The history of new media forms is the history of hysterical claims about their potential as weapons of total mind control. It used to be that advertisers were making you eat junk food and care about bad breath.https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/975928069688086528 …
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The actual proof of these broad-spectrum claims has always been less than compelling. Which is not to say that these media don't have broad social effects. But they are not of the "turning the population into mindless slaves of the puppet masters" variety.
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One observation that I don't really know what to do with: the emergence of a powerful new media form was twice followed, in fairly short order, by major worldwide social and political upheavals: radio in 1920s and television in 1950s. Web seems to be replicating that pattern.
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I have no mechanism that would explain this, so take it for what it's worth--possibly spurious pattern-making, possibly a regularity worth investigating.
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But if there is some causal link between a new mass media form and societal upheaval, I'm pretty sure about one thing: it isn't because these rebellions were being directed by a shadowy force that controlled people's minds through their radios and televisions.
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Talk to @fturner about The Democratic Surround.
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