ARTS2090 Modes of Publishing, Distribution blog post

‘Digital Network Media make no essential difference to relations between publishing institutions and society.”

Information is distributed in such a scattered way in this day and age that we cannot comprehend a single way to map the directional flow of it. But one thing that is sometimes pushed to the back of our minds is how our reliance and thirst for knowledge and information allow the information provider a power over the receiver. However seeing as there is an over supply of information from all directions, it is now the receiver that has the power to choose what he or she want to believe or not. This is why I would have to disagree with the above statement in saying that the interaction between publisher and society is not affected by digital network media. In this response I will discuss what would classify as a relationship between publisher and society in terms of power in communication. I will also discuss an example where there is no digital network media involved in the communication process and another example where it is a key aspect.

Before we get into it though, we should try to understand what ‘Digital Network Media’ would be considered as. From my understanding of the statement it would be the communication network as it is today, a complicated multidirectional network with the application of the many to many communication concept. Quite simply it is the new age of the distribution of information. Therefore we see the internet being a huge part of this digital network media. Social networking, peer to peer file sharing and just publishing alone by a person at home using a regular computer or laptop with internet access are all part of this idea of digital network media. The most important aspect of this is that the communication is in digital signals which differ from analogue signals in that it allows for the multidirectional flow of information more easily to the ‘Society’ rather then the corporate media powers when the distribution of information was mainly in analogue.

Now that we have understood that, we now need to understand ‘Publishing institutions’ and ‘Society’. Again according to my understanding, a publishing institution would be anything that is able to publish and control information. Whether the institution controls and manages bulks of information or little bits is questionable but for now we can think of it as a place that publishes information in the bulk. For old media where there were no digital networks that allowed for the communication, we can see newspaper press’ or all print publishing companies as being a publishing institution as it allowed for the information within that print medium to be accessible to all public. Print publishing pretty much encompasses a lot such as magazines and flyers but apart from print we have television networks and organisations in charge of visual advertisement such as billboards etc. In a more digitally networked media environment, we can say some big publishing institutions would be Wikipedia, youtube, facebook etc.

But now we come to the question of the ‘Society’ that receives this information from the publishing institutions. Society, according to Wikipedia is a group of people that are connected in some way, either through a network, or roles or status. In this case we would think it is a group of people that have in common, the consumption of the media that the publishing institutions provide, the participants so to say. But it can also be taken as all the people of the world or more along the lines of public. We can take either of these meaning of ‘Society’ and apply them to the statement. So then to my understanding, society is another important node in the distribution network of information.

This brings us to the relationship between publishing institutions and society. So based on the fact that the digital network media allows for more interaction of the previous supposed passive receiver of information, the relationship is of passing back and forth of information. In a one way distribution network, there is the consumption of information without necessarily interacting with the other nodes. According to Foucault, when a relationship of communication is formed between partners, it has the potential of one having power over the other as long as there is the capacity to modify the information wether intentionally or accidently, (1983, p215). Propaganda has been a big practice using media, especially during the 1990’s when broadcast media was able to reach masses and wrong information could be easily repeated due to owned and controlled media. It was through this that the power holders were able to manipulate truths and warp a person’s sense of reality according to Larry Tye in The Big Think’ in The Father of Spin: Edward L Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (1998, p52).  Megan Boler points out in ‘Introduction’ in Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, many cases where propaganda can easily be seen in play, when news reports leave out essential details or change statistics to exaggerate or under report major events or just from repeating the story constantly leaves an impression of urgent importance regarding the issue when something else may have been just as important if not more, (2008, p2-4). With the arts of perception management, (Balnaves, Donald, Shoesmith, 2009, p138), people are easily brainwashed as the impact of advertising in the early television days evidently shows.

This is not to say that there is no use of tactical media and perception management in the digital network media that we now participate in. On the contrary it is used more thoroughly to enforce opposing opinions held by the public. And with the quantity of similar content but from different sources is more likely to be believed and followed then repeated footage on mainstream news channels on news. However it is the power relationship that changes. The public is now able to enforce their view through blogging, citizen journalism etc. They are now able to impact on the rest of the public just as much as the dominant media players. Where it took access to big publishing institutions like record companies to get exposure for a music artist, the DIY capabilities of youtube are able to have the exact same impact. Therefore there is no longer that dependency of the society on the publishing institutions for information, instead Boler would argue that that dependency is reversed with dominant media being very dependant on the public contribution to the flow of information as it is made public, (2008, p14).

Propaganda has been used for centuries by the power holders, whether they are the state leaders or sovereignty. But the impact is that much greater when there is a medium such as television and newspaper to publish content to the masses easily and quickly. An example of this is very thoroughly encompassed in the 1997 film Wag the Dog by Barry Levinson about the faking of a war by government representative using a Hollywood producer to make real life footage and dramatic emphasis in order for the media to be saturated with it when just days before it was saturated with a scandal regarding the president. The media that is represented in the film is that of dominant publishing institutions where digital distribution was not a part of it. Also the public was seen to be passive receptors as the outcome that the government was aiming for was successful. But something like propaganda can never really be considered a real aspect of media as proof of behaviour modification is based on the information received by the public is based more on observation then anything solid. Most importantly though, this film shows the relations between publishing institutions and the society as it is in the midst of one way media. Off course it doesn’t go to say that all members of society are influenced like so but in an age when there is no contradictory publications proving things the dominant media have said as untrue then majority are likely to concede to the lies as truth.

Citizen journalism takes a turn with publishing news content. Society plays a big role in what is exposed of world events. A publishing institution like youtube which is internet based, thus very dependant on the digital network media to even function blurs the borders between the institution and the society. While it doesn’t completely eliminate them as the big bosses are still able to control content to some degree but the fact that it is user generated content which sometimes gets aired on dominant media forms or otherwise most likely has a larger viewer base due to its global reaches is able to point out the drastic change in the relationship between institutions and society. It seems now that the society has power to influence itself. But not only that the vast amounts of content of different point of views allows for a user to acquire different perspectives on a particular issue instead of being fed the one biased story.

When there is a difference in the power relations between publishing institutions and society in the two examples I have discussed above then it is most definitely affected by the digital network media and its role in the distribution of information. Just the directional flow of information is enough to signify that difference with the way a publishing institute interacts with society.

Balnaves. M, Donald. S.H, Shoesmith. B, (2009), ‘Media Theories and Approaches’: A Global Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Boler. M, (2008), ‘Introduction’ in Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, Cambridge, MA: MIT press.

Foucault. M, (1983), ‘The subject and Power: Afterword’, Chicago University of Chicago Press.

Society, (last updated 2^nd of June), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society

Tye. L, (1998), ‘The Big Think’ in The Father of Spin: Edward L Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, New York: Henry Holt.

Wag the Dog, (last updated 1^st June 2010), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog.