[iDC] The People Formerly Known as the Employers

[Brian Holmes]

Mark Deuze wrote:
> when I was listening to Leopoldina  
> Fortunati the other day I felt for the first time that somebody  
> brilliantly articulated the twin process of power redistribution  
> taking place in this context. 

Some references to specific books or articles could be interesting!

> Beyond this, why should we not warn against the deleterious side- 
> effects of a self-producing digital media culture? 

Well, indeed, why not? The point is to think in terms of a media ecology 
where the different strong points become stronger. But this requires a 
scale of values to measure quality, and that is the trickiest thing in 
the world. It is clear that my viewpoint or your viewpoint are not good 
enough. One needs an institutional mix that will favor certain ranges of 
diversity. The decline of public-broadcast type channels on TV, the 
failure of alternative stations to penetrate the mainstream, and the 
increasing consolidation among both audiovisual and print media has 
created the opposite. As for the social/networked media, its vast 
user-base is doing a surprisingly good job at maintaining some modicum 
of interest and relevance amidst the floods of nonsense, but still, the 
odds are stacked against it: the networked media are for the most part 
controlled by capital interests and they have bequeathed us a jumpy, 
glittering world of push-button stimulation rather than multileveled 
spaces of mediated interaction and reflexivity. Michel's work is 
important because it extracts and codifies principles of resistance and 
above all, positive alternatives to the corporate use of the Internet. 
At this point, if we stay focused on the news, the critical bloggers and 
independent media people are helping keep concentrated corporate media 
production a little more honest, while at the same time still depending 
largely on the majors for the bulk of their knowledge about the world. 
It's an uncertain balance, and the recent swings to the racist right in 
many democratic societies do not reflect favorably on the quality of 
public, i.e. mediated discourse.

In my own case, although I don't watch TV much, I depend to a very large 
degree on newspapers for grasping what's going on, and on university and 
other databanks in order to criticize that superficial grasp. I would 
appreciate to see, not just (understandable) self-defense from the 
journalistic professions, but also critical initiatives from the inside, 
to transform and improve the overall mediasphere. But I also repeat my 
earlier request: what are some examples of great professional 
initiatives which I might have missed and could help me and others see 
where the positive energy and ethics are going these days? As things 
stand, from what I can make out, the media ecology is in bad shape. We 
all can do better, or suffer the continuing slide of our societies into 
a kind of frenetic state of easily manipulated passion, fetishization 
and amnesia.

In any event, I do find this exchange quite good,

thanks,

Brian