Social Network Media Gatekeeping
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/06/2007 - 12:55
During a particularly difficult period in my life, a friend of mine, who was a therapist, pointed out one of my psychological defenses and went on to note the importance of our defenses. Without them, during times when life is coming at you fast, things can easily become overwhelming.
I thought of that today as I read Enric’s post on a video blogging mailing list about the recent discussion about authenticity in digital space.
Enric notes,
“The mistake is in thinking that networked media is about content
(scripted or not, personal or show, etc.)It's about the disappearance of media gatekeepers.”
I thought about this in terms of presidential politics. My wife was Ned Lamont’s scheduler during his U.S. Senate campaign. There is an important role for gatekeepers, especially in the political realm, and this is what led me back to my thought about psychological defenses.
Perhaps the old media gatekeepers are not disappearing. Perhaps they are being replaced by a different type of gatekeepers. After all, YouTube and the other videosharing services have their own gatekeeping rules about what can go on the site, how it can be shared, how it makes it to the front page, etc. Social networks serve as another part of the gatekeeping mechanism as popular and well liked videos rise to the top.
Are popularity and user ratings better gatekeepers than the producers, editors, and anchors in the traditional media? The fiercely democratic, as well as those interested in ideas like emergence and collective intelligence are likely to think so.
No Gates
Submitted by Enric on Tue, 02/06/2007 - 14:09.For there to be gatekeepers there needs to be one or more gates. There are no gates on the net. Gates are a result of limited resources. For motion picture it is a limited number of screens that a movie can be shown on. For television it is a relatively static and limited network of broacasters and affiliates to a population group in a region. The limitation (and high cost of production) requires an executive to decide which small percentage of content that comes in, goes through that gate of movie screens or TV network time slots. The net does not have that limitation. The large video sharing sites do not pre-screen videos (YouTube, MySpace, etc.) And the smaller ones that do (like Revver), don't limit by quality of content, target audience and so forth, but for copyright ingringement and not being pornographic.
What you are referring to in which videos rise to the top in popularity is a different limitation. This is the number of people who can view a video and their average taste. For the most part that is detemined by the viewers themselves. They rate the videos, blog about them, email friends. A site will put up a video they think will be popular, an advertiser will pay to have a video on the front page. But if it doesn't get an audience in a short time, it dissapears. This is not a gate, but a promotional system. It has different, more dynamic characteristics than a gated system.
There is a downside to a lack of gates. There are sites with just pornographic material. There are other sites to promote racism, jihad, etc. that spring up. Some get shut down, but new ones appear.