Author’s Note
In 2018, news media were abundant with news about media. Though distinguishable by the who, the what, and the rest, those news stories were united by a shared “so what?” That last question underlies this project, fueled by my interest in the connections between media, laws, politics, technology, and ethics.
The title of this publication, Media Metropolitan 2019, draws inspiration from 20th century media theorist Marshall McLuhan but is rephrased to the characteristics of the current media landscape. Writing in the 1960s, McLuhan envisioned separate societies brought together in a global village through the advance of technology in the media (McLuhan 1962). In 2018, the Internet and its communication channels have obliterated borders. However, the current media landscape is more closely resembling a metropolis made up of steel-and-glass skyscrapers housing the headquarters of media and tech giants who are still subject to the activities of regulatory authorities taking place behind granite facades.
This project features a series of articles discussing the media news that reverberated throughout 2018 and whose effects have spilled over in 2019 and will possibly continue to raise questions. Yet the list of topics included in my articles is not remotely exhaustive of all possible points of discussion worthy of news coverage, academic study, and ethical evaluation. Still, the topics I have chosen mark the important trends whose implications have been and will continue to impact media professionals’ work.
My method can be described as going back to the future: wherever possible, I base my arguments on the potential developments of media trends in the future on research of similar trends in the past. In fact, none of the particular phenomena covered in my project are purely native to our digital era. Just like AI-savvy people create deep fakes now, filmmakers in the 1920s forged old movies. Food porn has been around for centuries but in more or less subtle forms. The ASMR technique can be linked to synesthesia which has been researched as early as the beginning of the 19th century.
Past research then can be seen as the solid structure of this project. Links to other journalists’ and analysts’ work are the building blocks which justify the need for further discussion of the topics covered in my project. While research and news coverage is abundant, what is missing is a translation of those into practical terms that a contemporary media professional can reference as a basis when forming their ethical viewpoints or demanding legal rights. My project then contributes to the discussions on the hot topics in media by providing such a translation to young media professionals.
I chose Medium as the platform of this project as its values overlap with those of my project and with the needs of the modern media consumer: it allows for quick, metered reading; it combines the trustworthiness of a widely used platform with the awareness that it is not a legacy medium; and it offers the opportunity for including visual components for the reader to relax their eyes when their attention span is interrupted.
Still, the focus of my work remains the content. Despite users’ prioritizing of images and video over text as sources of information, research-based discussions are necessary as the world media industry, and particularly the Western media as the focal point of this project, is facing problems with trust, funding, freedom, and technological innovation.
Those challenges have driven media outlets into a frenzy of mergers in an effort to compete with innovative services. They also justify the paywalls legacy newspapers have been forced to put up in an effort to stay afloat. In the EU, technological innovation has necessitated new legislation aiming at protecting users’ data from tech giants whereas the balance between the government and the market in the U.S. is yet to be found. Tapping into the resources cutting-edge technologies have to offer, advertisers have employed techniques that spur controversy among viewers and researchers. At the same time, other technologies formerly reserved to tech-savvy users are now much more commonly used and can have a negative impact on media professionals’ work. Nevertheless, in 2018 journalists also demonstrated that the values all media professionals share override institutional pressure technological attacks.
References
McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Canada: University of Toronto Press
These articles are published as part of a Senior Capstone Project counting toward the Journalism and Mass Communication major at the American University in Bulgaria.
