Baym-Making New Media Make Sense

Making New Media Make Sense

Introduction

  • Challenge of New Media: Understanding new communication mediums.

    • Questions to consider:

      • What is it good for?

      • What are its risks?

      • What benefits might it bring?

  • Student Perspectives on the Internet:

    • Hopes:

      • Facilitate new connections

      • Enhance cross-cultural interaction

      • Provide more social support

      • Foster tighter family ties

    • Fears:

      • Loss of face-to-face interaction

      • Rise of false relationships and deception

      • Vulnerability to strangers

Understanding New Media

  • Importance of considering:

    • Technological features of media.

    • Personal, cultural, and historical contexts.

  • Cultural Anxieties:

    • New media can evoke anxieties due to interactivity and sparse social cues that question the authenticity of relationships.

    • Concerns about continuous interaction and data storage leading to potential misuse of information.

Social Forces and Technology

  • Social forces shape anxieties and perceptions about new technologies.

    • New media represented in daily stories and popular culture.

    • Examples in film:

      • You've Got Mail: Online romance narrative.

      • The Net: Identity theft narrative.

      • Catfish: Online deception concerns.

      • Her: AI vs. human relationships.

  • Symbolic meanings assigned to technologies reflect human emotions and societal norms.

Theoretical Frameworks

  • Four Major Theoretical Perspectives:

    • Technological Determinism: Technology as a causal agent of change.

      • Examples: Nick Carr's assertion that Google is making us 'stupid'.

    • Social Construction of Technology (SCOT): Focus on human agency in shaping technologies and their uses.

    • Social Shaping: Recognizes the interplay between technology and society, emphasizing co-creation.

    • Domestication: Technologies become integrated into daily life and lose their initial perceived impact.

Analyzing Technological Determinism

  • Historical Context:

    • Concerns from Socrates regarding writing and memory.

    • Modern parallels: Fears surrounding digital media leading to inferior cognitive abilities.

  • Variants of Technological Determinism:

    • Impact-Imprint Perspective: Technology transfers its qualities to users.

    • Direct Effects Perspective: Technologies exert a direct influence based on their features.

Critiques of Technological Determinism

  • Overly simplistic to view technology as a singular cause of social change.

  • Acknowledgment of human agency and societal context is crucial.

Utopian vs. Dystopian Narratives

  • Common themes in media about new technologies include anxieties and hopes for community building vs. social isolation.

  • The internet as a potential means for both broadening relationships and perpetuating risks such as anonymity and deception.

Social Construction and the Role of Users

  • Users as active participants in the development and use of technologies.

  • Case Studies of Communication Domains:

    • Adoption patterns influenced by peers and societal context.

    • Online communities as spaces for relationship building, yet fraught with deception risks.

Moral Panics Surrounding New Technologies

  • Concerns about children’s safety in relation to the internet often emphasized in popular discourse.

    • Reality vs. perception of threats from online interactions.

    • The dynamics of online behavior as rooted in pre-existing social issues.

Conclusion

  • Both technological and social perspectives are needed to understand communication media.

  • Importance of navigating the complexities of how technologies affect individual and group relationships over time.