MM
Noughties has liberated people from viewing computer technology as fixed to work stations previously associated with word processing and gaming. As an antidote to pre-Millennium fin-de-siecle (end of a century) narratives of cultural decline and moral decay, the proliferation of digital technology and the internet has infused contemporary civilisation with a new vitality that can be felt across various media forms including television, film, pop music and the press. Contemporary use of ICT embraces not only
the interactivity of hardware that allows us to listen to music, watch television, surf the internet and talk to our friends all on the same machine, but has reframed the way in which media institutions conceptualise their own business infrastructure: in the post-digital age the most successful brands are those that exist across multiple platforms: BAUER’s Kerrang!, for example, is a website, TV and radio station. Likewise, the increased interactivity between audience and institution has refined their relationship, with niche market programming proliferating at the expense of broadcasting, and small-scale media industries often producing a healthier profit margin than cumbersome and unwieldy corporations. However, it is perhaps the proliferation of social networking that exemplifies best the way in which audience engagement with media technology has become naturalised and framed by consumer creativity.
Social networking On the face of things, social networking sites
like Bebo, Facebook and MySpace embody postmodern culture: they are virtual reality spaces in which the distinction between the real and the simulated is neither here nor there and audiences are free to construct their identity from a bricolage of pop culture references: applications invite us to list our favourite albums, films and adverts and details about age, sex and national identity are totally unverifiable. In theory these sites encourage us to adopt new idealised personas, free from the constraints of our corporeal everyday lives in which we can embrace the aspirational codes of consumer culture and reinvent ourselves in
the terms of our own definition. What social networking sites offer is the
opportunity to enter a hyper-real utopia in which all participants are equal because the signifiers of social belonging and the invocations of prejudice no longer matter. The technology that underpins social networking is based on the premise that whether you are slim or fat, black or white, gay or straight does not matter in the media-induced reality of cyber-space. And yet it does. As every instance of cyber-bullying and internet harassment testifies, the way in which audiences use social networking has been routinised and naturalised; and endemic to this is that it draws out of its participants some of their less pleasant characteristics: vanity, insularity and petty prejudice often seem to characterise the way consumers engage with sites like Facebook and Bebo. Just as networks and friendship groups are
increasingly confined to parochial factions of college and work mates, so too has the proliferation of digital images on social networking sites emphasised issues of body image for it participants. Andy Warhol once predicted that everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes, but for contemporary users of Facebook and MySpace that duration can be extended as they face the same pressures of living in the public eye that just five years ago was the preserve of reality TV stars and minor celebrities.
Skype In the wonderful cycle of perpetual
return that characterises patterns of media consumption, one of the most innovative forms of media technology today is Skype. Principally a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the internet, the service duplicates the features of a regular land- line with the addition of video conferencing
60 MediaMagazine | December 2009 | english and media centre
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