Week 3 Journal: Networked Publics

The section that interested me most was Chapter 2: Media Convergence and Networked Participation. Collective intelligence is so easily facilitated by Internet-based platforms. When I think about it, I know so many people that create knowledge, culture, entertainment, etc. in publicly networked platforms. Both my younger brother and my boyfriend make digital music using Ableton software, sampling and mixing beats and melodies from YouTube; I’ve taken part in and benefitted from plenty of crowd-sourcing fundraisers such as Donors Choose or Giving Tuesday campaigns; students I’ve taught in the past have created and marketed apps… I don’t know if Google Drive is included in all of this – it seems like it should be – but I use it every single day in teaching: lesson planning, slide shows, etc. It’s incredible what we are now capable of creating collaboratively. To further illustrate, Varnelis (2008) points out that “networked distributors like Amazon.com increasingly make profits not from the short head— a small number of bestsellers— but from the long tail— a wide variety of niche products, each of which has relatively small circulation. Combined with the ability of digital communication to directly connect special-interest groups, these new distribution channels have enabled small producers and small audiences to find one another.” (p. 46) It occurs to me that this new phenomenon that Varnelis (2008) refers to as “networked public culture” has pervaded nearly every aspect of our daily lives.

But is it all necessarily beneficial? Sure, the collaboration and access has its advantages, but when viewing networked participation through the critical literacy lens, one must consider the implications in a more nuanced way. Public access to social media platforms drive the production of “click-bait” articles that lack substance, and in general it’s easier for erroneous or exaggerated news/information to circulate and gain momentum. And what is the underbelly of Amazon.com’s seemingly unbelievable customer service? In Kantor & Streitfeld’s New York Times article (2015), they chronicle Amazon.com’s system that is so efficient and miraculously fast, it can “get an Elsa doll that [a customer] could not find in all of New York City” and have “it delivered… in 23 minutes.” But what quality of life is robbed from Amazon’s workers in order to maintain this level of expediency, continuously meeting such insane demands? (This question is addressed – along with many other criticisms – in the New York Times piece.) And even with all of the public input that becomes involved in these networks, Varnelis (2008) reveals that “there has been an alarming concentration of the ownership of mainstream commercial media, with a small handful of multinational media conglomerates dominating all sectors of the entertainment industry… Convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process.” (p. 48)

What fascinates me here is the contradicting interests and benefits of networked culture and consumer culture. We have become so accustomed to the convenience and facility of publicly networked platforms, and in so doing, don’t consider often enough what gets lost – or what we feel we need to consume – in the meantime.  More amateurs have access to contribute and create art, but artists that depend on copyright laws and protections in order to make a living have more of a challenge now. We can order just about anything we want from Internet-based stores, but there are still costs associated with this service, even if we don’t personally see or pay them.

References:

Kantor, J. & Streitfeld, D. (2015, August 15). Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

Varnelis, K., & Annenberg Center for Communication (University of Southern California). (2008). Networked publics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.