The New Media Masters in an Economy of Attention

As I mentioned in "Why Social Media Means a Social Revolution" new media has radically changed the information flow in our society. Rather than the increasingly hierarchical structures of mainstream media we are now seeing a picture that is more messy and unpredictable than the media landscape has been for decades. Aristotle said that giving power to the people was a way of giving power to those who could persuade the people. Who will gain the power to persuade the people in this new media age? What will be the common denominators of those who will able to gain a large enough audience to have considerable influence on public opinion? Here are a few of my predictions:

Seducing the Audience

Douglas Hesse, a professor in rhetoric and composition, describes how our idea of publication and readership has changed: "The world of blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, and even old-fashioned Web pages ensures that writing will be made public—just not that it will be read. Updating familiar terms from two decades past, we’ve gone from audience addressed, through audience invoked, to audience imagined and seduced." Virtually everyone now can publish and gain a readership. Unlike the channels of mainstream media and the academic world there are no gate-keepers online to decide what will or will not get published and read. There are over 200 million blogs online today! And they are stealing large portions of the market that used to be dominated by a few media giants. We live today in what Richard Lanham calls "The Economics of Attention". If you can catch the eyes of people and get clicks and pageviews, you gain influence, chances to sell advertising, and your ideas can lead to real action. In other words, attention is the new currency! If you can get someone to read you and listen to you, you will make a difference, no matter what other media giants or traditional gatekeepers of knowledge may think of it.

So how does this new generation of writers seduce an audience to follow them? In the economy of attention this is a major question not only for writers, but for politicians, economists, educators, and virtually anyone who wants to have something to say about how this new world is going to look like. The common denominator is "you have to make them want what you have". The first thing that will go in such an economy is circumscribed readerships. Newspapers, television stations, and writers will meet increasing competition for attention, and people will get used to shopping around much more. Even the largest actors will not be able to simply rely on the same old readers and audience that they have had for a long time.

Burke's Theory of Literary Form

Kenneth Burke defined literary form as the arousing and fulfilling of expectations. We all know this from fiction books. If the cover and title doesn't get you, what is the chance you'll even pick it up? If the first chapter doesn't get you, why would you want to keep reading? The title and cover arouses expectations for the content in the book. If those expectations are not fulfilled we often feel cheated or snubbed. Richard Lanham refers to this as "making attention structures from the stuff of language". There can be thousands of methods to accomplish this, visual design, music, slogans, humor, the list goes on. However, the premise is the same: There has to be a promise at the beginning that there is something you want at the end of the road, a taste to wet your appetite, a glimpse to awaken your imagination. Professional authors know this very well. Unless the reader is persuaded to in some way identify with the authors views, narrative and characters, the text will be lifeless to the reader.

Give the People What They Want

Burke's literary form answers the question of how to communicate powerfully, yet in the end it is the form and not by itself all the content of communication. A writer may be brilliant at catching our attention and keeping it riveted throughout a book, but we still feel empty after we have finished the book. This really brings us to the question, what do people want? Entertainment industry have been obsessed with this forever, and the easy answer would be to play on the basest desires of mankind: sex, violence, and cheap pleasures. The first years of the Internet was witness of this approach, with pornography quickly becoming the number one online activity. However, as the Internet has evolved we have witnessed how the full range of human desires and needs have opened new areas of discourse and influence. Social networking has now far surpassed pornography as the leading online activity, showing that human is more of a social creature than a sexual one. Another area that has exploded is genealogy, which has seen an unpresedented growth. What is it that makes people want to know about their ancestors? What human need does it fulfill? It seems clear to me that simply appealing to base needs will not do in the long run.

I don't know who the masters and champions of this new media world will be. Millions are currently contending for our attention to have a say in the creation of tomorrows trends, movements, and opinions. What I can say is that these channels or people will have some things in common

1. They must know what people really want

2. They must have ability to communicate effectively to convice people that they can help them to get it

The following discussion is long, but I recommend it for any who has the time

The Economics of Attention by design mind

Why Social Media Means A Social Revolution

Social protests and revolutions are spreading like wildfire in the Middle East, shaking the very core of social orders which have been established for decades. In many ways the failed Green Revolution in Iran can be seen as a precursor to what we are seeing now in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, etc. Although the causes for these events are deep-rooted and varied, there is a general agreement that they would not have been possible without the social media revolution led by online blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. So what is it about the nature of social media that opens the possibility for social change where it has been supressed for so long?

In my Mission statement I mentioned a quote from “Democracy & Rhetoric: John Dewey on the Arts of Becoming”: 

“By making the individual both the means and the end of democracy, it [society] committed itself to investing its energies into creating individuals capable of possessing a moral will that achieves enough autonomy from dominant social forces that it is capable of reacting back on those forces with intelligence and power.”

One of the main imbalances that has existed in modern societies is the unequal access people have to channels of expression. So although there may be people who possess a moral will and achieve autonomy from sociel forces (media being one of the greatest of these), they do not have sufficient access to channels of expression. As a consequence of this, they may be able to react with intelligence, but not with power. Unless they are some of the few privileged to be in the spotlight, their reaction will not reach or influence many others. The potential for a public uprising is quenched before it has begun because they cannot distribute their message to enough people.As a result, the ones who controled the channels of expression controlled public opinion.

As I mentioned in Rhetorical Pressure and Moral Will, Kenneth Burke gave this warning in 1955:

“In practice, democratic states move toward a condition of partial tyranny to the extent that the channels of expression are not equally available to all factions in important public issues. Thus we see democracy being threatened by the rise of the enormous ‘policy-making’ mass media that exert great rhetorical pressure upon their readers without at the same time teaching them how to discount such devices; and nothing less than very thorough training in the discounting of rhetorical persuasiveness can make a citizenry truly free.”

What we can see right now is that social media has opened new channels of expression, and as a result information, emotions, and initiatives are spreading and bringing revolutionary consequences. Protests are being organized through Facebook groups and Twitter, restricted information about corrupt officials are available to everyone through Wikileaks and other web sites, and the social consciousness of new societies are being formulated by blogs and debated in online forums. Regimes are perplexed at this new social structure that is emerging. Unlike hierarchical institutions it is impossible to determine a leader you can kill or imprison to quell the movement. The new media are releasing private initiatives which organize themselves without directives from any organization. 

If any of you are in doubt about the real impact of the social media revolution, may I suggest you take a look at the following video clip ;)

We are in the middle of an exciting and scary media revolution. We do not know what social structure will emerge from the new possibilities of communication that we have unleashed. As Douglas Hesse points out, unlike the hierarchical structure of power and information, we are today experiencing “a quite different textual world in which knowledge and belief are shaped less by special isolated rhetorical acts than by countless encounters with any manner of texts, as if belief were a massive wiki."

In any case, I am excited about the possibilities this Brave New World offers, and if it can lead to a more democratic society, so much the better!

Because It's Said A Lot: Mass Media and Mass Manipulation

We live in a world of gossip. What do I mean by that? I mean that most of the information we get is based on second-hand knowledge. Just today I have read about laws in China, military information in Afghanistan, the water scandal in Northern Ireland, all of which I have no first-hand knowledge about. All of this information, like gossip, is mediated. Information virtually never passes through a medium without that medium changing the information in some way. Even in live video coverage there is mediation, by selecting what is covered, camera angle, and how the coverage is introduced.

In such situations we tend to side with "conventional wisdom". Knowledge agreed upon by the majority of "informed" voices. For most of us those voices come from mass media. In the video below John Stewart succinctly describes the creation and result such "conventional wisdom" can have on an electorate, such as in 2004.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Talking Points
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

So politicians know that they have limited media coverage, and if they can flood that coverage with talking points and easily recognizable key words, people may accept it as the conventional wisdom since that is what they get to hear the most. That's hardly a secret. Ad agencies do it all the time with their brands, governments do it with their policies, I even do it with my web page so that google will make me more prominent on their search engine (Oh, btw. intelligence of persuasion, democracy, society, rhetoric). But what impact does this have on the public discourse and individual opinions?

Talking points and key words are of necessity reductive, catchy, and represent the dumbing down of a discourse. They simplify complicated issues to a slogan, and reduce intense debates to a shout. When a politician is more concerned about pounding us with talking points than actually discussing a problem intelligently there is no room for compromise and mutual understanding, which is the very basis of a democratic society.

Apart from this, such "jack-hammering" of talking points creates the effect of bullying. A 1955 study of social psychology supervised by Salomon E. Asch discovered some disturbing facts about the pressure of conformity. Eight persons were brought into a room for an experiment. Seven had been told to advocate the same wrong answer every time and one had been told that all eight were being tested for perceptive skills. The participants were shown different objects and asked questions like "which line is longer?" and "which ball is white and which is black". Every participant would utter their opinion after each other according to where they were sitting in the circle. For the first few questions the eighth individual answered according to his own perception, but by the fourth question he was getting unsure and frustrated. Did the rest really see things so differently from him? Could they all be wrong each time? From then on the eighth participant answered the same answer as the rest of the group. He even said a white ball was black and that a black ball was white.

A full summary of the study can be found here:
http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps18.html

As a conclusion to the study, Professor Asch wrote:
"Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of his experience and insight. When consensus comes under the dominance of conformity, the social process is polluted and the individual at the same time surrenders the powers on which his functioning as a feeling and thinking being depends. That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern."

There is a real danger that we as individuals will allow ourselves to conform to views, values and opinions that are neither personal, factual, or moral. Just like the participant in the study we may cave in to the pressure of conformity. Ask yourself, next time you are watching a movie, a political ad, or the news: "Do I agree with this representation of the world? What values is this movie promulgating as good and acceptable? What evidence does this person have for that claim? How is what this person is saying making me feel?"

In asking these questions we may very well choose to agree with what is being presented to us, but the difference is that we then make a moral choice rather than just taking the default option.

Religious Values in the Public Square

The values of a democratic society determine many of its actions. These values are shaped by public discourse. I have found an online article which describes this process very accurately and encourage everyone to read it. 

Religious Values in the Public Square

Here is one excerpt:
"Our public interaction reveals much about who we are as a people, what values we uphold and what kind of society we want to live in. The discourse that emerges from that interaction continually defines what we consider morally acceptable, how we treat others, and how in turn we expect to be treated."

Modern democratic societies generally have a broad public discourse as their ideal, inviting contributions from different ethnic, ideological and religious groups. Yet in many democratic societies religious groups have been marginalized. Despite the fact that many of these have legitimate competence and experience in areas like community building, solving ethical problems and organizing volunteer work, their viewpoints have often been ridiculed, considered obsolete, or deliberately ignored. Some religious communities have as a result become radicalized (as is the case with many Muslim extremists), others have become increasingly isolated from society around them and its development. None of these two options are healthy for a democracy. The result of the first is that citizens of a society turn against it violently because they no longer identify themselves as a part of that society. The result of the second (for religious groups) is an experience of society which resembles that of totalitarianism; the development of society is in the hands of another group of people and the governed have no voice to participate in determining the outcome. 

To quote from the article:
"The issue of religious participation in the public square is essentially a debate about the first principles of civic life: the coexistence between competing human interests, the self-determination of religious communities, the autonomy of individual conscience and the accommodation of diverse beliefs and opinions in public debate. The way we respond to these challenges establishes the parameters of civic interactions and sets the boundaries of our collective and individual identities."

When groups and voices are marginalized or denied access to the public discourse, society as a whole loses. Many examples in the past show how people from these communities have effectively questioned and changed the flow of current public discourse, and as a result societies have improved. Prominent examples include Ghandi, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Reverend Martin Luther King. These are almost universally seen as heroes. They identified conditions, tendencies or movements in their society which were contrary to their deepest beliefs, and they reacted against those with intelligence and power. They identified their passion with their religious zeal. How much poorer would the world be today if these voices had been forever silenced or denied access to the public debate because of their religious origin and motivation?

On the other hand, religious communities and individuals lose when they withdraw themselves from the public discourse. As isolated as they may become, eventually decisions will be made which affect them. Without actively participating in public discourse they often become defined by people who may be ignorant of or even antagonistic towards their views.

A democratic society is ruled by the people, and that includes both secular and religious individuals and organizations. A narrow public discourse leads to a narrow-minded society. Jurgen Habermas, one of the most prominent modern thinkers, wrote, "Among the modern societies, only those that are able to introduce into the secular domain the essential contents of their religious traditions which point beyond the merely human realm will also be able to rescue the substance of the human.”

Mission statement

“By making the individual both the means and the end of democracy, [society] committed itself to investing its energies into creating individuals capable of possessing a moral will that achieves enough autonomy from dominant social forces that it is capable of reacting back on those forces with intelligence and power.”
John Dewey

From the outset, the premise of democracy has been the rule of the majority. Yet public opinion is volatile and vulnerable. Aristotle said, giving power to the people was a way of giving power to the ones who could persuade the people. This concern has been validated throughout the history of democracy. Demagogues can manipulate and inflame public opinion by playing on the very basest attributes of human nature, until the people act like a mob and willingly throw out the foundations of liberty and freedom. Many democratic societies have, like Germany in the 1930s, voted themselves out of power.

It is essential for the stability of any democratic society that there are individuals within that society who are able to distance themselves from the influence of dominant social forces, to question them and, if necessary, to react back on those forces with "intelligence and power". Thus they can stem the flow of public opinion when it would otherwise propel the people off the edge of a cliff.

Democracy works not by coercion but persuasion. Therefore it is crucial for a democratic citizen to seek and gain what I have called 'the intelligence of persuasion' in order to both recognize persuasive influences in society and, when necessary, be able to persuade others to reject those influences.

This web page is dedicated to learning and teaching the intelligence of persuasion in order to build a more democratic society.