| |
Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone's comic about media theory is serious but never dull - Boing Boing
by Decius at 3:07 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2011 |
I thought this was an intelligent observation: This fascinating history serves to introduce the major thesis of Influencing Machine: that the "media machine" that cynically distorts in order to serve the rich and powerful is a delusion. The reality is that the "media agenda" is an emergent phenomenon that arises spontaneously from commercial constraints, human frailty, state interference, and cognitive blindspots.
From one of the reviews on Amazon All media products are inherently biased, so as the audience it's our duty simply to identify these biases as they reveal themselves. Gladstone, however, addresses the question of bias by pulling back to the 50,000-foot level and positioning the "boring" controversy about "political bias" alongside the far less obvious biases that we really "should worry about"--commercial bias, status quo bias, access bias, visual bias, narrative bias, and, most iconoclastically, fairness bias.
|
| |
RE: Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone's comic about media theory is serious but never dull - Boing Boing
by noteworthy at 7:41 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2011 |
This book seems like the proper frame in which to consider Pariser's The Filter Bubble. As I quoted in the earlier thread: Each new form of media, according to the analysis of McLuhan, shapes messages differently thereby requiring new filters to be engaged in the experience of viewing and listening to those messages.
I am reminded of another book from 2004, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communication: Most complaints about the media are personal. Rupert Murdoch did this, Jayson Blair did that. But the most important -- and interesting -- questions are structural.
From the first chapter: Publications weave invisible threads of connection among their readers. Once a newspaper circulates, for example, no one ever truly reads it alone.
|
|
|
|
