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herdofturtlesProducing video, art, or text on the internet is an odd experience because there isn’t anything tangibly being given to anyone. A blog isn’t the same as a printed book—which is consciously chosen by the reader, sought out and stored on a shelf or table. A book is a belonging. A blog post is not belonging to anyone. I have given nothing but raw data.
This principle runs through video, music, and art just the same. A Vinyl record is different from a car radio; a movie DVD is different from streaming. In its furthest form, the scrolling of mixed short media is nothing tangible to hold onto at all.
The whole fleeting ecosystem of the internet means it is difficult to own or hold a work published on the internet to allow it to seep into place or identity. There is no country, face, or location associated to the content of the internet in a real, meaningful, tangible way. It exists evanescently— the work has become content that is consumed and moved on from by nature of the medium from any space in the world. One doesn’t have to search for anything specific, take it home, make space for it, and make it part of themselves. One clicks and checks what is fed to them daily and makes a game of sorting approval and disapproval on the content presented there to curate the experience of ever fleeting content.
Watching a video on the internet is as part of one's identity as a conversation held on the sidewalk.
Owning a book seems to me to be a different experience. One writes in the margins and returns to the puzzles in its pages their whole life, even passing the book down in a written will to another family member. It is a piece of the person, tangibly, in a way internet content never can be.
The privacy between the objects of one’s personal identity are shifted to that of the communal identity on the internet—the blog, television program, and radio stream foster an external reality while the physical book, DVD, vinyl, fostered interior reality.
According to Joshua Meyrowitz, professor of communication, this differing relationship alters the way people think of works and information. Someone who wouldn’t like to purchase a vintage painting or flip through a book on whale facts would have no qualms with seeing these things pop up in their media feed. Someone who wouldn’t want to spend their time purchasing a political book and reading the compiled argument would have no problem scrolling through unrelated five second clips of political takes for the same several hour amount of time.
Because of this, a creator’s audience on intangible media forms fluctuates wildly. Studies find that half of any audience leaves between television episodes (even on cliffhanger episodes), media posts, channels, and the lost viewers are replaced by new viewers who float in and out to check a work once before moving on. This means the statistic for views remains relatively consistent, but the statistics for returning views fluctuate widely.
Personal commitment is not demanded of the internet viewer. The internet and its content wash over us… they do not stay with us. In the internet world, studies show that niche interests gather an audience not from people seeking it, but from people who do not bother to click away or turn off the steady stream of content. In The mass media and social problems by Dennis Howitt, he explains this by saying, “for a programme to be very popular it has to attract people who switch it on especially. A minority programme gains an audience simply from those who do not bother to switch off (p. 145).” But for a programme to attract a popularly large audience of people who switch it on in the internet world, it must appeal to the most common denominator possible.
This is all to say, as one who posts to the internet, I have made myself content.
This principle runs through video, music, and art just the same. A Vinyl record is different from a car radio; a movie DVD is different from streaming. In its furthest form, the scrolling of mixed short media is nothing tangible to hold onto at all.
The whole fleeting ecosystem of the internet means it is difficult to own or hold a work published on the internet to allow it to seep into place or identity. There is no country, face, or location associated to the content of the internet in a real, meaningful, tangible way. It exists evanescently— the work has become content that is consumed and moved on from by nature of the medium from any space in the world. One doesn’t have to search for anything specific, take it home, make space for it, and make it part of themselves. One clicks and checks what is fed to them daily and makes a game of sorting approval and disapproval on the content presented there to curate the experience of ever fleeting content.
Watching a video on the internet is as part of one's identity as a conversation held on the sidewalk.
Owning a book seems to me to be a different experience. One writes in the margins and returns to the puzzles in its pages their whole life, even passing the book down in a written will to another family member. It is a piece of the person, tangibly, in a way internet content never can be.
The privacy between the objects of one’s personal identity are shifted to that of the communal identity on the internet—the blog, television program, and radio stream foster an external reality while the physical book, DVD, vinyl, fostered interior reality.
According to Joshua Meyrowitz, professor of communication, this differing relationship alters the way people think of works and information. Someone who wouldn’t like to purchase a vintage painting or flip through a book on whale facts would have no qualms with seeing these things pop up in their media feed. Someone who wouldn’t want to spend their time purchasing a political book and reading the compiled argument would have no problem scrolling through unrelated five second clips of political takes for the same several hour amount of time.
Because of this, a creator’s audience on intangible media forms fluctuates wildly. Studies find that half of any audience leaves between television episodes (even on cliffhanger episodes), media posts, channels, and the lost viewers are replaced by new viewers who float in and out to check a work once before moving on. This means the statistic for views remains relatively consistent, but the statistics for returning views fluctuate widely.
Personal commitment is not demanded of the internet viewer. The internet and its content wash over us… they do not stay with us. In the internet world, studies show that niche interests gather an audience not from people seeking it, but from people who do not bother to click away or turn off the steady stream of content. In The mass media and social problems by Dennis Howitt, he explains this by saying, “for a programme to be very popular it has to attract people who switch it on especially. A minority programme gains an audience simply from those who do not bother to switch off (p. 145).” But for a programme to attract a popularly large audience of people who switch it on in the internet world, it must appeal to the most common denominator possible.
This is all to say, as one who posts to the internet, I have made myself content.
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