emotion-arousing, sensationalist or populist media messages, even when it concerns so-called “fake news”. In all, these suggestions call for further empirical testing, specifically also comparing adolescents and adults, in which the pattern of brain changes is combined with behavioral research and opinion formation.

Another intriguing question for future research is whether regulation or control of media-generated emotions can be trained. It was previously found that training of executive functions is associated with increased activity in DLPFC 85 , but it remains an open question whether activity in DLPFC can be influenced by (aggression) regulation training and behavioral control, and whether this results in changes in the functional and structural properties of the brain. If such training were possible, video games and immersive virtual environments might provide even more useful training environments. In this respect, promising projects are ongoing, testing the use of biofeedback videogames to help youth cope with stress and anxiety and identify physiological markers, and patterns of emotion regulation 86 . Game interventions are also developed to help children to cope effectively with anxiety-inducing situations 87 . These enrichment and training programs may also be useful to test specific media sensitivities by controlling the amount of media exposure. Such designs will have important benefits over studies examining correlations between naturally occurring behaviors and developmental outcomes, which often do not allow for control of other variables such as temperament or environmental changes.

Taken together, individuals differ in how they respond to media content, especially when these evoke emotional responses or are evaluated in an emotion-aroused state. There are only preliminary studies available that link these individual differences to brain development, but possibly the regulating role of DLPFC is important to control emotional responses to rejection, fake news, violent video games, or appealing ideals. These are all questions that need to be addressed in future research, but are highly relevant given the developmental stage and time adolescents engage with these prevalent forms of media.

Outlook for future studies

We described research in three directions that we believe are crucial in understanding how the omnipresent use of (social) media among today’s adolescents may influence them, through the following: (1) social rejection and acceptance, (2) peer influence on opinions of self and others, and (3) emotion precedence in media use and effects. We have provided a first overview of how neuroscience research may aid in a better understanding of these influences in a mediated context. However, study results appear to vary regarding the specific adolescent age ranges; sometimes effects seem specific for early- or mid-adolescents, while in other studies adolescents and (young) adults do not differ and the indicated age ranges also vary widely (e.g., for some, ‘late adolescence’ is between 13 and 17 years old, whereas in other reports, 17–25 years of age is referred to as ‘late’, see also ref. 88 ). Most adolescent samples are relatively older, whereas early adolescents (aged 10–15) are understudied and seem of particular interest in regards of sensitivity in these three areas. Therefore, further research is needed to align specific age ranges to developmental stages.

Current media technology opens possibilities to understand sensitivities to media and peers in adolescence. For example, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram provide excellent environments to study combined with media content and peers’ feedback in adolescence 27 , 89 . Moreover, such social media platforms introduced so-called user-generated content 90 and options to present and express oneself in media environments have increased tremendously, thereby increasing media’s social functions. Taking the ethical aspects of performing social media research into account, as it can impinge on users’ privacy, social media devices also provide great opportunities to understand how media exposure affects day-to-day fluctuations in mood and self-esteem.

A critical question that remains largely unanswered is how adolescents’ abundant media use may impact them developmentally in terms of structural brain development, functional brain development, and related behavior. The scientific evidence thus far is still scarce and results are mixed 91 , 92 . For example, digital-screen time and mental well-being appear to be best described by quadratic functions with moderate use not intrinsically harmful 93 . Several recent studies have shown that habitual use is associated with a reduced ability to delay gratification 94 , but can also have positive consequences such as increased ability to flexibly switch between tasks 95 and feeling socially connected 96 . Adolescents who spend more time on their mobile devices may engage less in ‘real’ offline social interactions and the consequences of these communication changes are not yet well understood. Perhaps, consequences differ among those who experience their online interactions as similar to their offline interactions, or as separate worlds. Important moderators and mediators should also be taken into account to understand how online communication is processed. Finally, being constantly online also affects sleep patterns, which impacts mood as well 97 . In all, the majority of these studies are based on self-reported new media use and outcomes. Integrating both experimental methods and neuroscientific insights may advance our understanding of who is susceptible under which circumstances to which effects, positive or negative.

In this review, we described the emerging body of research focused on how new media use is processed by the still developing adolescent brain. In particular, we highlighted the neural systems that are associated with behaviors that are important for social media use, including social reward processing, emotion-based processing, regulation, and mentalizing about others 98 . As these neural systems are still underdeveloped and undergoing significant changes during adolescence, they may contribute to sensitivity to online rejection, acceptance, peer influence, and emotion-loaded interactions in media-environments. In future research, it will be important to understand these processes better, especially the specific developmental sensitivities, as well as to understand which adolescents are more and less susceptible for beneficial or undesirable media influences.

The review of the literature suggests that peer sensitivities are possibly larger in adolescents than in older age groups. Peer influence effects have been well demonstrated in adolescent decision-making research, showing that adolescents take more risks in the presence of peers and when peers stimulate risk-taking 99 . This seems to hold similarly for peer influence online through online comments, also with less risky behaviors 62 . These findings have been interpreted to suggest that adolescents have a strong need to follow norms of their peer group and show in-group adherence 100 . There is a strong need for studies that experimentally test whether increased influence of peers, possibly through developing social brain regions, combined with strong sensitivity to acceptance and rejection, makes adolescence a tipping point in development for how social media can influence their self-concept and expectations of self and others. It is likely that these sensitivities are not related to one process specifically, but the combination of developmental brain networks and associated behaviors 75 , 84 . A critical question for future research is how neural correlates observed in this review predict future behavior or emotional responses in adolescents.

Social media have at least the following two important functions: (i) socially connect with others (the need to belong) and (ii) manage the impression individuals make on others (reputation building, impression management, and online self-presentation) 98 . The emerging trajectory of acceptance sensitivity, peer ‘obedience’, and emotion precedence may make adolescents specifically susceptible to sensationalist and fake news, unrealistic self-expectations, or regulating emotions through adverse use of media. Important questions for future research relate to unraveling whether adolescents are more sensitive to these news items than children and adults, who is most sensitive to which kind of media influence, how (one-sided) media use may influence adolescent development over time, and understand not only the risks but also how media provides opportunities for positive development, such as engaging with friends, forming new peer relations, and experiment with uncertainties or overcoming fears. Studying the interplay between media use and sensitive periods in brain development will provide important directions for understanding how media may impact youth and who is most vulnerable and under which conditions. Key questions for future research are to understand whether recent changes in media usage, delivery, dosage, and levels of engagement (e.g., as more active creators and participants, for example) are leading to different or amplified neural responses in adolescents relative to adults. Using longitudinal research, it will be important to test whether there is evidence that the still developing adolescent brain is more sensitive to, or more likely to be shaped by these changing patterns of media usage. 1

Box 1 Multiple perspectives on adolescent risk-taking

Adolescence is often defined as a period of increased risk taking and sensation-seeking, this is observed across cultures 101 and across species 102 . However, the way risk-taking is expressed differs across generations. In middle ages, risk-taking in adolescence took place through reckless fights and wars. In contrast, in the late 20th century and early 21st century, adolescents were more prone towards risk-taking in context of alcohol, sex, and drug experimentation 103 . Recently, through social media, new forms of risk-taking are expressed, such as excessive or unlimited self-disclosure or sexting 104 . These observations suggest that social media may be the new way in which sensation-seeking behavior is expressed, which is possibly an adolescent-specific tendency to explore and learn to adapt to new social environments.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the reviewers for their detailed and insightful comments on the manuscript, and Lara Wierenga for providing helpful comments on previous versions of the manuscript. This work was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO-VICI 453-14-001 E.A.C.) and by an innovative ideas grant of the European Research Council (ERC CoG PROSOCIAL 681632 to E.A.C.). Both authors were supported by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS: September 2013–September 2014).

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32 New Media, Social Change, and Human Development from Adolescence Through the Transition to Adulthood

Adriana M. Manago is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Western Washington University.

Shu-Sha Angie Guan, M.A., is a doctoral candidate at University of California, Los Angeles.

Patricia M. Greenfield, Department of Psychology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

• Published: 02 October 2014
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This chapter presents developmental mechanisms by which new media drive development toward increasing individualism. The authors establish basic principles regarding the impact of new media on relationship development (increasing orientation to peers, relationship breadth, and choice) and on identity development (increased capacities for control and emphasis on exploration, self-expression, and hybrid identities) and review sociological, communication, and psychological theories, including Greenfield’s theory linking social and developmental change. This theory predicts that new media communication technologies will everywhere push development toward increasing individualism. Cultural nuances—history, philosophical traditions, and institutions established prior to the proliferation of communication technologies—may also influence how youth and families use new media. The authors propose that greater intergenerational tensions arise with rapid technological change. The chapter is a starting point for understanding how new media and cultural traditions interact with globalization and sociodemographic shifts to produce changes in human development.

Allegory of the Cave, 2.0

In January 2012, in preparation for a research project on intergenerational value change, the first and third authors (Manago and Greenfield) visited with an Arab family in the village of Drijat in the Negev Desert of Israel. Just a short walk from the family’s three-story home of marble floors and modern furnishings was a cave dwelling cut out of rocks, the home of their ancestors until just a generation ago. The three-room cave—one room used to store food, one room for the animals, and one where the family slept—represented a way of life in Drijat that had been passed down since biblical times by Falakhim Arab farmers living in the south of Mt. Hebron. At the time we visited the family in 2012, the father, Hadar (a pseudonym), had transformed the cave where he lived as a child into a tourist destination to attract travelers visiting ancient historical sites in the region.

Hadar invited us to sit with him on hand-woven mats in the family room of his one-time subterranean home. His teenage son, Ahmad (a pseudonym), brought us a tray of traditional Arabic tea and tabun bread his mother had baked in a clay oven. Meanwhile, Hadar regaled us with tales about traditional customs and growing up in Drijat. He warned us with a wink that, when he was growing up, it was customary for visitors who had a serious matter to discuss to indicate their intentions to their host by drinking their tea in one swift swill. So we sipped our tea slowly as Hadar told us about how he was the first in his family to attend school, but then left school at age 16 to marry. He worked as a construction laborer in the nearby Israeli city of Arad to support his family, eventually acquiring a lifestyle adapted to the postindustrial society springing up around the Negev. When the sun went down on the desert hills where his father and grandfather had farmed, Hadar led us to a very different kind of family room in his present-day home.

There, we met Hadar’s other children and his mother who, in keeping with Arab hospitality, offered us more tea, fruit, and dates. As we sat on sofas trying to make conversation, a television placed prominently in the family room drew one’s attention to its broadcast of an Arabic program featuring men adorned in turbans re-enacting nomadic life in the desert. Photos of actual desert-dwelling Arab men in turbans, Hadar’s father and grandfather, hung on the wall just above the television set. Meanwhile, Hadar’s children disappeared upstairs, except for Ahmad who had served us tea in the cave; he migrated over to the computer in the corner of the room. Eyes transfixed on the screen, he scrolled down his newsfeed on Facebook in Arabic, clicked and navigated through a series of different windows, and responded to flashing chat messages. With his launch into cyberspace, Ahmad joins the ranks of youth around the world ushering in new media to their communities. These young people are coming of age in the midst of profound changes in cultural practices of communication and are pioneering new channels through which humans experience themselves in relation to one another.

Theoretical Approaches to New Media and Social Change

In this opening ethnographic description, we see rapidly shifting social milieus in the new millennium that encapsulate not only new media technologies, but also a host of interlacing sociodemographic changes. A theoretical framework that coheres the multitude of sociodemographic changes illustrated in this family portrait is Greenfield’s (2009) theory of social change and human development. It spotlights the influence of sociodemographic change on culture and human development when communities shift from small, tight-knit, homogenous, rural, and subsistence agricultural ways of life to increasing involvement in large and heterogeneous postindustrial societies with advanced levels of formal education and more elaborate technology. Greenfield adopts the concepts Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society) from sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1887/1957) to describe the array of sociodemographic factors constituting social contexts of development. Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft represent prototypical social ecologies that anchor spectra of sociodemographic continua, such as economy, education, and technology. When communities move in either direction along any one of those continua, the sociodemographic changes transform daily socialization practices and the values and meanings embedded in those practices, as well as developmental outcomes.

Greenfield (2009) predicts that sociodemographic shifts in the direction of a Gesellschaft typology—for example, increases in wealth, formal education, technology, and cultural diversity—drive socialization and development toward increasing individualism and away from collectivism, which are also conceptualized as existing on continua. Individualism and collectivism describe “cultural syndromes” ( Triandis, 1993 ) that manifest differently across the life span in the practices, values, and goals pertinent to particular developmental tasks. In the transition from childhood dependence to adult responsibilities, hallmarks of high levels of individualism under increasing Gesellschaft conditions include prioritizing personal choice over family obligation and independence over parental obedience ( Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003 ). A high level of individualism is also epitomized in the emphasis on personal pleasure and personal responsibility over family continuation in sexual development and on personal fulfillment and gender equality over adherence to complementary and ascribed gender roles for the sake of group harmony ( Manago, Greenfield, Kim, & Ward, 2014 ). Greenfield’s (2009) theory hypothesizes that the proliferation of new media in the West and in other regions of the globe is an extension of Gesellschaft conditions that push socialization practices and values toward higher levels of individualism during development from childhood to adulthood.

Two other major theoretical approaches, one from the discipline of sociology and the other from communication studies, present complementary views on the implications of new media. Rainie and Wellman (2012) describe research that suggests the expansion of communication technologies gives rise to a new form of connectivity that they term networked individualism . In a society of networked individualism, the individual is at the center of his or her own personalized network, which is constructed based on shared interests, rather than on kinship or common physical locales. Rainie and Wellman argue that communication technologies endow individuals with powerful tools to traverse independently a variety of relationships in order to acquire social capital, including information, work collaborations, and social support (see also Wellman et al., 2003 ). Social networking sites, for example, enhance the ability of emerging adults who go away to college to integrate into new social milieus while remaining connected to old friends and acquaintances across long distances and to call on large networks of contacts for help and information ( Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2011 ). This theoretical approach encourages us to think about individualism not as a cultural syndrome of social isolation, but rather as one in which mobile individuals connect with others via networks rather than stable social groups.

Another theoretical approach, the media practice model ( Steele & Brown, 1995 ), also highlights the agency of the individual with the increasing specialization of media. This model builds on uses and gratifications theory ( Rubin, 1994 ) in the field of communication studies to focus specifically on the use of media in the process of identity development. Similar to uses and gratifications theory, which encourages explorations into the personal motivations, preferences, needs, and contextual demands that influence how people use and respond to media, the media practice model is used to understand how individuals select, interact, interpret, and apply media content to explore their distinct identity concerns. Brown (2000) argues that media have become both more diverse and more specialized: from limited numbers of television channels and outlets in the 1950s to a multiplicity of media content targeted to particular demographics, and now online forums that enable users to create their own media. These changes have given youth increasing opportunities to use media to explore their distinctiveness in their social worlds. Whereas the theoretical approach of Rainie and Wellman (2012) helps to identify changes in the composition of social networks at the level of society, Steele and Brown (1995) illuminate how individuals actively select and interpret media in their daily lives to understand who they are. These processes of identity exploration are important components of individualism under modern Gesellschaft conditions. Both theories are useful for exploring the developmental implications of new communication technologies because they provide details on facets of individualism that are particularly relevant to media. Greenfield’s (2009) theory makes predictions that both networked individualism and identity exploration are made possible or enhanced as technology advances and becomes more widespread in a Gesellschaft environment. Because the theory explores both these issues in the context of societal change and developmental change, thus subsuming these two other theoretical frameworks, we rely heavily on Greenfield’s theory in this chapter.

As we review the literature on new media and developmental change, we focus on understanding how the increasing penetration of new media in daily life shapes the ability of the individual to meet his or her unique interests and concerns during preadolescence, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. New media are defined primarily by their interactivity and, it is important to note, are increasingly accessed on mobile devices. Because the transition from childhood to adulthood represents an important and sensitive period in the life span for both relationship and identity development ( Erikson, 1968 ), we focus on how these specific developmental tasks are shaped by new media communication practices.

New Media: Definition and Proliferation Around the World

“New” media are distinct from “old” media, which include books, magazines, television, and movies, in that they are more intensely interactive in ways previous media were not. This difference is readily apparent when comparing Internet and television use in the opening sketch. Consonant with the media-practice model ( Steele & Brown, 1995 ), the Arab family we interviewed selected television programming that reflected their ethnic identity and that resonated with the family’s (more traditional) experiences in the world. With new media, more idiosyncratic identity concerns are projected onto the screen. Ahmad was immersed in his online world, personally controlling his media experience by making his own choices and clicking on links that immediately satisfied his personal interests. He also used his computer as an entertainment portal to interact with peers on Facebook. Consequently, media socialization and peer socialization become more deeply entangled as youth co-construct their own media environments ( Greenfield & Yan, 2006 ). As young people engage with online content produced or recycled by peers, they choose and interpret content that resonates with who they are and what they believe; and those selected encounters further shape their identity development.

The interactivity of new media has a number of paradigm-shifting implications for communication ( Lister, Dovery, Giddings, Grant, & Kelly, 2009 ). In contrast to old media, new media require users’ creative participation; this requirement changes patterns of production. Media conglomerates control the creation and dissemination of information, art, and entertainment using old media; individuals are at the helm using new media, producing their own multimedia content online, expressing themselves on blogs or social networking sites, and directing their attention where and when they choose. All of these paradigm shifts in the new media age of communication highlight the prominence of individual agency and the expression of personal needs, desires, and preferences as users navigate and contribute to the real-time generation of flows of human expression in virtual space.

These virtual flows of human expression are widening to include a growing number of participants. The spread of new media is evidenced by the increasing rates of penetration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in populations around the world. ICTs can be thought of as the infrastructure of new media. They include hardware such as computers and mobile devices, as well as Internet software such as email, instant messaging, blogs, forums, virtual gaming worlds, social networking sites, and other content-sharing websites. Table 32.1 lists Internet penetration rates in seven regions of the world and the change in those rates from 2000 to 2012. Taking the United States as an example, 36.6% of households in the country in 1997 had access to a computer and 18% had Internet access; by 2000, 51% of households had access to a computer and 41.5% had Internet access ( Newburger, 2001 ). By 2012, the Internet penetration rate in the United States was estimated at 76.3% ( Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2012 a ). In Table 32.1 , we see an unmistakable proliferation of ICTs and new media around the world, although a global digital divide is also clear; this divide also includes vast inequalities in broadband speed in poorer regions of the globe ( International Telecommunications Union [ITU], 2013 ). Nonetheless, the region with the lowest Internet penetration, Africa, also had the steepest growth curve.

Data estimates from Miniwatts Marketing Group (2012 b ) .

Another big wave of change is occurring with Internet-enabled mobile devices. Mobile broadband subscriptions have increased from 268 million worldwide in 2007 to 2.1 billion in 2013 ( ITU, 2013 ). Table 32.2 lists broadband mobile device penetration in six different regions of the globe. The ITU estimates that, although broadband remains largely unaffordable in much of Africa (in stark contrast to Europe and North America), large jumps in mobile adoption will continue to occur in many economically developing nations because mobile broadband subscriptions are considerably cheaper than fixed broadband subscriptions. Interestingly, in the United States, smartphone adoption does not differ by income or education among those under age 30, but Latino, African-American, low-income, and non-college going users are most likely to report using their mobile devices as their main source of Internet access ( Zickuhr & Smith, 2012 ). The growth of Internet-enabled mobile devices points to the potential for new media to become an incessant presence in our lives, permeating daily activities and allowing people to remain “connected” and transient at the same time.

Data estimates from International Telecommunications Union (2013).

How does this proliferation of communication via new media technologies shift cultural practices, norms, meanings, and values that shape development? We first must acknowledge that the spread of new media complicates already problematic conceptualizations of culture as something shared by a homogenous group of people living in a particular locale. New media accelerate forces of globalization in which information, ideas, and people traverse geographic space, physical communities, and national boundaries faster and more efficiently than ever before in human history. In fact, these circumstances are characteristic of Gesellschaft societies, which have smaller, relatively more Gemeinschaft communities nested within them. Gesellschaft societies influence one another through transportation systems and communication technologies ( Greenfield, 2009 ). Old media, such as newspapers and television, initiated the transmission of ideas across physical communities, expanding people’s provincial points of view to contexts outside their local experience ( Lerner, 1958 ; Meyrowitz, 1985 ). New media, with their on-demand access to a perpetual flow of human expression, escalate the potential for exposure to new horizons and give youth more personal control in exploring them. We argue in this chapter that the interactivity afforded by new media, combined with access to people and information in diverse communities unrestricted by physical propinquity, undermines permanent, stable communities and interpersonal interdependence, while intensifying practices that nurture individual agency and values for personal fulfillment in goals for development.

New Media as Instruments of Sociocultural Change in Youth Development

We are certainly not the first to observe that changes in communication technologies in the new millennium yield a heightened emphasis on the individual. As described earlier, networked individualism has been used in sociology to describe how ICTs facilitate the replacement of tight-knit and permanent face-to-face communities with personalized social networks centering on the individual ( Rainie & Wellman, 2012 ). The worldwide spread of “electronic communication” is thought to promote individual agency because successful adaptation to the information age requires high levels of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-determination ( Bandura, 2002 ). Also, in informal education, children and teenagers engage in opportunities for self-directed learning as they pursue and develop their unique interests online ( Ito, 2010 ).

However, unmitigated adoption of individualistic values, beliefs, and practices leading to individual empowerment is likely to be an overly simplified depiction of the developmental changes occurring with technological changes in society. According to the media practice model and uses and gratifications theory, the ways in which media are used and how they influence people depend on the motivations and values they bring to the encounter, as well as the environmental demands that surround particular media use. For example, an experiment in Ethiopia showed that 1 year after a random sample of seventh and eighth graders received a laptop, they had significantly higher levels of individualistic values and independent self-construals compared to those who received no laptop or a laptop that stopped functioning ( Hansen, Postmes, van der Vinne, & Thiel, 2012 ). Yet the two groups did not differ in their level of collectivistic values, perhaps because Ethiopian adolescents used the laptops in ways that also resonated and reaffirmed their collectivistic values. In fact, researchers noted that those with laptops often shared their computers with other children who did not have laptops, potentially fostering cohesion and cooperation with others. Also, it is important to note that there may be some drawbacks to the increased emphasis on the individual, at least in highly individualistic Western cultures, in that new media such as social networking sites can foster a preoccupation with the self and nonclinical forms of narcissism ( Malikhao & Servaes, 2011 ; Twenge, 2013 ).

Our aim in this chapter is to identify both new opportunities and new challenges for development with the expansion of new media and also to introduce a global perspective on the issue by incorporating studies, when possible, on new media from around the world. Although Greenfield’s theory predicts that new media will shift development in a common direction around the world, there may also be cultural differences in how new media are integrated into social life depending on the historical time points at which communities have shifted toward Gesellschaft conditions. The introduction of new media into families such as Hadar’s, where there has been a shift to Gesellschaft conditions in just one generation, will likely affect intergenerational relationships, and thus social development, differently from the introduction of new media in, say, Western locales where families have lived under more Gesellschaft sociodemographic conditions for multiple generations.

The remainder of this chapter is divided into basic developmental tasks during the transition to adulthood. We first review how new media shift the ways youth orient to a relatively wider world of relationships outside the family in their journey to adulthood, and then we explore how new media influence the construction of a coherent sense of self. We suggest that new media create new tasks in development that include learning to form meaningful relationships of both depth and breadth within networks of social relations, rather than within stable communities. Youth must also learn to construct coherent identities and a positive sense of self-worth from exploration and self-expression in these expansive social networks.

New Media and Relationship Development

How does the multiplication of technological tools that function to facilitate human connectivity foster independence in development? It is important to first establish that individualism in Gesellschaft societies does not equate to individual isolation or unmitigated autonomy. Humans are by nature social animals who live in some form of social organization requiring cooperation. Collectivism denotes a form of social organization in which individuals have an interdependent self-construal such that their well-being is inextricable from and overlapping with the well-being of the family or clan, and thus the group is emphasized over individual considerations ( Markus & Kitayama, 1991 ; Triandis, 1993 ). As individualism increases, individuals begin to have a more independent self-construal, such that well-being is understood to be a matter of personal responsibility, and thus the goals and interests of the individual become prioritized over those of the social group. In highly individualistic societies, individuals still forge interdependent relationships, but they do so under the assumptions that (1) their participation in those relationships is determined by personal choice; (2) their involvement hinges on whether the relationship meets personal needs, including the need for social connection; and (3) the terms of engagement are negotiated by separate and distinct individuals of equal status who have fewer restrictions when it comes to leaving and pursuing alternative relationships. This description of individualism is also in line with the concept of networked individualism ( Rainie & Wellman, 2012 ).

When sociodemographic factors such as communication technologies shift in a Gesellschaft direction, they facilitate this individualistic form of sociality. As we outline later, an important mechanism by which this shift occurs in human development can be described in terms of the way new media orient youth to peers. Unrelated peers offer symmetrical relational contexts that elicit individual negotiations and co-constructions of relationship terms, as opposed to relationships with kin that are determined by birth and subject to rules determined by parental authority ( Youniss, 1980 ). Heightened access to peers and the ability to access social resources outside the family and physical community according to one’s personal desires become a critical way in which new media may drive human development toward an individualistic approach to social relationships.

New Media and Family Relationships

Although research in the early years of Internet adoption indicated that time spent online was detrimental to overall face-to-face social involvement (e.g., Kraut et al., 1998 ), evidence suggests that as the Internet and mobile devices have grown more embedded in the fabric of our lives, engagement with these technologies specifically decreases youth involvement with the family at home ( Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008 ). For example, a study with a nationally representative sample of teenagers in the United States found that the more they used the Internet for recreation and to communicate with peers, the less time they spent with parents ( Lee, 2008 ). Research in various locales confirms findings in the United States that Internet use is associated with lower levels of closeness between children and their parents. Surveys with a national sample of teenagers in New Zealand ( Richards, McGee, Williams, Welch, & Hancox, 2010 ); high school students in Ontario, Canada ( Willoughby, 2008 ); a national sample of Jewish and Arab teenagers in Israel ( Mesch, 2003 ); fourth and fifth graders in urban Korea ( Lee & Chae, 2007 ); and teenagers in Beijing China ( Lei & Wu, 2007 ) all showed correlations between time spent online and lower levels of perceived closeness to parents. An important caveat in the studies in Israel, China, and Korea, however, is that frequency of Internet use for educational purposes, as opposed to using the Internet for entertainment or to socialize with friends, was not associated with lower levels of parental closeness ( Lee & Chae, 2007 ; Lei & Wu, 2007 ; Mesch, 2003 ).

We cannot infer causality from these studies, yet it is not hard to imagine from our opening anecdote that communication technologies offer adolescents more opportunities to meet their needs for social bonding and leisure outside family time at home. In fact, interviews with Norwegian teens suggest that increased orientation to peers via mobile devices comes at the expense of interactions with parents, thus undermining family rituals such as family get-togethers or meal times ( Ling & Yttri, 2006 ). Moreover, data from a large online sample in North America showed that the more preteen girls reported interacting with friends online, the more they reported having friends their parents did not approve of ( Pea et al., 2012 ); these findings suggest that new media can facilitate personal choice in peer relationships over adherence to parental wishes.

To be sure, it is not the case that technology has a direct causal effect on family relationships. According to uses and gratification theory, the impact of new media technology on social life depends on how people use it and the goals and values they bring to new media (see Bargh & McKenna, 2004 ). There are certainly ways new media could be mobilized to facilitate family cohesiveness. For example, interactive gaming with parents has been shown to be conducive to family bonding ( Padilla-Walker, Coyne, & Fraser, 2012 ), social networking sites can help parents maintain connections with their children when they move away to college ( Padilla-Walker, Nelson, Carroll, & Jensen, 2010 ), and new media such as email or Skype help international students and immigrant families stay in touch and maintain filial piety with families in their home countries ( Kline & Liu, 2005 ).

Yet, in all these instances, there remains an overall direction of change in human development toward individualism with increases in new media. Even though new media can be utilized for family bonding, it is exceptionally more common to use old media with family members, such as watching television or movies together, than it is to do so via online gaming or any other form of new media, such as email or social networking sites ( Padilla-Walker et al., 2012 ). Furthermore, maintaining technologically mediated social connections with children moving away to college or with family members immigrating to distant locales precisely exemplifies the “looser” social connections that are facilitated by Gesellschaft technologies. The presence of communication technologies to stay in touch from a distance can even serve as a rationalization for physical separation, as one immigrant Chinese parent rationalized in separating from her child, “when [my baby and I] are separated we will continue to have contact on telephone and the Internet” ( Bohr & Tse, 2009 , p. 278). In this way, families may be more likely to see individual pursuits of opportunities in separate physical settings as an option for the future if they have new media technologies at their disposal. Certainly, new media can attenuate feelings of distance when families are separated. For example, among Chinese international students, open phone and email communication with family members were related to a greater sense of family cohesion, compared with students who did not have this communication ( Kline & Liu, 2005 ). However, media users perceive emotional bonding to be inferior in technology-mediated communication compared to in-person communication ( Sherman, Michikyan, & Greenfield, 2013 ). Moreover, physical separation socializes individualistic approaches to relationships ( Keller, 2007 ).

Some argue that new media and mobile devices heighten parents’ abilities to keep tabs on their adolescent children, stay abreast of their location, and monitor their social media activities. However, new media and mobile devices are actually sources of increased negotiation and sometimes conflict in parent–child relationships, rather than sources of authoritarian surveillance ( Ling & Yttri, 2006 ; Mesch, 2012 ). A large-scale survey in the United States shows that parents who “friend” their adolescent on social networking sites have more conflicts with their child over social media use than those who do not ( Lenhart et al., 2011 ). Negotiation and conflict are likely due to the increased agency new media technologies provide adolescents; this increased agency then shifts the power dynamics in family relationships away from parental obedience. For example, teens adept at navigating the expanding social media scene maintain profiles on multiple social media sites to interact with peers away from the potential surveillance of adults ( Madden et al., 2013 ).

Mesch (2012) describes how Arab youth in Israel hide chat windows behind another parent-approved window when a parent approaches. With a variety of tools at their fingertips, adolescents can be quite skilled at hiding their new media activities from parents ( Rosen, 2007 ). This is especially likely to be the case when children are more technologically savvy than parents, a situation that can attenuate parental authority in families such as Hadar’s who are experiencing abrupt intergenerational shifts in technology. Indeed, Mesch (2006) found higher levels of parent–child conflict among families in Israel when adolescents reported being the Internet expert in the family and when they reported more frequent Internet use.

New Media and Peer Relationships

The evidence is quite clear that as new media spread, they become a conduit for youth to forge deeper ties with friends outside the family ( Gross, 2004 ; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008 ). Research also confirms this trend around the world; for example, a longitudinal study in Singapore with a national sample of 13-year-olds showed that, over the course of a year, increases in Internet use stimulated socializing with friends ( Lee & Kuo, 2006 ). In their review of the literature, Valkenburg and Peter (2011) conclude that new media nurture adolescents’ orientation to peers because they give them the ability to circumnavigate restrictions such as lack of transportation or parental rules, so that they can maintain continuous engagement with friends whenever they desire.

Because new media communications are asynchronous and afford some level of audiovisual anonymity, they can embolden youth to disclose personal feelings or communicate concerns to their friends more easily than in face-to-face situations ( Davis, 2012 ; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007 ). Computer-mediated communication can thereby scaffold the development of social skills within symmetrical relationships. Evidence for this comes from a study in Bermuda, where adolescents described how using social networking sites made it easier for them to express themselves to their friends and thus fostered a heightened sense of peer belonging ( Davis, 2012 ). Learning how to cooperatively construct interpersonal closeness and mutual understanding through self-expression within symmetrical relationships during adolescence will be necessary for coordinating chosen relationships in a new-media Gesellschaft environment.

Unfortunately, youth must also learn to negotiate negative peer experiences because a heightened orientation to peers also means vulnerability to cyberbullying , defined as “any behavior performed through electronic media that repeatedly communicates hostile or aggressive messages intended to inflict harm or discomfort on others” where the identity of the bully may or may not be known ( Tokunaga, 2010 , p. 278). In Tokunaga’s (2010) review of research, as many as 53% of adolescents in US studies report being a victim of cyberbullying, and they often hide bullying from parents.

The breadth of peer relationship experiences that new media facilitate further speaks to individualistic relationship development. The most visited website in the world after Google is Facebook ( Alexa, 2012 ), used primarily by adolescents and emerging adults to keep in touch with close friends, as well as with larger spheres of friends of friends or peers known from school and social activities such as sports teams, clubs, summer camps, and travel abroad ( Manago, Taylor, & Greenfield, 2012 ; Reich, Subrahmanyam, & Espinoza, 2012 ). In accord with a uses and gratification theoretical approach, there are likely to be cultural differences in the use of social networking sites to accumulate social connections; one study showed that female European-American Facebook users maintain larger online networks and were more likely to express themselves in more public, less intimate ways than were female Japanese Mixi users ( Barker & Ota, 2011 ).

Notwithstanding cultural differences, social networking sites in general, whether it is Mixi in Japan or Orkut in Brazil, make it possible for users to conveniently establish a digital tie to larger numbers of friends than is possible in the offline world. Consequently, friendship in the age of new media connotes a more expansive, shallower, and more diverse understanding of the term compared to notions of friendship in a culture before new media ( Amichai-Hamburger, Kingsbury, & Schneider, 2013 ). Moreover, inherent activities on any social networking site include creating a public profile and posting comments to the public “newsfeed,” which means communicating with large numbers of people at once and also gathering information about people one might not know very well ( Ellison et al., 2011 ). In fact, acculturating to Facebook involves increasing orientation to public communications: Burke, Marlow, and Lento (2009) used Facebook servers to collect data among an international sample of 140,000 new users and found that individuals began to share more publicly on status updates the more that people in their network did so.

Although some may interpret sociality on social networking sites as a superficial form of friendship, learning about, communicating with, and traversing through networks of individuals and groups is advantageous for pursuing personal interests while still remaining interpersonally connected. In fact, social media sustain “customized sociality,” a form of social relatedness in which personal control and personal convenience in human connectivity is amplified ( Manago & Vaughn, in press ). For example, young people utilize social capital from large online networks to seek out information and other resources at their command, make connections to groups they have a personal interest in but may not have access to in their physical communities, or broadcast calls for social support to a web of potential participants ( Ellison et al., 2011 ). Importantly, customizing one’s social resources by building social capital via social media requires that users engage in some level of public self-expression ( Burke, Marlowe, & Lento, 2010 ). This is a highly individualistic form of communication with implications for identity development, a topic to which we now turn.

New Media and Identity Development

Broadcasting one’s thoughts, feelings, opinions, and image to online audiences represents the next iteration of an individualistic style of communication in the digital age. Communication in individualistic cultures has been characterized as direct, open, and geared to self-expression, as opposed to the kind of communication exemplified in Hadar’s description of traditional practices surrounding the drinking of tea—indirect, implicit, and geared toward mitigating group discord ( Gudykunst & Nishida, 1986 ). As new media users attend to ongoing streams of 140-character Tweets, post their current mood on a Facebook status update, or comment on a YouTube video, the scale of human self-expression escalates. Communication practices that increasingly emphasize giving voice to personal feelings and thoughts signify heightened levels of personal exploration in the process of identity development. They also signify a shift away from forms of identity that are ascribed by birth, developed through participation in a kin group, and tied to the land in Gemeinschaft environments. Youth instead are using new media more agentically to construct their identities by contributing to and exploring multiple virtual landscapes of human expression online.

An important thread tying together aspects of exploration and self-expression in processes of identity development via new media is the magnification of individual control of outer circumstances. Mastering the external, seeking to influence others, and evoking an outward effect through individual action and emotional expression are characteristic of individualism ( Markus & Kitayama, 1991 ; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984 ). In collectivistic cultures adapted to Gemeinschaft environments, an inwardly directed form of control that harmonizes, rather than influences the outer world, is more common. Technology essentially extends the scope of humans’ capacity to devise more elaborate tools for harnessing resources and altering environments to meet personal needs and desires. Indeed, “change the world” is a ubiquitous phrase in Silicon Valley, the staging ground for new media ( Packer, 2013 ). In the next two subsections, we describe how increased control of external circumstances afforded by new media technologies plays out in two important processes of identity development in individualistic Gesellschaft societies: exploration and self-expression.

Control and Exploration

Old media, such as books, newspapers, and television, have long been part of the infrastructure in relatively more Gesellschaft environments conducive to identity exploration. Individual exploration of beliefs, values, interests, relationships, and adult roles during identity development is desirable when personal choice, freedom, fulfillment, and equality are valued; when multiple perspectives are available; and when flexibility in adult roles is feasible ( Arnett, 2010 ; Phinney & Baldelomar, 2011 ). Old media instigated exposure to multiple perspectives and gave youth from different walks of life channels for imagining a variety of possibilities in adult roles. The advent of television provided various social groups with equal access to information and points of view, the rich and poor, children and adults, women and men, cultural insiders and outsiders, ethnic majority and minority members ( Meyrowitz, 1985 ).

Television also helps to transform identity during the acculturation process; immigrants come to a different understanding of themselves in the world as they use media programming to gain insights into the values and conventions of their host society (e.g., Reece & Palmgreen, 2000 ). In these ways, old media began to break down cultural and social group boundaries and limitations; however, old media, along with the information, messages, and values they imparted, were still controlled by those with the means to produce and distribute information and entertainment. New media democratize not just access, but also the production and distribution of human expression, thus dispersing control to individuals ( Lister et al., 2009 ).

Under these circumstances, identity exploration becomes increasingly oriented to creative and collaborative co-constructions of meaning. Youth in the midst of identity exploration are exposed to the lives and perspectives of different social groups and, furthermore, have a hand in shaping what those lives look like. For example, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual (LGBT) youth in rural America connect with LGBT communities in Internet forums to learn about other LGBT individuals and also to contribute their own experiences in forum discussions, thus co-constructing definitions of sexually queer identities ( Gray, 2009 ). Ito (2010) describes how one young Chinese-American man developed his unique niche interest in Japanese anime by posting to international anime news forums and creating his own anime music videos. Another study illustrated how ethnic minority adolescents create groups on Facebook to communicate with others interested in civic engagement around contemporary race relations ( Tynes, Garcia, Giang, & Coleman, 2010 ). As they participate in online public discussions, they collaborate to define and broadcast the issues ethnic minorities face, thereby elaborating on their self-concepts as ethnic minorities on their own terms.

Social identities, such as ethnic identities, were formerly forged through shared experiences in physical space but are now constructed symbolically through mass media communications and, most recently, via online networking. Old media, illustrated by the Arabic television series in the opening sketch of Hadar’s home, reflect national, ethnic, gender, and class issues that define the identities of its ethnic viewers ( Mayer, 2003 ). These ethnic programs are resources used to elaborate on social identities in the absence of physical communities. Mexican-American girls and their relatives in Mexico, for example, can become part of an “interpretive community” in which bonds can be maintained at a physical distance through shared interest in and discussion of the latest drama on their favorite telenovela ( Mayer, 2003 ).

New media, notably diasporic websites, give users the opportunity to do more than interpret mass-produced ethnic media programming together; they allow users to produce and share their own information and content ( Matsaganis, Katz, & Ball-Rokeach, 2010 ). Individuals themselves drive the discourse by exchanging messages and uploading photos. Also indicative of change toward increasing individual agency is the way that solidarity and intersubjectivity on these diasporic “cybervillages” do not derive from common kinship or shared geographical space, but from “networking” (e.g. Parham, 2004 ). That is, individuals use diaspora websites to actively seek others who share common interests, viewpoints, or ideologies stemming from similar cultural backgrounds. Through exploration and participation in these websites, the content of ethnic identities becomes more abstract, symbolic, and co-constructed.

Additionally, similar to the way LGBT youth in rural America may be empowered by new media to find similar others, children of immigrant families can use new media to connect to peers in countries of origin in ways that shape identity formation processes. This may be especially relevant to second- and third-generation adolescents who may have a weaker direct link to their countries of origin yet are struggling for self-definition in countries where they are still marked as “forever foreigners” by appearance ( Zhou, 2004 ). Computer-mediated communication with peers in countries of origin can serve a symbolic function in constructing cultural identities and values. This possibility of cyberconnection with the ancestral country grants immigrant youth higher levels of control over their social settings and increases their range of identity choices.

Rich illustrations of how ethnic identities are symbolically constructed online come from youth themselves. Bae (2010) describes Korean-American teenager Eunbi’s home page (hompi) on the Korean social networking site Cyworld. Eunbi’s hompi includes photographs of herself using typical Korean feminine hand gestures that partially cover the face to make it appear smaller and that signal cuteness and coquettishness. In a follow-up interview, Eunbi states that she does not post these kinds of photos on the social networking site she uses with her American friends—there she prefers “a stylish, mature, and sophisticated look;” however, she posts the gesture photos on Cyworld to “act like a cute girl as I did in Korea in the past. So that I can still share with my friends in Korea … This gesture confirms that we are Korean girls … A lot of Korean models and actresses also pursue this goal in photos” (p. 101–102). Immigrant youth such as Eunbi are exploring and expressing their bicultural social identities online by experimenting with iconic representations and also incorporating ethnic symbols curated from popular culture on the Internet.

When identity development is freed from the constraints of physical space and is instead constructed through explorations in cyberspace, bicultural, transnational, or hybrid identities emerge ( Mitra, 2006 ). Users of diasporic websites are not necessarily creating identities that align with host or home country, but instead constructing a third identity that is forged in the virtual space between two physical places. Hybrid identities may be particularly relevant for young women in traditional societies who negotiate a more restrictive and limiting sense of self in their local context while online they exhibit a more expressive identity that challenges cultural restrictions ( Mitra, 2004 ). For example, some Arab girls from Qatar create “fantastical, fabricated identities” on Facebook to “express their unspoken desires,” unfulfilled in their offline lives ( Leage & Chalmers, 2010 ). Others maintain two profiles, one on MySpace and one on an ethnic-specific site. On MySpace, one girl posts photos of herself going to concerts with friends, and on the ethnic-specific site, she posts information appropriate to the more traditional culture shared by friends on that site; for example she is more modest and refrains from posting photos of herself.

The development of hybrid or bifurcated identities speaks to how media provide the tools for individuals to control their self-expressions as they navigate and explore multiple and separate communities on- and offline. Hybrid identities also speak to the way in which cultural meanings and values can persist via new media; as the media practice model ( Steele & Brown, 1995 ) would suggest, youth bring to media the values and motivations rooted in their ethnic identities. Online self-expression is an opportunity to elaborate one’s values and interests in exploring the self, and it also presents an opportunity to reify the kind of person one might imagine oneself to be.

Control and Self-Expression

New media technologies not only create new possibilities for individuals to control the conditions of their external social environments, but they also provide them with the wherewithal to control external manifestations of the self. To exist online is to “write oneself into being” ( boyd, 2008 ). Youth using new media employ a heightened level of control over self-expression because digitally mediated communication is asynchronous, allowing for pause, reflection, and editing; it offers choice in the richness of audiovisual cues that transmit information about one’s identity (Do I want to upload a video of myself on YouTube, post a photo of myself on Facebook that hides my face, tweet to my friends, or blog anonymously?; see Valkenburg & Peter, 2011 ). Given these affordances, youth actively manipulate and control the identities they project to audiences on new media websites ( Manago, Graham, Greenfield, & Salimkhan, 2008 ; Zhao, Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008 ). They craft their profiles for particular audiences, choose flattering pictures, and select clever comments. Control does not necessarily translate into false identities online, but rather, it is about increased capability to manicure a reflection of the self that one consciously desires to project. Moreover, increased control may intensify young people’s capacity to imagine possible selves, reify those idealized selves into a digital format, and circulate them within online networks ( Manago et al., 2008 ).

Circulation of manicured selves in social spaces is an important component to identity development via self-expression using new media. Online audiences contribute commentary to online performances that corroborate and add legitimacy to online identity claims ( boyd & Heer, 2006 ). Also, the more frequently and elaborately facets of the self are shared with others, the more likely those qualities are internalized and integrated into one’s self-concept ( Baumeister, 1986 ). Thus, online public expressions are a way to seek feedback from an audience of sounding boards in the process of reifying a self one desires to be. One study with Dutch adolescents showed boosts in self-esteem with positive comments in response to online expressions in social networking sites ( Valkenburg, Peter, & Schouten, 2006 ). Other studies have found that receiving attention for one’s status updates is an important source of social support for college youth in the millennial generation ( Deters & Mehl, 2012 ; Manago et al., 2012 ). Online feedback may be received even more intensely than offline feedback because of its digital resonance and replicability—that is, online commentaries have a permanence that offline utterances do not have, and they can be shared and distributed more widely ( boyd, 2008 ).

This public nature of online self-expressions may intensify a self-consciousness regarding how one appears to others during identity development. For example, emerging adults using Twitter showed elaborate and complex considerations of their online reputations, which included desires to project their everyday lived experience into cyberspace and be perceived as “authentic” (Marwick & boyd, 2010). They were also experiencing what the authors call “context collapse,” the consolidation of all one’s social connections into one amorphous audience of diverse values, opinions, and perspectives so that it is impossible to target one’s communications to a particular listener. For this reason, the recipient of one’s communications is an “imagined audience” making the interpersonal connection increasingly distant, abstract, present for personal gratification, and imagined for the purpose of one’s own need to be heard.

Imagined audiences may explain why simply “writing oneself into being” online, even without the feedback, can lead to higher levels of self-esteem. A correlational study found that college students who report using Facebook to present themselves favorably (i.e., “I only show the happy side of me”) feel better about themselves and their lives compared to those who do not present themselves favorably ( Kim & Lee, 2011 ). Two experimental studies showed that college students assigned to a task in the presence of their Facebook profile ( Gonzales & Hancock, 2011 ) or asked to write about their Facebook profile ( Gentile, Twenge, Freeman, & Campbell, 2012 ) had higher levels of self-esteem after the manipulation compared to participants in control groups. The authors of these studies interpret their findings by suggesting that participants were likely experiencing a polished version of themselves occupying a virtual public social space.

Studies such as these have led some to speculate that new media have increased narcissism in the millennium generation in the United States ( Malikhao & Servaes, 2011 ; Twenge, 2013 ). Indeed, there are correlations between narcissistic personality and Facebook use among college students in Western countries such as Canada ( Mehdizadeh, 2010 ) and Australia ( Ryan & Xenos, 2011 ), and it is most strongly associated with using Facebook to post status updates and pictures of oneself. One study with Chinese university students also found associations between narcissistic personality and the frequency with which users post status updates and upload attractive photos ( Wang, Jackson, Zhang, & Su, 2012 ). Even among 10- to 12-year-olds, research in the United States has found that fame is a salient value in their future goals and seems to be internalized from engagement with the popular culture associated with new media ( Uhls & Greenfield, 2012 ).

Manago (2014) has proposed that increasing messages about fame and celebrity in popular media ( Uhls & Greenfield, 2011 ), combined with new capabilities to manicure and broadcast the self to large online audiences, promotes a form of identity development that increasingly looks like a branding of the self, similar to a commercially advertised product. On the one hand, this could be positive for identity consolidation: enhanced capacities for personal exploration and commitment to public articulations of the self to (real or imagined) audiences could promote a coherent and stable sense of self. On the other hand, branding the self may be driving youth to increasingly value themselves based on external appearances. In fact, frequency of photo sharing on Facebook correlated with increased centrality of appearance and social approval in one’s self-worth among a sample of North American college students ( Stefanone, Lackaff, & Rosen, 2011 ). Privately based standards of self-worth, such as virtue and family, were negatively correlated with Facebook use.

Facebook use also provokes social comparison among young people such that people tend to feel worse about themselves the more they observe self-promotional content on Facebook ( Haferkamp & Kramer, 2011 ). Among 15-year-old girls in Australia, Internet use is associated with appearance comparison and body dissatisfaction ( Tiggemann & Miller, 2010 ). Studies on new media and preoccupation with external appearances in identity development have been mostly conducted among more individualistic samples in the West with longer histories of Gesellschaft conditions; however, they may be the “canaries in the coal mine,” alerting us to the potential pitfalls of new media as they spread around the world. Future digital generations will face an important task in development to balance online expressions and branding of the self with close face-to-face relationships offline. Although it will be increasingly adaptive to move dexterously through various social communities and utilize online tools to manifest the type of person one would like to become, well-being may also depend on youth being engaged in committed, close relationships that are not contingent upon being an attractive persona in cyberspace.

We have presented developmental mechanisms by which new media drive development toward increasing individualism. We established basic principles regarding their impact on relationship development (increasing orientation to peers, relationship breadth, and choice) and on identity development (increased capacities for control and emphasis on exploration, self-expression, and hybrid identities). Greenfield’s (2009) theory related societal shifts to developmental shifts, predicting that new media will everywhere push development in the same direction. However, cultural nuances in the specifics are also likely—history, philosophical traditions, and institutions established during long periods of Gemeinschaft sociodemographic conditions may influence how youth and families use new media. We provided some examples of this phenomenon and highlighted the media practice model ( Steele & Brown, 1995 ) perspective that suggests youth in various places around the world will engage with media differently depending on their own values and identity concerns; yet, interactive media always move them in directions posited by Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development. We also showed evidence of universal tensions in intergenerational relationships that arise with a swifter pace of change toward Gesellschaft conditions. Our chapter is a starting point for understanding how new media and cultural traditions interact with globalization and sociodemographic change to produce changes in human development in coming generations of the new millennium.

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Neuroscience and Techno-politics: toward a Common Framework

Digital security: 5 alternatives to passwords, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, what’s happening in the arctic affects us all, featured author, latest book, the new media’s role in politics.

The new media environment is dynamic and continues to develop in novel, sometimes unanticipated, ways that have serious consequences for democratic governance and politics. New media have radically altered the way that government institutions operate, the way that political leaders communicate, the manner in which elections are contested, and citizen engagement. This chapter will briefly address the evolution of new media, before examining in greater detail their role in and consequences for political life.

New political media are forms of communication that facilitate the production, dissemination, and exchange of political content on platforms and within networks that accommodate interaction and collaboration. They have evolved rapidly over the past three decades, and continue to develop in novel, sometimes unanticipated ways. New media have wide-ranging implications for democratic governance and political practices. They have radically altered the ways in which government institutions operate and political leaders communicate. They have transformed the political media system, and redefined the role of journalists. They have redefined the way elections are contested, and how citizens engage in politics.

The rise of new media has complicated the political media system. Legacy media consisting of established mass media institutions that predate the Internet, such as newspapers, radio shows, and television news programs, coexist with new media that are the outgrowth of technological innovation. While legacy media maintain relatively stable formats, the litany of new media, which includes websites, blogs, video-sharing platforms, digital apps, and social media, are continually expanding in innovative ways. Mass media designed to deliver general interest news to broad audiences have been joined by niche sources that narrowcast to discrete users (Stroud, 2011). New media can relay information directly to individuals without the intervention of editorial or institutional gatekeepers, which are intrinsic to legacy forms. Thus, new media have introduced an increased level of instability and unpredictability into the political communication process.

The relationship between legacy media and new media is symbiotic. Legacy media have incorporated new media into their reporting strategies. They distribute material across an array of old and new communication platforms. They rely on new media sources to meet the ever-increasing demand for content. Despite competition from new media, the audiences for traditional media remain robust, even if they are not as formidable as in the past. Readers of the print edition of The New York Times and viewers of the nightly network news programs far outnumber those accessing the most popular political news websites (Wired Staff, 2017). Cable and network television news remain the primary sources of political information for people over the age of thirty (Mitchell and Holcomb, 2016). Consequently, new media rely on their legacy counterparts to gain legitimacy and popularize their content.

Ideally, the media serve several essential roles in a democratic society. Their primary purpose is to inform the public, providing citizens with the information needed to make thoughtful decisions about leadership and policy. The media act as watchdogs checking government actions. They set the agenda for public discussion of issues, and provide a forum for political expression. They also facilitate community building by helping people to find common causes, identify civic groups, and work toward solutions to societal problems.

The diversity of content disseminated by new media has created opportunities such as the ability for more voices to be heard.

New media have the potential to satisfy these textbook functions. They provide unprecedented access to information, and can reach even disinterested audience members through personalized, peer-to-peer channels, like Facebook. As average people join forces with the established press to perform the watchdog role, public officials are subject to greater scrutiny. Issues and events that might be outside the purview of mainstream journalists can be brought into prominence by ordinary citizens. New media can foster community building that transcends physical boundaries through their extensive networking capabilities. Although legacy media coverage of political events correlates with increased political engagement among the mass public, mainstream journalists do not believe that encouraging participation is their responsibility (Hayes and Lawless, 2016). However, new media explicitly seek to directly engage the public in political activities, such as voting, contacting public officials, volunteering in their communities, and taking part in protest movements.

At the same time, the new media era has acerbated trends that undercut the ideal aims of a democratic press. The media disseminate a tremendous amount of political content, but much of the material is trivial, unreliable, and polarizing. The watchdog role pre-new media had been performed largely by trained journalists who, under the best of circumstances, focused on uncovering the facts surrounding serious political transgressions. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein inspired a generation of investigative journalists after revealing President Richard Nixon’s role in the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, forcing his resignation (Shepard, 2012). Much news in the new media era is defined by coverage of a never-ending barrage of sensational scandals—be they real, exaggerated, or entirely fabricated—that often are only tangentially related to governing.

This chapter begins by briefly addressing the evolution of new media in the United States to establish the core characteristics of the current political media system. We then will focus on the role of media in providing information in a democratic polity, and will examine the ways in which new media have impacted this role. The diversity of content disseminated by new media has created opportunities, such as the ability for more voices to be heard. However, the questionable quality of much of this information raises serious issues for democratic discourse. Next, we will discuss how the new media are integral to political coverage in a post-truth society, where falsehoods infused with tidbits of fact pass as news. Finally, we will contemplate the ways in which the watchdog press is being overshadowed by the mouthpiece press which serves as a publicity machine for politicians.

The Evolution of New Media

New media emerged in the late 1980s when entertainment platforms, like talk radio, television talk shows, and tabloid newspapers, took on prominent political roles and gave rise to the infotainment genre. Infotainment obscures the lines between news and entertainment, and privileges sensational, scandal-driven stories over hard news (Jebril, et al., 2013). Politicians turned to new media to circumvent the mainstream press’ control over the news agenda. The infotainment emphasis of new media at this early stage offered political leaders and candidates a friendlier venue for presenting themselves to the public than did hard news outlets (Moy, et al., 2009). During the 1992 presidential election, Democratic candidate Bill Clinton famously appeared on Arsenio Hall’s television talk show wearing sunglasses and playing the saxophone, which created a warm, personal image that set the tone for his campaign (Diamond, et al., 1993). The fusing of politics and entertainment attracted audiences that typically had been disinterested in public affairs (Williams and Delli Carpini, 2011). It also prompted the ascendance of celebrity politicians, and set the stage for a “reality TV” president like Donald Trump decades later.

Political observers and scholars contemplated the advent of a “new media populism” that would engage disenfranchised citizens and facilitate a more active role for the public in political discourse. New media had the potential to enhance people’s access to political information, facilitate wider-ranging political discourse, and foster participation. Initially, the public responded positively to the more accessible communication channels, calling in to political talk programs and participating in online town hall meetings. However, new media’s authentic populist potential was undercut by the fact that the new political media system evolved haphazardly, with no guiding principles or goals. It was heavily dominated by commercial interests and those already holding privileged positions in politics and the news industry. Public enthusiasm eventually gave way to ambivalence and cynicism, especially as the novelty of the first phase of new media wore off (Davis and Owen, 1998).

The next phase in the development of new media unfolded in conjunction with the application of emerging digital communications technologies to politics that made possible entirely new outlets and content delivery systems. The digital environment and the platforms it supports greatly transformed the political media system. Beginning in the mid-1990s, new political media platforms quickly progressed from the rudimentary “brochureware” website, used by Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, to encompass sites with interactive features, discussion boards, blogs, online fundraising platforms, volunteer recruitment sites, and meet-ups. The public became more involved with the actual production and distribution of political content. Citizen journalists were eyewitnesses to events that professional journalists did not cover. Non-elites offered their perspectives on political affairs to politicians and peers. Members of the public also were responsible for recording and posting videos that could go viral and influence the course of events (Wallsten, 2010). In 2006, for example, the reelection campaign of Republican Senator George Allen was derailed by a viral video in which he used the term “macaca,” a racial slur, to refer to a young man of Indian ancestry who was attending his campaign rally (Craig and Shear, 2006).

A third phase in the evolution of new media is marked by Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s groundbreaking digital campaign strategy in the 2008 presidential election. Obama’s team revolutionized the use of social media in an election they felt was unwinnable using traditional techniques. The campaign made use of advanced digital media features that capitalized on the networking, collaboration, and community-building potential of social media to create a political movement. The Obama campaign website was a full-service, multimedia center where voters not only could access information, they also could watch and share videos, view and distribute campaign ads, post comments, and blog. Supporters could donate, volunteer, and purchase campaign logo items, like tee shirts and caps. The campaign was active on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as a range of other social media platforms that catered to particular constituencies, such as BlackPlanet, AsianAve, and Glee. The campaign pioneered digital microtargeting tactics. It used social media to collect data on people’s political and consumer preferences, and created voter profiles to pursue specific groups, such as young professional voters, with customized messages.

The new media trends established in the 2008 campaign have carried over to the realm of government and politics more generally. Social media have become a pervasive force in politics, altering the communication dynamics between political leaders, journalists, and the public. They have opened up wider avenues for instantaneous political discourse and debate. Research indicates that people’s access to social media networks has a positive effect on their sense of political efficacy and tendency to participate in politics (Gil de Zuniga, et al., 2010). However, there also has been backlash when social media discourse has become too nasty, and users have blocked content or dropped out of their social media networks (Linder, 2016). Social media allow people to efficiently organize and leverage their collective influence. Thus, political leaders are held more accountable because their actions are constantly probed on social media.

Members of the public also were responsible for recording and posting videos that could go viral and influence the course of events.

At the same time, legacy media organizations have come to rely on aspects of new media. Newspapers, in particular, have experienced financial hardships due adverse financial market conditions, declining advertising revenues, and competition from proliferating news sources. The size of traditional newsrooms in the U.S. has shrunk by more than 20,000 positions in the past twenty years, and global newsrooms have experienced a similar decline (Owen, 2017). Legacy news organizations have cut investigative units, and only around one-third of reporters are assigned to political beats (Mitchell and Holcomb, 2016). Alicia Shepard, a former media ombudsman and media literacy advocate, opined, “When newspapers can’t even cover daily journalism, how are they going to invest in long-term, expensive investigative reporting?” (2012). Still, journalists working for legacy organizations continue to do the yeoman’s share of serious news gathering and investigative reporting. Mainstream journalists have come to rely heavily on new media content as a source of news. These trends have seriously influenced the quality and nature of news content as well as the style of political reporting, which has become more heavily infused with infotainment and quotes from Twitter feeds.

Providing Political Information

The complexities of the new media system are reflected in the diversity of available content. The information distributed via the vast communications network runs the gamut from fact-based, investigative reporting from professional journalists to brash fabrications or “alternative facts”—to use the term coined by President Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway—proffered by the alternative press (Graham, 2017). In the new media era, the boundaries that separate these disparate types of information have become increasing muddled. Professional media editors who regulate the flow of information by applying news principles and standards associated with the public good have become scarce (Willis, 1987). They have been replaced by social media and analytics editors whose primary motivation is to draw users to content regardless of its news value. Audience members have to work hard to distinguish fact from fiction, and to differentiate what matters from what is inconsequential.

A number of explanations can be offered for the shift in the quality and quantity of political information. The technological affordances of new media allow content to propagate seemingly without limits. Social media have a dramatically different structure than previous media platforms. Content can be relayed with no significant third-party filtering, fact-checking, or editorial judgement. Individuals lacking prior journalism training or reputation can reach many users at lightningfast speed. Messages multiply as they are shared across news platforms and via personal social networking accounts (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017).

In addition, the economic incentives underpinning new media companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are predicated on attracting large audiences that will draw advertising revenue. Political content is used to drive consumers to social media products, rather than to perform the public service function of informing the citizenry. Commercial pressures lead media organizations to feature incendiary stories that receive the most attention. Further, while platforms proliferate, similar content is dispersed widely as media power is concentrated in a small number of old and new media corporations (McChesney, 2015). Search engines direct users to a limited selection of heavily trafficked and well-financed sites (Hindman, 2009; Pariser, 2011).

Other explanations focus on the nature of the American political environment that has become extremely polarized, prompting the emergence of political agendas that promote rogue politics. A 2017 Pew Research Center study revealed that the gap between Democrats and Republicans on core political values, including the role of government, race, immigration, the social safety net, national security, taxes, and environmental protection, have grown to epic proportions for the modern era. Two-thirds of Americans fall solidly in the liberal or conservative camp, with few holding a mix of ideological positions (Pew Research Center, 2017; Kiley, 2017).

Speech on new media reflects these stark political divisions, and frequently devolves into expressions of hostility and ad hominem attacks. President Donald Trump used Twitter to ignite a controversy over NFL players who protested racial oppression during the playing of the national anthem before games. He used a derogatory term to refer to players, who are predominantly African American, and urged team owners to fire those supporting the demonstration. Trump’s social media blasts accused the players of disrespecting the flag and the military, which misrepresents the protest agenda and has divided the public along political and racial lines.

Political divisions are reflected in the presence of media “echo chambers,” where people select their news and information sources based on their affinity for the politics of other users. Modern-day new media echo chambers began to form during the first phase of new media, as conservative talk radio hosts, like Rush Limbaugh, attracted dedicated followers (Jamieson and Cappella, 2010). Social media has hastened the development of echo chambers, as they facilitate people’s exposure to information shared by like-minded individuals in their personal digital networks, with 62% of adult Americans getting their news from social media platforms. Even politically disinterested social media users frequently encounter news articles unintentionally as they scan their feed (Gottfried and Shearer, 2016). The ability of social media to isolate people from exposure to those with differing viewpoints exacerbates political polarization.

A significant segment of the public perceives journalists as removed elites who do not share their conservative values. Political analyst Nate Silver (2017) contends that the national press has been operating in a politically homogenous, metropolitan, liberal-leaning bubble that has become attached to “Establishment Influentials”. He maintains that the mainstream media are out-of-touch with a wide swath of the public. During the recent election this became clear as legacy media institutions are unable to connect effectively with the frustration and anger of people outside of high education and income circles (Camosy, 2016).

Some scholars argue that new media are closing the gap between distant journalists and the mass public by giving voice to those who have felt left out (Duggan and Smith, 2016). The Tea Party, a conservative political movement focused around issues about taxation and the national debt, used social networks for political mobilization in the 2010 midterm elections. Tea Party candidates employed social media to reshape public discourse around the campaign, forging a sense of solidarity among groups who previously felt disenfranchised (Williamson, Skocpol, and Coggin, 2011). Candidates pushing an extreme agenda have amplified this trend. Highly partisan, flamboyant congressional candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who spark political disagreement and indignant rhetoric garner the most supporters on Facebook. They use social media to solidify their political base (Messing and Weisel, 2017).

Post-Truth Media

American author Ralph Keyes (2004) observes that society has entered a posttruth era. Deception has become a defining characteristic of modern life, and is so pervasive that people are desensitized to its implications. He laments the fact that ambiguous statements containing a kernel of authenticity, but falling short of the truth, have become the currency of politicians, reporters, corporate executives, and other power-brokers.

Journalist Susan Glasser (2016) argues that journalism has come to reflect the realities of reporting in post-truth America. Objective facts are subordinate to emotional appeals and personal beliefs in shaping public opinion. The public has difficulty distinguishing relevant news about weighty policy issues from the extraneous clamor that permeates the media. The work of investigative journalists has in some ways has become more insightful and informed than in the past due to the vast resources available for researching stories, including greater access to government archives and big data analysis. However, well-documented stories are obscured by the constant drone of repetitive, sensationalized trivia-bites that dominate old and new media. Reflecting on coverage of the last American presidential contest, Glasser states, “The media scandal of 2016 isn’t so much about what reporters fail to tell the American public; it’s about what they did report on, and the fact that it didn’t seem to matter” (2016).

Evidence that Glasser’s concerns are well-founded can be compiled by examining media content on a daily basis. Post-truth media was prominent during the 2016 presidential election. Media accounts of the election were infused with misinformation, baseless rumors, and outright lies. False stories and unverified factoids emanated from fabricated news sites as well as the social media accounts of the candidates and their surrogates. Republican nominee Donald Trump used his Twitter feed to push out sensational, unverified statements that would dominate the news agenda, a practice he maintained after assuming the presidency. He alleged that the father of Ted Cruz, his challenger for the nomination, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and perpetuated the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States (Carson, 2017). False news stories infiltrated reports by legacy media organizations as they relied heavily on digital sources for information. Cable news organizations like CNN and MSNBC amplified Trump’s unfounded claims, such as his allegations that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11, even as they criticized their veracity (Shafer, 2015).

Contrived controversies detract from coverage of important issues related to policy, process, and governance (Horton, 2017). In October of 2017, President Donald Trump and Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) exchanged a series of insults as Congress considered major tax reforms. The feud dominated coverage of the battle over tax legislation on new media, and commanded the front page of The New York Times . Among the many insults slung over the course of several weeks, Trump referred to Corker as “Liddle Bob,” and tweeted that Corker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher.” Corker called the White House “an adult day care center,” and labeled Trump “an utterly untruthful president” (Sullivan, 2017).

The Ascendance of Fake News

The most extreme illustration of the concept of post-truth reporting is the rise of fake news. The definition of fake news has shifted over time, and continues to be fluid. Initially, the term “fake news” referred to news parodies and satire, such as The Daily Show , The Colbert Report , and Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live . During the 2016 campaign, the concept of fake news was attached to fictitious stories made to appear as if they were real news articles. These stories were disseminated on websites that had the appearance of legitimate news platforms or blogs, such as Infowars , The Rightest , and National Report . A 2017 compilation documented 122 sites that routinely publish fake news (Chao, et al., 2017). Authors are paid—sometimes thousands of dollars—to write or record false information. Some of these authors are based in locations outside of the United States, including Russia (Shane, 2017). They make use of social media interactions and algorithms to disseminate content to specific ideological constituencies. Fabricated stories are spread virally by social bots, automated software that replicates messages by masquerading as a person (Emerging Technology from the arXiv, 2017).

Objective facts are subordinate to emotional appeals and personal beliefs in shaping public opinion.

Fake news stories play to people’s preexisting beliefs about political leaders, parties, organizations, and the mainstream news media. While some fake news stories are outright fabrications, others contain elements of truth that make them seem credible to audiences ensconced in echo chambers. Conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and lies were spread efficiently through Facebook, Snapchat, and other social media, and reached millions of voters in the 2016 election (Oremus, 2016). For example, a fabricated story on The Denver Gardian , a fake site meant to emulate the legitimate newspaper, The Denver Post , reported that an F.B.I. agent connected with an investigation into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails had murdered his wife and shot himself. Other erroneous reports claimed that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump and that Hillary Clinton had sold weapons to ISIS (Rogers and Bromwich, 2016).

Conditions in the new media age have been ripe for the proliferation of fake news. The new media system has lifted many of the obstacles to producing and distributing news that were present in the previous mass media age. While vestiges of the digital divide persist, especially among lower-income families (Klein, 2017), barriers to new media access have been lowered. The cost of producing and distributing information on a wide scale have been reduced. The logistics and skills necessary to create content are less formidable. Social networking sites make it possible to build and maintain audiences of like-minded people who will trust posted content. Fake news proliferates widely through social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. In fact, fake news stories are spread more widely on Facebook than factual mainstream media reports (Silverman, 2016). Audiences are fooled and confused by fake news, which confounds basic facts about politics and government with fiction. A 2016 Pew Research Center report found that 64% of the American public found that made-up news created a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current events, and an additional 24% believed fake news caused some confusion (Barthel, Mitchell, and Holcomb, 2016). Finally, legal challenges to fake news and the distribution of false content are much more difficult to pose, as it is costly and time-consuming to sue publishers for spreading false information.

An alternative meaning of fake news emerged after the presidential election. At his first press conference as President-elect, Donald Trump appropriated the term “fake news” as a derogatory reference to the mainstream press. Pointing at CNN journalist Jim Acosta, who was attempting to ask a question, Trump exclaimed, “You are fake news!” Trump and his acolytes frequently employ the “fake news” moniker when attempting to delegitimize the legacy media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post , for reporting they consider to be unfavorable (Carson, 2017). Weary of Trump repeatedly invoking the “fake news” label, CNN launched a “Facts First” campaign in response to “consistent attacks from Washington and beyond.” A thirty second video shows an image of an apple, with the voice over:

This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you this is a banana. They might scream banana, banana, banana, over and over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe that this is a banana. But it’s not. This is an apple.

Facts are facts. They aren’t colored by emotion or bias. They are indisputable. There is no alternative to a fact. Facts explain things. What they are, how they happened. Facts are not interpretations. Once facts are established, opinions can be formed. And while opinions matter, they don’t change the facts. (https://www.cnncreativemarketing.com/project/cnn_factsfirst/)

Watchdog Press or Politicians’ Mouthpiece

The notion of the press as a political watchdog casts the media as a guardian of the public interest. The watchdog press provides a check on government abuses by supplying citizens with information and forcing government transparency. Public support for the media’s watchdog role is substantial, with a Pew Research Center study finding that 70% of Americans believe that press reporting can “prevent leaders from doing things that shouldn’t be done” (Chinni and Bronston, 2017).

New media have enhanced the capacity of reporters to fulfill their watchdog role, even in an era of dwindling resources for investigative journalism. Information can be shared readily through formal media sources, as local news outlets can pass information about breaking events to national organizations. News also can be documented and shared by citizens through social networks. When a vicious category 5 hurricane devastated Puerto Rico and the American government’s response was slow, journalists were able to surface the story as residents and first responders took to social media to provide first-hand accounts to national journalists who had difficulty reaching the island (Vernon, 2017).

However, there are aspects of the media’s watchdog role that have become more difficult to fulfill. Countering outright lies by public officials has almost become an exercise in futility, even as fact-checking has become its own category of news. The Washington Post ’s “Fact Checker” identified almost 1,500 false claims made by President Trump in just over 250 days in office (www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker). Sites focusing on setting the record straight, such as PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck, can barely keep pace with the amount of material that requires checking Despite these efforts, false information on the air and online has multiplied.

There is evidence to suggest that the new media allow political leaders to do an end-run around the watchdog press. In some ways, the press has moved from being a watchdog to a mouthpiece for politicians. This tendency is exacerbated by the fact that there is a revolving door where working journalists move between positions in the media and government. Some scholars maintain that this revolving door compromises the objectivity of journalists who view a government job as the source of their next paycheck (Shepard, 1997).

The media act as a mouthpiece for political leaders by publicizing their words and actions even when their news value is questionable. President Donald Trump uses Twitter as a mechanism for getting messages directly to his followers while averting journalistic and political gatekeepers, including high ranking members of his personal staff. Many of his tweets are of questionable news value, except for the fact that they emanate from the president’s personal social media account. Yet the press act as a mouthpiece by promoting his tweets. A silly or vicious tween can dominate several news cycles. In an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiomo, President Trump gave his reason for using social media to communication with the public and the press that supports the notion of the mouthpiece media:

Tweeting is like a typewriter—when I put it out, you put it immediately on your show. I mean, the other day, I put something out, two seconds later I am watching your show, it’s up… You know, you have to keep people interested. But, social media, without social media, I am not sure that we would be here talking I would probably not be here talking (Tatum, 2017).

When rumors and conspiracy theories are believed, they can have serious consequences. This point is illustrated by the “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory that spread on social media during the 2016 presidential election. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta, were accused of engaging in satanic rituals where they personally “chopped up and raped” children. Wikileaks released personal emails from Podesta’s account indicating that he enjoyed eating at a pizza restaurant Washington, D.C. The Twitter hashtag #pizzagate began trending. Rumors alleging that the restaurant’s owner was running a child sex ring began circulating. Believing the rumors to be true, a man drove from North Carolina to liberate the purported child sex slaves. He fired an assault rifle inside the pizza restaurant as staff and patrons fled. He is currently serving a four-year prison sentence (Aisch, et al., 2016; Fisher, et al., 2016).

New media have both expanded and undercut the traditional roles of the press in a democratic society. On the positive side, they have vastly increased the potential for political information to reach even the most disinterested citizens. They enable the creation of digital public squares where opinions can be openly shared. They have created new avenues for engagement that allow the public to connect in new ways with government, and to contribute to the flow of political information.

At the same time, the coalescence of the rise of new media and post-truth society has made for a precarious situation that subverts their beneficial aspects. Presently, it appears as if there are few effective checks on the rising tide of false information. Substituting scandal coverage for serious investigative journalism has weakened the press’ watchdog role. The ambiguous position of the media as a mouthpiece for politicians renders journalists complicit in the proliferation of bad information and faulty facts. It is important to recognize that American journalism has never experienced a “golden age” where facts always prevailed and responsible reporting was absolute. However, the current era may mark a new low for the democratic imperative of a free press.

Aisch, Gregor, Jon Huang, and Cecilia Kang. 2016. “Dissecting the #PizzaGate Conspiracy Theories,” The New York Times, December 10. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/10/business/media/pizzagate.html?_r=0

Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. 2017. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 31, no. 2: 211-236.

Barthel, Michael, Amy Mitchell, and Jesse Holcomb. 2016. “Many Americans Believe Fake News Is Sowing Confusion.” Research Report. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center. http://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americansbelieve-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/

Camosy, Charles. 2016. “Trump Won Because College-Educated Americans Are Out of Touch,” The Washington Post, November 9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-college-educated-americans-are-out-of-touch/?utm_term=.b900fe12b964

Carson, James. 2017. “What is Fake News? Its Origins and How It Grew in 2016,” The Telegraph, March 10. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/fake-news-origins-grew-2016/

Chinni, Dante, and Sally Bronston. 2017. “Despite Attacks on the Press, Public Supports Watchdog Role,” NBC News, July 9. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/despite-attacks-press-public-supports-watchdog-role-n781046

Craig, Tim, and Michael D. Shear. 2006. “Allen Quip Provokes Outrage, Apology,” The Washington Post, August 15. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589.html

Davis, Richard, and Diana Owen. 1998. New Media and American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Diamond, Edwin, Martha McKay, and Robert Silverman. 1993. “Pop Goes Politics: New Media, Interactive Formats, and the 1992 Presidential Campaign,” American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 37, no. 2: 257-261.

Duggan, Maeve, and Aaron Smith. 2016. The Political Environment on Social Media. Research Report. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/25/political-content-on-social-media/

Emerging Technology from the arXiv. 2017. “First Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role in Spreading Fake News,” MIT Technology Review, August 7. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608561/first-evidence-that-social-bots-play-amajor-role-in-spreading-fake-news/

Fisher, Mark, John Woodrow Cox, and Peter Hermann. 2016. “Pizzagate: From Rumor, To Hashtag, To Gunfire in D.C.,” Washington Post, December 6. file:///C:/Users/Diana/Dropbox/Sabato%20Volume%202016/Pizzagate_%20>From%20rumor,%20to%20hashtag,%20to%20gunfire%20in%20D.C.pdf

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Geert Lovink

New media, art and science, explorations beyond the official discourse, geert lovink — october 20, 2005, texts — english.

http://www.map.com.au

(This essay was first published in Scott McQuire/Nikos Papastergiadis (ed.), Empires, Ruins + Networks, University of Melbourne Press, Melbourne, 2005, http://www.mup.com.au).

Disclaimer: in this essay I want to raise the topic why new media arts is perceived as such a closed and self-referential scene. Why can’t artists who experiment with the latest technologies be part of pop culture and the arts market? What’s the after-effect of the ‘exhuberant’ dotcom era? And why is there there such a subordinate attitude towards academic science within new media arts? And is the educational sector the only way out? In what follows, I am reluctant to list specific examples of artworks for fear of diluting the general argument. Each and every argument can be falsified with reference to specific projects that prove the opposite of what I am trying to prove. What I am interested in is the broader tendency in which new media arts currently exists—a situation I will argue is unnecessarily constraining at a time of rapid commercial development and social take of new media forms. The immediate call for ‘positive examples’ and ‘alternatives’ is not a constructive attitude but part of the problem because it averts to make an actual institutional power analysis.

I feel compelled to start with a definition. New media arts can best be described as a transitional, hybrid art form, a multi-disciplinary ‘cloud’ of micro-practices 1 . Historically ‘new media’ arose when the boundaries between clearly seperated artforms such as film, theatre and photography began to blur, due to rise of digital technologies 2 . Its beginnings are currently being investigated by scholars such as Dieter Daniels (Leipzig), Charlie Gere (London), Stephen Jones (Sydney), Paul Brown (Goldcoast) and Oliver Grau (Berlin) 3 . The emerging field of ‘media archeology’ as excercised by Zielinski, Huhtamo and others will contribute to this effort, as well as studies by sociologists and art historians. Before we can start speculating about its becomings, it is time to analyse the stagnant new media arts with the tools of institutional criticism.

The birth of new media is closely tied to the democratization of computers. According to  some it is an art form is born out of the Geist of Fluxus with its video art and performance. Others stress the  influence of seventies electronic music and post-industrial art and activism of the eighties. The term ‘new media art’ only arrived as a set of practices in the late eighties, and is specifically tied to the rise of desktop publishing and the production of CD-ROMs. Internet involvement started relatively late, from 1994-95 onwards, after the World Wide Web had been introduced. New media art is first of all part of the larger ‘visual culture’ context. While it has  strong ties to written discourses, computer code, sound,  as well as abstract and conceptual art and performance, we can nonetheless say that the visual arts element forms the dominant thread. The problem of with these accounts of the ‘beginnings’ of new media art however is their overemphasis on individual artists and their works. Such accounts lack institutional awareness.  Whereas technology developed fast, institutional understanding in this sector has been equally slow. In this respect, new media art is a misnomer, since it reproduced time and again the modernist dilemma between aesthetic autonomy and social engagement. Add the word ‘art’ and you create a problem. In the case of new media arts there was–and still is–no market, no galleries, few curators and critics, and no audience. And most of all: there is no ‘suprematist’ feeling of acting as an avant-garde. What is lacking here is historical confidence. Instead, there is a strong sense of conducting ‘minor’ practices in the shadow of established practices such as film, visual arts, television, computer animation, games and graphic design.

New media art, as defined by, for instance, the Australia Council, is a process where new technologies are used by artists to create works that explore new modes of artistic expression. These new technologies include computers, information and communications technology, virtual or immersive environments, or sound engineering. They are the brushes and pens of a new generation of artists. 4 ” The emphasis here is on exploration. New media art is searching for new standards and art forms. Its prime aim is not necessarily to create everlasting universal artworks. Instead, it paves the way for a next generation to make full use of the newly discovered language—outside of the new media arts context. The emphasis on the creation of a language, an infrastructure, could explain why there is so much hidden, voluntary work done in this scene and why self-exploitation is so common. Only pioneers understand that one first needs to create a language in order to write a poem. However, the ‘laws of new media’ are not simply there to be uncovered. What some see as an advantage, not having a complex set of rules and references, others such as myself judge as an inherently immature situation.

We have to be specific, that’s true. Political climates in Western countries wildly vary. Whereas e-culture funding in the Netherlands has gone up over the past years, the situation in Berlin, Paris and London, for instance, remains bleak. Academia remains a safe haven in the USA with little cultural funding available elsewhere. Yet, the overall tendency of stagnation is clear and needs to be analysed. This critique is not meant to disdainfully look down on the yawning vacancy of the technological sublime 5 . New media arts is not a single entity. It is ‘searching’ and does not primarily focus on grand narratives or finished works that can be purchased in a gallery. They are forms in search of a forms.  As testbeds they obviously lack content. Many of the works are neither ‘cool’ nor ironical, as so many pieces of contemporary art are. Instead, they often have a playful, nave feel. Electronic arts, a somewhat older term that is sometimes used as a synonym for new media arts, is an experimental setup rather than an established discipline that highly depends on the cultural parameters set by engineers. Many of the key players in the field position their practice in the fragile zone between ‘art’ and ‘technology’, which means asking for trouble. Because what does it mean to have to please both computer scientists and art curators? Neither the art world nor ICT professionals are  fans of electronic arts. Wunderkammer artworks are not in big demand. From the geek perspective they are made by users, not developers. New media artworks ‘apply’ new technologies and do not contribute to its further development. For the art professionals, on the other hand, new media art belongs in educational science museums and amusement parks rather than contemporary arts exhibitions. If we read the mainstream critics art should transmit Truth and Emotion. In today’s society of the spectacle there is no place for halfway art, no matter how many policy documents praise new media arts for its experimental attitude and Will to Innovate.

Myth of the Blank Page

There is a widely spread belief that new media art works have the potential to be works of ‘genius’. Supposedly there are not yet ‘traces’ or ‘fingerprints’ of the human on recently developed technologies and the artist therefore has the full range  of all possible forms of expression in front of him or her. Dirty society with its evil economic ‘pop’ interests has not yet spoiled the channel. The apparent absence of a digital aesthetics for PDAs, RFID tags, mobile phones etc. is exactly seen as its potential. According to this ‘myth of the blank page’ new media artists are not limited by existing cultural connotations because there are no media-specific references yet. It is the heroic task of the new media artist to define those cultural codes. In this argument the situation of new media art is too good to be true. The problem of this theory of the unspoiled perception is the uncritical belief in universal talent. So-called creative, contemporary artists on the other hand are focussed on the market. They have to subject themselves to the laws of fame and celebrity and cannot waste their time in such uncool environments as computer labs. For them, technology is merely a tool. But the search for the specificities of a new medium requires a long trial-and-error period in which funky images or experiences are not guaranteed. Pop and experiment do not go together very well. The geek as role model had its media moment during the Internet hype of the mid nineties, but then quickly faded away. And the geek aesthetics remained as bad as it always has been. This is media reality but the new media arts sector finds it hard to deal with. The uncool can only  be pop once, after its demise it’s just a failure.

The Desire to Be Science

There is an implicit holistic, New Age element behind the desire to create a synthesis between arts and technology–and not go for confrontation. It’s tempting to look away from the harsh reality of the arts markets. With the heroic Leonardo figure in mind, the ‘artist-engineer’ expects the world to embrace the desire to unite humanities and hard science. Much to their surprise, the world is not yet ready for such good ideas. Often the artist is not much more than a willing test user/ early adaptor. In itself this wouldn’t be such a problem. Who cares? But most new media art works are neither subversive nor overly conceptual or critical. To make things more complicated: they aren’t ‘pop’ either. The new media art genre can’t work out whether it’s underground or urban subculture. But new media arts never really became part of the techno, dance or rave party scene either–let alone a subculture; certainly, it’s never had anything to do with rap or other contemporary street cultures. VJ culture, for instance, is not part of the official new media arts canon. Like the self-insulated world of the ivory-tower modern academic, new media art situates itself in a media lab rather than a lounge club. The launch bed of works is the new media festival where like-minded collegues gather.

Instead of being loud and clear about the hybridity-in-flux, the somewhat odd and isolated situation of new media arts has turned into a taboo topic. A general discontent has been around for a while, in particularly as a privileged inner-circle has focused on excessively expensive interactive ‘baroque’ installations that could be found at in places like ZKM (Karlsruhe/Germany) and ICC (Tokyo). But that excessive period of the late nineties is over. We could almost become nostalgic about those roaring nineties. It was a good party for many and a goldmine for some. In contrast, this is a time of budget cuts, conceptual stagnation, artistic backlashes (with the ‘return’ of minimal painting), and political uncertainty–while simultaneously new media are penetrating  society in an unprecedented fashion.

It is not considered good form to openly raise ‘crisis’ issues in the new media area for the simple fact that the gloomy mood may endanger future projects, a next job or your upcoming application. ‘Negativism’ sticks to people in this scene, which is silently dominated by ‘new age’ positivism, driven by the common belief that technology will ultimately save us all. There are only rare cases of individuals who speak out openly. The rest eventually shut up and move on to become complicit  intraditional ‘contemporary arts’ or find a job in the industry. One source of the lack of negation could be the implicit influence of techno-libertarianism. Those who protest are quickly condemned as ‘enemies of the future’, but this is never done  out in the open.

The collective discursive poverty within new media arts explains the virtual absence of lively debates about art works. There is little institutional criticism. With mainstream media uninterested, the new media arts scene is fearful of potentially devastating internal debates. Rival academic disciplines and policy makers could be on the look out to kill budgets. Instead, a fuzzy tribal culture of consensus rules, based on goodwill and mutual trust. To develop a genuinely critical perspective on new media arts, one really has to either come from elsewhere, or move away from the scene to an entirely different field such as the commercial art world, pop culture or dance parties. For all these reasons, the scene remains small and is stagnating, despite the phenomenal growth of new media worldwide. This is not exactly what young, creative tinkerers expect. A growing number of young artists who work with technology avoid the ailing sector and find their own path, either via the established art sector, ‘tactical media’ activism or small businesses. At the same time there are painters, sculptors and fashion designers who use computers as the primary tool of design, yet explicitly leave out ‘new media’ in their public presentations.

Instead of taking the heroic stand of the avant-garde, many new media practioners have chosen to  simply ‘drift away’ in clouds of images, texts and URLs. There is a certain cosiness to hanging out in the networks and not being confronted with the world. The importance of vagueness cannot be underestimated. The blurry, background aspect of many works need to be acknowledged and taken seriously. In the present situation of immediate irrelevance, it is genuinely difficult to create a significant work that will have an impact. Digital aesthetics has developed a hyper-modern, formalist approach and lacks the critical rigour of standard contemporary arts pieces. Serious international curators simply cannot afford to include halfway ready ‘fairground’ installations that lack critical content and decent aesthetics. Marketing and attempts  at professionalization cannot overcome this basic mistrust.

If new media arts has such an emphasis on experimentation, collaboration with engineers, bio- scientists, innovative interfaces, then why it is it not simply giving up this tragic alliance with the arts and ruthlessly seeking to integrate itself in the world of IT business and computer science? Good question. It is only outsiders who can accuse the electronic arts of compliance with the ‘capitalist system’. The sad reality is that artists aren’t all that different from ordinary computer users, unless they are part of the celebrity high-end circuit. For the majority of artists access to technology is limited to consumer electronics. Often there is no money for more state of the art machines and software.

Industries already have their own networks who do the demo design. This is the true tragedy of new media arts. Those who turn new media inside out and develop an aesthetic agenda have no place in today’s production processes. Despite these institutional, disciplinary and economic realities, so many artists persist in their pursuit of a formalist nirvana. Is this symptomatic of a lack of imagination, or perhaps even an over-subscription to the exotica of the artist-identity?

If digital formalism, neither recognized by the museum, the market nor by the industry, is such a dead end street, then why aren’t artists walking over to the ‘content side’ and start producing interesting narratives? Certainly a lot of the new media artists try this move. But their stories are not connected to the mainstream distribution networks such as film, television and the publishing industry. This is why numerous CD-ROMs and DVDs do not even reach their own core audiences. It is not seen as a priority to build up distribution networks through, for instance, museum bookshops. Another reason for the reluctance to ‘comply’ is the wish to alter interfaces, software and even operating systems. Rightly so (or not?), new media arts feels uncomfortable using mainstream products such as Windows XP. Critique in this context is focused on underlying structures, not the superficial level of mediated representation. It is the architecture of the Internet and open standards of the Web that shape your surf experience, not this or that ‘cool’ homepage.

New media arts operates well beyond the logic of the demo design. Marketing something that has not been conceived as a product in the first place has proven next to impossible. Putting content online is a last resort, but funnily enough its not very popular amongst new media artists. The Internet is looked down upon as a primitive device, left to an in-crowd of ‘net artists’ that prefer to do formalistic experiments, combined with an subversive political action every now and then, such as those instigated by groups such as www.rtmark.com . New media arts is (rightly so) not interested in traditional politics, but has yet to reach its own phase of political correctness. Even though the presence of female curators and administors is substantial, this does not result into a more open field. Links to contemporary social movements are weak, and the awareness of post-colonial issues is absent. The ‘white’ scene is by and large an exchange between North-West-Central Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and Japan.

Another reason for the alleged ’emptyness’ of new media arts could be traced in the absence of regular critics and curators. Often there are technicians or IT managers around instead. There is no rich reference system or common language (even though, in theory, this could be constructed by now). Instead there is a romantic notion that artists are busy ‘inventing’ the language of new media. Its rare to see playful games of referencing to each others work. If classified, works appear under very general categories or are simply grouped under the rubric of the media they were produced in, or the genre it belongs to.

Life for artists in general is an uphill struggle and this particularly counts for those that deliberately position themselves in between disciplines. Instead of curiosity and support, what the pristine new media arts scene finds is a stiff competition between scientific disciplines, media and art forms. These are often fights over decreasing resources within a general climate of jealousy and ignorance. There is no convergence or harmony with the performing arts. Despite all the ideology, multi- and interdisciplinarity are at an all-time low. People simply can’t afford to jump over to a competing form of expression. Theatre has to look down on television. Video people are snobs when it comes to new media. There is nothing as trashy and second-rate as the Internet.

Much of what I write here is of a speculative nature and is formulated to open up a discussion, not to dump on specific persons or the pursuit of new media arts experiments. Allegations such as mafia networks, corruption and insider favours can be investigated but not published because they will be met with defamation claims. People in power, even in this relatively progressive scene, have their lawyers close at hand to silence dissent. It is an old boys club where only a handful of though ladies can survive, presuming they are playing the game. As I have indicated, a lack of a rich and diverse discourse is one of the many problems. Sectarianism is another. The new media scene, even on a global scale, is simply too small. But what is more surprising: it is not even growing. For instance, theatre itself becomes digital (stage design, light, music etc.). It doesn’t need the new media arts to do that. The same with film. The only observation one can make is that every civilized country needs to have its own festival or centre. But that doesn’t say much. What stagnates is the ‘penetration’ into society.

New media images are not sacred, nor do they have an aura. Instead, we could describe these images as technical in the spirit of Vilem Flusser’s definition of ‘technical images’. According to Flusser:

[I]t is difficult to decipher technical images, because they are apparently in no need of being deciphered. Their meaning seems to impress itself automatically on their surfaces, as in fingerprints where the meaning (the finger) is the cause and the image (the print) is the effect. (..) It seems that what one is seeing while looking at technical images are not symbols in need of deciphering, but symptoms of the world they mean, and that we can see this meaning through them however indirectly. This apparent non-symbolic, ‘objective’ character of technical images has the observer looking at them as if they were not really images, but a kind of window on the world. He trusts them as he trusts his own eyes. If he criticizes them at all, he does so not as a critique of image, but as a critique of vision; his critique is not concerned with their production, but with the world ‘as seen through’ them. Such a lack of critical attitude towards technical images is dangerous in a situation where these images are about to displace texts. The uncritical attitude is dangerous because the ‘objectivity’ of the technical image is a delusion. They are in truth, images, and as such they are symbolical.

I am quoting Flusser at length because he provides us with a clue about the ‘faith’ of new media arts: the technical nature of its images is profoundly uncool.

New media arts have a problematic relation with the strategy of appropriation. Obviously its image production is not claimed to be unique. Instead they are probes into new laws of perception. The dominant appropriation point of view in art history can only deal with content, not with the medium itself. Data from other media are used as resources, as data trash, fuel that can fire up the exploration. There is no desire to further deconstruct the already weak modernist project. If there is anything that needs to be appropriated it is geek knowledge, not other art works.

The new media arts scene is no longer in need of further globalization. It’s international enough, despite the relative lack of work from non-Western countries. What new media arts cries for is a quantum leap. The ghetto walls need to be taken down. As a revolt from inside is not likely to happen, we can rather expect a general implosion. A first step would be to raise civil courage and get out of closet. Right now people talk with two tongues. Questions are raised in small circles and private conversations but in the end funding bodies and other officials have to praised. There is a regime of fear that needs to broken down. Electronic arts is in need of its own whistleblowers. People in positions of power are not questioned and there is not even a basic awareness as to how a controversy could be ignited. We’re in a situation much like that of the former socialist countries, with their two cultures and two languages—except that in this case dissidents are even too fearful (or cowardly?) to publicly declare that the existing dominant culture is one of corruption, misguidedness and irrelevance. The only legitimate option remains to walk away and change context, or not to enter the scene in the first place—which is what most young artists seem to do.

Electronic Arts and the Dotcoms

Let’s focus for a while on the more specific topic of the absent relation between new media arts and the dotcoms. Superficially, the tech wreck of 2000/2001 and its following associated scandals did not affect new media arts.  It always struck me how slow critical new media practices have been in their response to the rise and the fall of dotcommania. It seemed as if they were parallel universes with the arts dragging behind events. There was not even a ‘spiritual anticipation’ of the excess. The world of IT firms and their volatile valuations on the worlds stock market seemed light years away from the new media arts galaxy. The speculative hey-day of new media culture was the early-mid 90s, before the rise of the World Wide Web. Theorists and artists jumped eagerly at not-yet-existing and inaccessible technologies such as virtual reality. ‘Cyberspace’ generated a rich collection of mythologies. Issues of embodiment and identity were fiercely debated.

Only five years later, with Internet stocks going through the roof, not much was left of the initial excitement in intellectual and artistic circles. The artist-as-virtual-expert had lost its shortlived hype status of the early-mid nineties when artists could showcase their multimedia capabilities. Once concepts could be turned into money, there was no room for people with ideas anymore. At the turn of the millenium artists and theorists had lost influence on the public perception of what new media was all about. What could have turned into a pop culture, degenerated into a shrinking micro cosmos.

Dotcom culture has been ‘anti-art’ in a rather openly fashion. It was said that profit should be re-invested in the IT-sector and transferred into stocks and ought not to be invested into art works, as the ‘old money’ was doing. Technology itself was art, and there was no need for artists to substantiate this assumed truth. Real artists were geeks. Applied art such as design was cool but its role should not be overestimated as it was the abstract and image free ‘code’ that eventually ruled, not the world of images. Nineties cyberculture was fighting with this same paradox.

Eventually experimental technoculture missed out on the ‘funny money’. As a result no commercial arts in this sector has been developed, nor have serious attempts been made to resolve the distribution and revenue/cash crisis. Most new media arts is therefore produced with government support that tightly controls and guides production. It’s stunning to see how, in detail, pseudo-independent bodies are overseeing the new media arts field, exercising their power over tiny individual applications. This, in turn, explains the relative importance of Northern European countries, Austria, Canada and Australia. Most work done in the U.S.A. originates from universities and/or is funded by a hand full of foundations. Over the past few years there has been a growing stagnation of new media culture, both in terms of it concepts and state funding. With hundreds of millions of new users flocking onto the Net and over a billion now using mobile phones, new media arts proved unable to keep up with the fast pace of change and had to withdraw into its own world of poorly attended festivals and workshops.

Whereas new media arts institutions, begging for goodwill, still portray their artists as working at the forefront of technological developments, collaborating with state of the art scientists, the reality is a different one. Multi-disciplinary goodwill is at an all-time low. At best, the artists new media products are demo designs, as described by Peter Lunenfeld in his book Snap to Grid . Often the work does not even reach that level. New media art, as defined by institutions such as Ars Electronica, ISEA, Transmediale and the countless educational programs, rarely reaches audiences outside of its own subculture. What in positive terms could be described as the heroic fight for the establishment of a self-referential new media arts system through a frantic differentiation of works, concepts and traditions, may as well be classified as a dead-end street. The acceptance of new media by leading museums and collectors will simply not happen. Why wait a few decades anyway? The majority of the new media art works on display at ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Linz Ars Electronica Center, ICC in Tokyo or the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne are hopeless in their innocence, being neither critical nor radically utopian in approach. It is for this reason that the new media arts sector, despite its steady growth, is getting becoming increasingly isolated, incapable of addressing the issues of today’s globalized world. It is therefore understandable that the contemporary (visual) arts world is continuing the decades old silent boycott of interactive new media works in galleries, art fairs, biennales and shows such as Documenta. The relative isolation of new media arts could, in part, also explain the rise of the ‘creative industries’ discourse, which presents itself explicitly as a way out of the miserable policies that surround the state-funded arts and education businesses. The irony however is that ‘creative industries’ themselves do not exist outside of the realm of state policies. A critical reassessment of the role of arts and culture within todays network society seems necessary. Would artists be happier if they can could work within the ‘creative industries’ and no longer be bothered with the question of whether, or not, they are producing ‘art’? Certainly, theres a discursive legitimacy that awaits migrants to the Creative Industries, but whether it pays their rent is yet to be seen.  The information economy is still failing to extract value from content production, and if money is to be made, it profits whoever possesses the IP rights – which typically isnt the creative producer, whose role is really one of service provision.  So, whats the difference between the artist and the sales clerk in that scenario?

Let’s go beyond the tactical intentions of the players involved. The artist-engineer, tinkering away on alternative human-machine interfaces, social software, alternative browsers or digital aesthetics has effectively been operating in a self-imposed vacuum. Over the last few decades both science and business have successfully ignored the creative community. Even worse, artists have actively been sidelined in the name of usability. The backlash movement against web design, led by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, is a good example of this trend. Other contributing factors may have been fear of corporate dominance. Creative Commons lawyer Lawrence Lessig 6  argues that innovation of the Internet itself is in danger. In the meanwhile meantime the younger generation is turning its back on the specific  new media arts related issues and either become anti-corporate activists,  do some webdesign for a living, teach here and there, or turn to other professions altogether. Since the crash the Internet has rapidly lost its imaginative attraction. File swapping and cell phones can only temporarily fill the vacuum. It would be foolish to ignore these trends. New media have lost their magic spell; the once so glamorous gadgets are becoming part of everyday life, similar to radio and the vacuum cleaner. This long-term tendency, now in a phase of acceleration, seriously undermines the future claim of new media altogether.

New Media as War of the Generations Another taboo issue in new media is generationalism. With video and expensive interactive installations being the domain of the baby boomers, the generation of 1989 has embraced the free Internet. But the Net turned out to be a trap for the young ones. Whereas real assets, positions and power remains in the hands of the ageing baby boomers, the gamble of its successors on the rise of new media did not materialize. After venture capital has melted away, there is still no sustainable revenue system in place for the Internet. There is no life after demo design. The slow working education bureaucracies have not yet grasped the new media malaise. Universities are still in the process of establishing new media departments. But that will come to a halt at some point. The fifty-something tenured chairs and vice-chancellors must feel good about their persistent sabotage. The ‘positive generation’ (Wanadoo) is unemployed and frustrated.

‘Whats so new about new media anyway?’, the babyboomers ask. Computers are not generating narrative content and what the world needs now is meaning, not empty, ironic net.art. Technology was hype after all, promoted by the criminals of Enron and WorldCom. It’s enough for students to do a bit of email and web surfing, safeguarded within a filtered and controlled intranet . If there is to be a counter to this cynical reasoning, that then we urgently need to analyze the ideology of the greedy 90s and its techno-libertarianism. If we dont disassociate new media quickly from that decade, and if we continue with the same rhetoric, the isolation of the new media sector will sooner or later result in its death. Let’s transform the new media buzz into something more interesting altogether – before others do it for us. The Will to Subordinate to Science is nothing more than an helpless adolescent gesture.

One way out of this subordinate position may be to point at the social aspect of the production of science, as Bruno Latour and others do. According to their theory the work of science consists of the enrollment and juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements – rats, test tubes, colleagues, journal articles, funders, grants, papers at scientific conferences, and so on – which need continual management. They conclude that scientists’ work is “the simultaneous reconstruction of social contexts of which they form a part–labs simultaneously rebuild and link the social and natural contexts upon which they act.” 7

US-performance artist Coco Fusco has written a critique of biotech art on the Nettime mailinglist (January 26, 2003). Biotech artists have claimed that they are redefining art practice and therefore the old rules don’t apply to them. For Fusco, bio art’s heroic stance and imperviousness to criticism sounds a bit hollow and self-serving after a while, especially when the demand for inclusion in mainstream art institutions, art departments in universities, art curricula, art world money and art press is so strong. From this marginal position, its bio-arts post-human dreams of transcending the body could better be read as desires to transcend its own marginality, being neither recognized as ‘visual arts’ nor as ‘science’. Coco Fusco: I find the attempts by many biotech art endorsers to celebrate their endeavor as if it were just about a scientific or aesthetic pursuit to be disingenuous. Its very rhetoric of transcendence of the human is itself a violent act of erasure, a master discourse that entails the creation of ‘slaves’ as others that must be dominated.’ OK, but what if all this remains but a dream, prototypes of human-machine interfaces that, like demo-design, are going nowhere. The isolated social position of the new media arts in this type of criticism is not taken into consideration. Biotech art has to be almighty in order for the Fusco rhetoric to function. Coco Fusco rightly points at artists who attend meetings with ‘real’ scientists, but in that context they become advisors on how to popularize science, which is hardly what I would call a critical intervention in scientific institutions.’ Artists are not ‘better scientists’ and the scientific process is not a better way of making art than any other, Fusco writes. She concludes: ‘Losing respect for human life is certainly the underbelly of any militaristic adventure, and lies at the root of the racist and classist ideas that have justified the violent use of science for centuries. I don’t think there is any reason to believe that suddenly, that kind of science will disappear because some artists find beauty in biotech.’ It remains an open question as to where radical criticism of (life) science has gone and why the new media (arts) canon is still in such a primitive,regressive stage. Coco Fusco’s remark were written before the FBI cracked down on Critical Arts Ensemble (mid 2004) because of their alledged bio tech terror experiments 8 . This however does not affect her overall argument.

Western ‘new media arts’ lacks a sense of superiority, sovereignty, determination and direction. One can witness a tendency towards ‘digital inferiority’ at virtually every cyber-event. The politically nave pose of the techno-art tinkerers has not paid off. Neither the science nor the art world is paying any attention to its  goodwill projects. Artists, critics and curators have made themselves subservient to technology and ‘life science’ in particular, unsuccesfully begging for the attention of the ‘real’ bio scientists. This ideological stand has grown out of an ignorance that cannot be explained easily. Were talking here about a subtle mentality. The cult practice between dominant science and its slaves in the new media artists is taking place in backrooms of universities and art institutions, warmly supported by genuinely interested corporate bourgeois elements, board members, professors, science writers and journalists that set the technocultural agenda. Here we are not talking about some form of ‘techno celebration’. The corporate world is not interested in the new media artworks because in the end they are too abstract and seriously lack sex appeal. Do not make this mistake. New media art is not merely a servant to corporate interests. There has not been a sellout for the simple reason that there has not been basic interest to start with. If only it was that simple. The accusation of new media arts ‘celebrating’ technology is a banality, only stated by ill-informed outsiders; and the interest in life sciences can easily be sold as a (hidden) longing to take part in science’s supra-human triumph of logos, but I won’t do that here. Scientists, for their part, are disdainfully looking down at the vaudeville interfaces and well-intentioned weirdness of amateur tech art. Not that they will say anything. But the weak smiles on their faces bespeaks a cultural gap of light years. An exquisite non-communication is at hand here. Ever growing markets for Internet, mobile devices and digital electronic consumer goods make it hard to sense the true despair. Instead of, again, calling for a more positive attitude towards the future, it could be a more seductive strategy of ‘becoming’ to disconnect the computer from labels such as ‘new’ and ‘digital’ and start building up networks with an even more brutal intensity.

• Earlier fragment of this essay: http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/10-fragments.html . Thanks to Ned Rossiter, Trebor Scholz and Scott McQuire for critical comments. [ ↩ ]
• For an extensive debate on the merits of the new media term, see Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 2001, pp. 27-61. [ ↩ ]
• See www.mediaarthistory.org . Books of individual authors include, amongst others, Dieter Daniels, Kunst als Sendung. Von der Telegrafie zum Internet , Beck Verlag Mnchen, 2002; Charles Gere, Digital Culture, Reaktion Books, London, 2002; Oliver Grau, From Illusion to Emersion, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 2003; Siegfried Zielinski, Audiovisions Cinema and Television as Entr’actes in History, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 1999. [ ↩ ]
• http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/newmedia/ [ ↩ ]
• Charlie Finch (Artnet) about Chris Kraus’ book on the Los Angeles art scene, Video Green, Semiotexte, Cambridge (Mass.), 2004. [ ↩ ]
• See: www.creativecommons.org and www.lessig.com/blog . [ ↩ ]
• Quoted from the website What is Actor-Network Theory, written by Nancy Van House. URL: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/ant_dff.html [ ↩ ]
• See: http://www.caedefensefund.org [ ↩ ]

Text Archives

At The Brink

An Introduction: It’s Time to Protest Nuclear War Again

Kathleen Kingsbury, Opinion Editor

The threat of nuclear war has dangled over humankind for much too long. We have survived so far through luck and brinkmanship. But the old, limited safeguards that kept the Cold War cold are long gone. Nuclear powers are getting more numerous and less cautious. We’ve condemned another generation to live on a planet that is one grave act of hubris or human error away from destruction without demanding any action from our leaders. That must change.

In New York Times Opinion’s latest series, At the Brink, we’re looking at the reality of nuclear weapons today. It’s the culmination of nearly a year of reporting and research. We plan to explore where the present dangers lie in the next arms race and what can be done to make the world safer again.

W.J. Hennigan, the project's lead writer, begins that discussion today by laying out what’s at stake if a single nuclear weapon were used, as well as revealing for the first time details about how close U.S. officials thought the world came to breaking the decades-long nuclear taboo.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, threatened in his 2024 annual speech that more direct Western intervention in Ukraine could lead to nuclear conflict. Yet an American intelligence assessment suggests the world may have wandered far closer to the brink of a nuclear launch more than a year earlier, during the first year of Mr. Putin's invasion.

This is the first telling of the Biden administration’s efforts to avoid that fate, and had they failed, how they hoped to contain the catastrophic aftermath. Mr. Hennigan explores what happened during that tense time, what officials were thinking, what they did and how they’re approaching a volatile future.

In the first essay of the series, W.J. Hennigan lays out the risks of the new nuclear era and how we got here. You can listen to an adaptation of the piece here .

Within two years, the last major remaining arms treaty between the United States and Russia is to expire. Yet amid mounting global instability and shifting geopolitics, world leaders aren’t turning to diplomacy. Instead, they have responded by building more technologically advanced weapons. The recent intelligence on Russia’s development of a space-based nuclear weapon is the latest reminder of the enormous power these weapons continue to wield over our lives.

There is no precedent for the complexity of today’s nuclear era. The bipolarity of the Cold War has given way to a great-power competition with far more emerging players. With the possibility of Donald Trump returning as president, Iran advancing its nuclear development and China on track to stock its arsenal with 1,000 warheads by 2030, German and South Korean officials have wondered aloud if they should have their own nuclear weapons, as have important voices in Poland, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

The latest generation of nuclear technology can still inflict unspeakable devastation. Artificial intelligence could someday automate war without human intervention. No one can confidently predict how and if deterrence will work under these dynamics or even what strategic stability will look like. A new commitment to what could be years of diplomatic talks will be needed to establish new terms of engagement.

Over the past several months, I’ve been asked, including by colleagues, why I want to raise awareness on nuclear arms control when the world faces so many other challenges — climate change, rising authoritarianism and economic inequality, as well as the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Part of the answer is that both of those active conflicts would be far more catastrophic if nuclear weapons were introduced into them. Consider Mr. Putin’s threat at the end of February: “We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” the Russian leader said during his annual address. “Do they not understand this?”

The other answer lies in our recent history. When people around the world in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s began to understand the nuclear peril of that era, a vocal constituency demanded — and achieved — change.

Fear of mutual annihilation last century spurred governments to work together to create a set of global agreements to lower the risk. Their efforts helped to end atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, which, in certain cases, had poisoned people and the environment. Adversarial nations started talking to each other and, by doing so, helped avoid accidental use. Stockpiles were reduced. A vast majority of nations agreed to never build these weapons in the first place if the nations that had them worked in good faith toward their abolishment. That promise was not kept.

In 1982 as many as a million people descended on Central Park calling for the elimination of nuclear arms in the world. More recently, some isolated voices have tried to raise the alarm — Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said last year that “the most serious thing facing mankind is nuclear proliferation” — but mostly such activism is inconceivable now. The once again growing threat of nuclear weapons is simply not part of the public conversation. And the world is less secure.

Today the nuclear safety net is threadbare. The good news is that it can be restitched. American leadership requires that Washington marshal international support for this mission — but it also requires leading by example. There are several actions that the U.S. president could take without buy-in from a Congress unlikely to cooperate.

As a first step, the United States could push to reinvigorate and establish with Russia and China, respectively, joint information and crisis control centers to ensure that misunderstandings and escalation don’t spiral. Such hotlines have all but gone dormant. The United States could also renounce the strategy of launching its nuclear weapons based only on a warning of an adversary’s launch, reducing the chance America could begin a nuclear war because of an accident, a human or mechanical failure or a simple misunderstanding. The United States could insist on robust controls for artificial intelligence in the launch processes of nuclear weapons.

Democracy rarely prevents war, but it can eventually serve as a check on it. Nuclear use has always been the exception: No scenario offers enough time for voters to weigh in on whether to deploy a nuclear weapon. Citizens, therefore, need to exert their influence well before the country finds itself in such a situation.

We should not allow the next generation to inherit a world more dangerous than the one we were given.

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Elon Musk and Yann LeCun’s social media feud highlights key differences in approach to AI research and hype

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Time's almost up! There's only one week left to request an invite to The AI Impact Tour on June 5th. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to explore various methods for auditing AI models. Find out how you can attend here .

Over the Memorial Day weekend, while most Americans were firing up their grills and enjoying a cold one, Yann LeCun , Meta’s chief AI scientist, and Elon Musk , the enigmatic CEO of Tesla and xAI , were engaged in a no-holds-barred digital dustup on X.com (formerly Twitter). This clash of the AI titans exposed some of the key fault lines in the fast-moving, hype-fueled field of artificial intelligence.

The online feud ignited on Sunday, May 26th when LeCun threw shade at Musk, who was promoting job openings at his new AI startup xAI. LeCun’s tweet was a masterclass in snark: “Join xAI if you can stand a boss who: claims that what you are working on will be solved next year (no pressure), claims that what you are working on will kill everyone and must be stopped or paused (yay, vacation for 6 months!), claims to want a ‘maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth’ but spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories on his own social platform.”

Join xAI if you can stand a boss who: – claims that what you are working on will be solved next year (no pressure). – claims that what you are working on will kill everyone and must be stopped or paused (yay, vacation for 6 months!). – claims to want a "maximally rigorous pursuit… — Yann LeCun (@ylecun) May 27, 2024

Musk, never one to back down from a fight, came out swinging. “What ‘science’ have you done in the past 5 years?” he posted, questioning LeCun’s recent contributions to the field. LeCun wasn’t about to let that one go: “Over 80 technical papers published since January 2022. What about you?”

What “science” have you done in the past 5 years? — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2024

The godfather of convolutional neural networks vs. The self-proclaimed savior of humanity

LeCun, 63, is a bonafide AI legend, one of the pioneers of deep learning , the groundbreaking technique that now powers everything from chatbots to self-driving cars. Back in 1989, as a researcher at Bell Labs, he co-authored a paper that introduced convolutional neural networks , a fundamental architecture of deep learning. “Every single driving assistance system today uses ConvNets,” LeCun posted, and he’s not wrong.

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Musk, 52, has had a more tumultuous relationship with the AI research community, despite his companies’ heavy reliance on the technology. His startup xAI has the lofty goal of building artificial general intelligence, or human-level AI—an ambition that many experts consider to be jumping the gun. Meanwhile, Tesla’s self-driving technology, which Musk has repeatedly hyped as being on the cusp of full autonomy, relies heavily on deep learning systems that were initially developed in academic labs like LeCun’s.

The Importance of Sharing Scientific Knowledge in the Age of Corporate Secrecy

“Technological marvels don’t just pop out of the vacuum,” LeCun posted. “They are built on years (sometimes decades) of scientific research that makes them possible. Research ideas and results are shared through technical papers. Without this sharing of scientific information, technological progress would slow to a crawl.”

To those who say 'these are *just* papers': One of these papers introduced convolutional neural networks (ConvNets) in 1989. Every single driving assistance system today uses ConvNets. That includes MobilEye (since 2014), Nvidia, Tesla, and just about everyone else.… — Yann LeCun (@ylecun) May 28, 2024

Musk, in true Muskian fashion, dismissed the importance of scientific publishing, claiming that Tesla doesn’t use convolutional neural networks much anymore in its self-driving stack. LeCun wasn’t buying it: “Curious to know how you could possibly do real-time camera image understanding in [Full Self-Driving] without ConvNets, TBH.”

Curious to know how you could possibly do real-time camera image understanding in FSD without ConvNets, TBH. — Yann LeCun (@ylecun) May 28, 2024

In an era where corporate secrecy around AI development is becoming the norm, exemplified by the tight-lipped labs of OpenAI and Google DeepMind , many experts still consider timely and transparent scientific publication to be essential to the long-term health of the field. Clem Delangue, co-founder of AI startup Hugging Face , summed it up nicely: “The scientists who publish their groundbreaking research openly are the cornerstone of technological progress & massively contribute to making the world a better place!”

I would pick @ylecun over @elonmusk every single day of the week. Despite getting much less $$, recognition & visibility than entrepreneurs, the scientists who publish their groundbreaking research openly are the cornerstone of technological progress & massively contribute to… — clem ? (@ClementDelangue) May 28, 2024

The future of AI: A tale of two visions

Both Meta and xAI have had eventful years in their quest for AI supremacy. Meta recently released a large language model called LLaMA 3 and is integrating similar technologies into its social apps like Instagram and WhatsApp, all while watching its market value slip away . Meanwhile, xAI announced a whopping $6 billion fundraise as Musk promises to build “artificial general intelligence,” though the details of his master plan remain fuzzy at best.

LeCun and Musk, two of the most influential figures in AI, clearly have divergent visions for the future of this transformative technology. But if this holiday weekend is any indication, the debates that will shape that future are increasingly playing out in the open, one tweet at a time. And we, for one, are here for it. Pass the popcorn.

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The Connection between Literacy, Education and New media Analytical Essay

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Introduction

Definition of literacy, education and new media, the relationship between literacy, education and new media, works cited.

The thesis statement for this essay will be to analyze the relationship that exists between literacy, education and new media, which includes; the Internet, technology, e-learning, e-commerce, digital technology and information literacy. The essay will analyze each of these concepts by looking at how they affect each other and whether the relationship that exists between them is complex or easy to define.

This will involve analyzing each of the concepts separately by defining what literacy, education and new media means and determining whether there is an interconnection between the three concepts. The essay will also focus on the various issues and aspects that support the relationship of the three concepts as well as the thesis statement.

Literacy is defined as an act of critically understanding the current situation of the world. It is a means of extending an individual’s efforts towards education where individual acquires the necessary tools that will be used in developing solutions to problems.

Literacy leads to education, the result of which is usually empowerment through the acquisition of necessary skills and knowledge that can be used in the effective functioning of the individual within a societal or community context. Literate people are viewed to have better reasoning skills than people who are illiterate or lack any basic knowledge (UNES 11).

Literacy helps individuals to lead a better quality of life as they have the necessary skills and knowledge that can be used to better their lives. Literacy also helps people to utilize their knowledge and skills gained from education by participating in activities that will see them benefiting from the use of their skills and knowledge.

To add on, Literacy allows people to join gainful employment so that they can be able to fully utilize their educational experience for maximum benefits that come in the form of salaries, wages and work benefits (UNES 10).

The main goal of education is to provide people with knowledge and information which they can use to better their lives in a positive way. Education empowers people to be able to think and act based on their existing knowledge on what is right or wrong. It also improves the self esteem and self confidence of an individual by motivating them to be better than what they are through the use of information.

Education is considered by many sociologists to be an important tool in developing intellectual capacities and potential in people who are going to be involved in human capital formations. People who have received some form of education are viewed to be literate as they have gained the skills that will allow them to perform even the simplest tasks (UNES 10).

The use of new media in the recent past has increased with new media technologies playing a significant role within the education sector of most developed countries (Leaning 49). The modern world is today experiencing an explosion in the form of information technology where more and more activities are becoming computerized and Internet based.

Education today has become more computerized with more and more institutions seeking to conduct their learning processes in virtual classrooms where students do not have to attend the real class. The increasing use of the Internet as a learning tool has also increased significantly with most learning institutions incorporating the various programs within the Internet for their learning activities (Kumari 4).

The general relationship that exists between literacy, education and new media is not as simple and easy to understand as it should be. This is because the impact of education on new media and literacy solely depends on certain issues which include what is taught in educational institutions and how much the learners can be able to learn at a given time.

The content of education will determine the impact that this concept has on literacy and new media as it is the educational contents and teaching methods that determine the relationship that exists between the three terms.

Issues such as the interaction of education with social and economic environments will also determine the kind of relationship that exists between education, literacy and new media. Social factors such as the culture of the society will determine the literacy levels of the people within that society and it will have an important impact on education as well as new media technology (UNES 11).

According to Vasudevan (63) literacy studies and education were marked by a significant shift in their theoretical and methodological concepts in the early 1980s that saw a change in the educational systems that were in use during that time. These shifts were mostly influenced by the introduction of portable technologies that could be used by school going children to improve on their literacy and intellectual capacity.

Such portable technologies included lap tops, walkmans and radios that would be used by most teachers in their learning exercises. Digital or new media were therefore deemed to have a relationship with literacy and education in most learning institutions during the late 1980s and the early 1990s (Vasudevan 63).

In the current world today, the relationship that exists between literacy, education and new media is often at times far removed from the reality on the ground based on what the current practices of learning are in most educational institutions. This is evident when most students prefer digital learning media to attending classroom lectures as these media offer far better learning exercises than classroom teachers or lecturers.

Also many urban youth especially in the developed countries have become more digitalized and technology savvy yet they continue to be confined in analog schools that use blackboards and chalk as teaching tools.

This has created a digital divide in urban educational institutions where educational literacy is being challenged by the multimodal communication practices of the existing technological revolution as well as the multimedia literacy skilled revolution (Vasudevan 64).

The digital divide between education and literacy has also been increased by the introduction of e-learning equipment such as school web pages and desktop publishing tools that allow students to incorporate educational practices and learning techniques in the new media technology.

Many students in the United States prefer to use digital technology when performing their assignments and class tasks as it not only provides a practical approach to learning but it also allows for the various understandings of social constructs within the current world.

Digital students are able to learn at a faster pace and they are able to cover the course syllabus at a faster speed than their traditional counterparts who prefer the old classroom style of learning (Vasudevan 64).

Apart from the digital divide, it is no longer possible to consider literacy, education or new media in isolation as these concepts are affected by similar social, economic and technological factors.

The emerging dominance of technology in educational aspects has spurred a shift in the line of thinking when it comes to determining whether a relationship exists between the three concepts. New media has impacted on literacy and education in both a positive and negative way where most school based curricula have incorporated the use of digitalized learning modes in their educational exercises.

The positive side of this will be that the literacy development of students will be more practical in nature rather than theoretical as the digitalized exercises offer practical exercises while the negative side of this will be that the slow learners will not be able to catch up on the learning exercises.

New media therefore bridges the gap that is created between literacy and education when the practical application of education in literacy comes in. New media therefore provides the means that can be used in presenting and communicating educational content at the various stages of intellectual development (Kress 1).

The thesis statement for this essay was “to analyze the relationship that exists between literacy, education and new media which includes the Internet, technology, e-learning, e-commerce, digital technology and information literacy”.

The relationship that exists between literacy, education and new media while complex in nature has continued to grow over the years with the continued introduction of technological innovations that are meant to make life easier. This relationship is viewed to continue growing stronger as more educational institutions incorporate the use of new media in the literacy development and educational practices.

Kress, Gunther. Literacy in the new media age . London, UK: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Kumari, Sarita. Increasing role of technology in education . Delhi, India: Isha Books, 2004. Print.

Leaning, Mark. Issues in information and media literacy: criticism, history and policy . California, US: Informing Science Press, 2009. Print.

UNES. Relationship between literacy, education and development , n.d. Web.

Vasudevan, Lalitha. “Educations remix: new media, literacy’s, and the emerging digital Geographies”. Digital Culture and Education . 2.1 (June. 2010): 62-82. Print.

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1. IvyPanda . "The Connection between Literacy, Education and New media." May 21, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-relationship-between-literacy-education-and-new-media/.

Bibliography

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Government of Canada supports growth and innovation in British Columbia’s quantum technology industry

From: Pacific Economic Development Canada

News release

Quantum science examines the behaviour of matter and energy at the smallest scale. It has led to groundbreaking technological advances, such as new medicines, more efficient and secure digital communications, and new approaches to tracking and forecasting climate change.

PacifiCan funding of over $11 million will help three local organizations advance quantum technology

May 30, 2024 – Vancouver, British Columbia – PacifiCan

Quantum science examines the behaviour of matter and energy at the smallest scale. It has led to groundbreaking technological advances, such as new medicines, more efficient and secure digital communications, and new approaches to tracking and forecasting climate change. British Columbia is an early pioneer in the global quantum ecosystem and is poised for further growth.

Today, the Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan, Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada (PacifiCan), announced over $11 million in PacifiCan funding to three B.C.-based organizations leading innovation in quantum computing. This includes:

• Over $3.4 million to 1QB Information Technologies, Inc. (1QBit) to develop and commercialize their Topological Quantum Architecture Design (TopQAD ™️ );
• $4.3 million to Simon Fraser University to establish the Quantum Fabrication Centre at the university’s 4D LABS facility; and,
• Over $3.2 million to the University of British Columbia to increase their capacity to commercialize quantum technologies at the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute.

Today’s investments are the first three B.C.-based projects funded under the Regional Quantum Initiative. They will help solidify Canada’s reputation as a leader in quantum science. It is anticipated that today’s announcements will benefit 41 businesses.

As part of the Government of Canada’s National Quantum Strategy, PacifiCan is delivering the Regional Quantum Initiative in British Columbia. The Regional Quantum Initiative will boost Canada’s global position by helping companies and organizations create good jobs and commercialize quantum technology in Canada and around the world.

See backgrounder here for more information on the projects that were announced.

“Quantum technology has the capacity to deliver the innovations of the future with enormous potential for commercialization. British Columbia is well-positioned to increase its lead in this exciting field. The PacifiCan-funded projects announced today will help B.C.-based organizations access the support they need to propel themselves forward, creating jobs and prosperity here in British Columbia.” - The Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan, Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada (PacifiCan)

“Using TopQAD, our collaborators are getting critical insights into the performance of their next-generation architectures. With the help and support of PacifiCan, we are excited to bring the design tools the industry needs to guide the future of fault-tolerant quantum computing.” - Andrew Fursman, CEO, 1QB Information Technologies, Inc.

“This investment in the Quantum Fabrication Centre at SFU leverages B.C. and Canadian leadership in quantum technologies—a field with major transformative and economic potential. SFU is privileged to work with some of Canada’s top researchers and entrepreneurs in this field and collaborate with leading quantum companies. We are thrilled with the support to mobilize knowledge and innovation in B.C. and beyond.” - Dugan O’Neil, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, Simon Fraser University

“UBC Blusson QMI’s Advanced Nanofabrication Facility provides researchers and emerging quantum industry leaders with the research and technology development infrastructure to create groundbreaking solutions in areas like public health and clean energy. This investment by the Government of Canada plays a pivotal role in enabling the facility to emerge as a leading device manufacturing hub, supporting a range of projects and enabling the commercialization of innovative quantum technologies.” - Dr. Gail Murphy, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, University of British Columbia

Quick facts

According to a study commissioned by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), the quantum sector will become a $139 billion industry in Canada, with more than 200,000 jobs and $42 billion in returns by 2045.

PacifiCan is the dedicated federal economic development agency for British Columbians. PacifiCan’s programs and services help businesses, not-for-profits and communities grow stronger.

Earlier investments by private and public sectors, including more than $1 billion invested by the Government of Canada between 2009 and 2020, has helped to produce a highly skilled research and development (R&D) community in quantum technologies.

Related products

• Backgrounder: Government of Canada supports growth and innovation in British Columbia’s quantum technology industry

Associated links

• Pacific Economic Development Canada
• Regional Quantum Initiative
• Simon Fraser University
• University of British Columbia
• 1QB Information Technologies, Inc.

Haley Hodgson Senior Communications Advisor Office of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada (PacifiCan) [email protected]

Lynsey Brothers A/Communications Manager PacifiCan [email protected]

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