Andrey Miroshnichenko

From the perspective of media ecology, this paper explores the question of responsibility for the effects that media have on society. To explain these media effects, two approaches are singled out. (1) The instrumental approach assumes that a medium works as a tool used by a user for a purpose. (2) The environmental approach focuses on the capacity of a medium to become an environmental force that reshapes both the habitat and the inhabitants. The instrumental approach to media, when taken too broadly and without an understanding of its limits, leads to conspiracy theories and inadequate social and political assessments. The more advanced and sophisticated environmental approach allows for an adequate understanding of media evolution and its effects but does not comply with the traditional legal notions of guilt and responsibility for actions, as there is no jurisdictional human or institutional agency when environmental forces are in play. After charting the distinction between the instrumental and environmental views of media, the paper focused on how the instrumental effects of media turn into environmental effects. The purpose of the paper is to develop and offer a media ecological apparatus for possible further juridical discussions regarding the regulation of the networking society.
Keywords: media effects; internet regulation; media ecology; social media; Marshal McLuhan

The entire media environment, comprised of both new and old media, now rewards the rage and polarisation of its actors and users. Digital platforms give regular people power that they otherwise would never have had access to. The mass media reinforce and articulate this power into political discourses. In return, people provide platforms and the media with a degree of engagement that allows for monetisation. Populism and polarisation are structurally embedded into this social-economic symbiosis. This media hardware can and must work only with this cultural software.

This article probes into Trumpism using McLuhan’s idea of figure/ground analysis. To make visible the hidden ground behind a salient figure (or figures), the dichotomy of instrumental and environmental approaches to media effects is introduced. The widely used instrumental approach is rooted in the long-standing Lasswellian tradition of communication studies (‘who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect?’). The instrumental explanations of Trumpism are unavoidably reductionist, as they focus on figures and, therefore, overemphasize rationality and agency in media use. On the contrary, the environmental approach focuses on hidden ground and explores what environmental forces originate from new media’s proliferation and how these forces reshape habitat and inhabitants. To apply this view, the article examines the environmental factors within the news industry and social media that are favourable to Trumpism: the commodification of Trump by the media, the morphological conflict between broadcasting and engaging modes of agenda-setting, the built-in polarization of social media and others.

This chapter contributes to scholarship in the fields of media ecology and political communication by investigating the effects of the Trump bump in media-driven democracy. Specifically, it explains how the media's obsession with Donald Trump allowed them to capitalize on his political brand, which in turn contributed to changing the tone of political discourse in the United States. The effects of mediatization, including click-bait framing, increased negativity, and person-centered media coverage, had a distinct impact on the behavior of political actors and the political system as a whole. The dominance of marketing logic in contemporary media democracies provides a compelling argument for critical investigation of brand appropriation in political communication and its impact on the state of democracy. This chapter advocates for the further investigation of the current media ecosystem in order to move toward a public deliberation model that would support enhanced media literacy and citizen engagement in public policy debates.

This paper explores a practical application of a weak, or narrow, artificial intelligence (AI) in the news media. Journalism is a creative human practice. This, according to widespread opinion, makes it harder for robots to replicate. However, writing algorithms are already widely used in the news media to produce articles and thereby replace human journalists. In 2016, Wordsmith, one of the two most powerful news-writing algorithms, wrote and published 1.5 billion news stories. This number is comparable to or may even exceed work written and published by human journalists. Robo-journalists' skills and competencies are constantly growing. Research has shown that readers sometimes cannot differentiate between news written by robots or by humans; more importantly, readers often make little of such distinctions. Considering this, these forms of AI can be seen as having already passed a kind of Turing test as applied to journalism. The paper provides a review of the current state of robo-journalism; analyses popular arguments about " robots' incapability " to prevail over humans in creative practices; and offers a foresight of the possible further development of robo-journalism and its collision with organic forms of journalism.

The article develops Marshall McLuhan's approach to the interplay between media, the sensorium, and reality. McLuhan's concepts of " acoustic space " and " visual space " are unfolded with regard to the consequences that digital media will have on the human ability to perceive reality. Reality–sensorium interaction is systematized in the article. This systematization includes the environments of the given, the represented, and the induced. These environments are shaped by sequential stages of media evolution, which relate to preliterate media, alphabet-based media, and digital media. Existing and upcoming media technologies are presumed to alter human biology and transcend it. Within the set of media technologies that alter human biology, artificial flavours, electrically induced senses, immersive media, augmented reality, and virtual reality are treated. Within the set of media impacts that will change the human sensorium, the dismissal of gravity (related to the McLuhanian " angelism " of electronic discarnate man), the switch in navigation from biological networking to social networking, the sense of others, and the thirst for response are treated. Plato, Lenin, Wittgenstein, Benveniste, Logan, Carr, Shirky, and other thinkers are employed in the article to support these McLuhanian speculations, and sketch out prospective trends in the evolution of media and the sensorium.

The article applies the concepts of media socialization, media literacy, and media hygiene to the problem of human adaptation to the digital environment.
The interaction of humans with the digital environment is described from the viewpoint of media ecology, but the ecological paradigm is reversed: what is at issue is not the protection of the environment from humans, but rather the protection of humans from the digital environment.
The development of the digital environment is only a few decades old. Humans have no experience of living amid environmental confusion and temporal compression. The task of media ecology is to help humankind develop the skills of living in a digital environment.
Media socialization develops norms for the children who enter the digital world with little experience of social interaction in the real world. Media literacy is a method of teaching people to use technical and social interfaces for interaction within a new environment. Media hygiene guides people to “prosume” content in the digital environment safely.

Is the Internet really just a supplier of rubbish?
One of the video presentations of American media thinker Clay Shirky is entitled It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure. The problem is not the volume or quality of information, but the filter quality.
Yes, in terms of how information appears on the Internet, it could be compared with a rubbish dump. Everything gets in. But far from everything circulates and finds an end-user. In reality, nobody uses rubbish. There are no restrictions on entering the Internet. But there are rather serious – albeit not all that obvious – restrictions on the path information takes from the Internet to our brains. Content is now filtered not before publication, but at distribution.
There are three bastions guarding our mental health – three echelons of filters that sift the contents of the Internet for us:
1) personal settings;
2) the Viral Editor;
3) algorithms of relevance.
http://human-as-media.com/2015/06/16/3-filters-of-internet-hygiene-browser-settings-the-viral-editor-and-the-filter-bubble/

Beautifully awkward Katy Perry Left Shark moment. – Shark Ex Machina. – Wrong Olympic snowflake. – Perfectness alienates, roughness invites. – Human mistakes and the cargo cult of robot journalists. – Give them bait. – The famous Degas’s horse head cut. – Exploit this. – Wrong means exists.
In the age of total algorithmization, the roughness of a performance, and even the mistake, becomes the factor of surplus value. It is only wrongness that proves the existence of rightness. Or maybe even more: it is wrongness that proves the very existence of things.
http://human-as-media.com/2015/10/05/the-wrong-theory-roughness-as-a-lure-in-design-and-media/

These days, an individual article is no longer the smallest unit of mass media consumption. It has been replaced by linked-to-article news teasers, which one typically finds in their news feed on social networks.
This creates a paradox that is interesting yet lethal for good old journalism. An editor seeks to lure the reader by making teasers attractive, loading them up with the most significant information, and all the juiciest bits from the original article. However, the more attractive the teaser, the more information it carries, and therefore the less the need for readers to actually follow the link and read the entire article on the media org’s website. Thus the teaser basically devours the original article. Aimed supposedly to just advertise the article, the teaser makes the reading of the actual article redundant, due to the simple fact that the teaser already contains everything of interest that the article has to offer. Consumers, in such a hurry, may often be satisfied with what they have already gotten from the teaser.
Read more on author's blog Human as media: http://human-as-media.com/2015/04/12/the-quantum-theory-of-mass-media-i-what-is-the-unit-of-media-consumption/

Journalism vs. blogging: a well-equipped detachment vs. haphazardly armed population.
If there is an imaginary contest between a journalist and a blogger, we may, no doubt, hand the winning prize to the journalist. But in reality, it is not a “one-to-one” contest. It is the rivalry between institutional media and guerilla journalism, between the organizations and the environment.
What is in journalism’s arsenal for its last battle?
1) Completeness of stories
2) Compressed panoramic agenda
3) Professional status of the journalist
4) Limited edition
The time is coming for journalists to be aware of robo-journalists. The last priests of journalism will defend themselves from robots, not the crowd. More than this, the crowd will become an ally, as it is still the human crowd.
Read more: http://human-as-media.com/2015/02/13/the-immortal-qualities-of-good-old-journalism/

Why the Internet guru Clay Shirky eventually banned the Internet in class. (A distorted precis, comments, and notes on the margins of Shirky’s reflection.)
New media evangelist Clay Shirky has recently prohibited students’ use of digital devices in his class. He had been moving toward this decision for a long 16 years. Professor Shirky has explained his ban in the extremely interesting article that was published on The Washington Post‘s blog[i].
Clay Shirky has been teaching Internet classes since 1998. He had been allowing students to use devices till this September. Firstly, it’s a little bit awkward to taboo what you are teaching. Secondly, it looks like he would have felt a little bit ashamed, if he had succeeded in the competition for students’ attention using artificial restriction. “It’s my job to be more interesting than the possible distractions, so a ban felt like cheating,” writes Shirky. Besides, Prof. Shirky believed in the laissez-faire approach supposing that the ‘invisible hand’ of rational decision-making will establish the right balance of attention in the audience. But, at the end of the day, after long years of struggle, he made his resolute decision and instituted the ‘government regulation’ over this ‘free market’ of students’ attention. Reed more: http://human-as-media.com/2014/11/06/clay-shirky-devices-and-the-brains-weathering/

Brands are engaged in a media arms race. Creating relevant and valuable content is no longer an option, but a necessity. Traditional marketing boils down to managing brand information distribution, while content marketing strives to create conditions in which information about the brand spreads on its own.
This article features examples of companies such as Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, John Deere, Michelin, Jell-O, and Patagonia that successfully create the tools for broadcasting their messages and engaging their audiences.
Read more: http://human-as-media.com/2014/11/16/content-marketing-how-companies-are-turning-into-media/

“In 1988, Ontario became the first educational jurisdiction in the world to mandate media literacy as part of the English curriculum”, reports the “Media Education: Make It Happen!” Program. In 1988 – that’s impressive. For so many years, this program has been building up its own tradition and its own methodology of teaching. But there is also the other side of the coin: there is a risk for long traditions to get outdated.
The methodological materials of the Ontario Media Literacy Program contain an essential concept for deconstructing how the media delivers its message. It is called the Media Studies Triangle and represents three basic components of media: Text, Audience, and Production.
But why text?
... Meanwhile, what is the real role of the linear sequence of letters in today’s media and, especially, in emerging media?
Today, what has to be in text’s place in the Media Studies Triangle is not text. No longer. At least, no long text. And soon, not text at all. So what instead?
Read more: http://human-as-media.com/2014/11/18/text-no-longer/

Television swallowed up millions of man-hours of free time by drawing people into a shared passive addiction. Prior to the age of TV, never before had such a large number of people done the same thing at the same time. TV paves the way for a level of centralized collective free time that, having been turned from passivity into active participation, produces a social explosion.
This vision somewhat fits Lenin’s idea of the historical mission behind imperialism: Imperialism provides a level of concentration of the means of production (“the gigantic socialization of labor”) that is essential for a socialist state. Imperialism is therefore a material preparation for socialism: the eve of a socialist revolution. All that is needed is to remove the imperialists from the position of owners and in their place declare the proletariat the owners. The concentration of the means of production can remain the same; imperialism has paved the way for this. Ленин с котиком
Something similar occurs in the transition from TV burning free time to social networks burning free time. TV engendered a “gigantic socialization” of mass free time. This socialization of time prepared people to be together en masse virtually, to experience a sense of unity with millions of people from a distance. (Earlier, newspapers were doing the same, but they proved too weak a gatherer of souls.)
Reed more: http://human-as-media.com/2015/01/23/lenin-and-billions-of-man-hours-of-free-time-from-passivity-of-tv-consumption-to-activity-of-social-media-contribution/

“The most important book in media theory that has been written in 40 years.”
Paul Levinson, author of “Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium”

Revising Herman-Сhomsky's Propaganda model, the author argues that all we knew about journalism was related to a news business funded by advertising. Because of the Google-Facebook duopoly, advertising has fled to the internet. The media are forced to switch to another source of funding – selling content to readers. However, they cannot sell news, because news is already known to people from social media newsfeeds. Instead, the media offers the validation of already-known news within a certain value system and the delivery of the “right” news to others.
The business necessity forces the media to relocate the gravity of their operation from news to values. Media outlets are increasingly soliciting subscriptions as donations to a cause. To attract donations, they have to focus on ‘pressing social issues’. However, for better soliciting, they must also support and amplify readers’ irritation and frustration with those issues. Thus, the media are incentivized to amplify and dramatize issues whose coverage is most likely to be paid for. Ideally, the media should not just exaggerate but induce the public’s concerns.
The ad-driven media manufactured consent. The reader-driven media manufactures anger. The former served consumerism. The latter serves polarization and Trumpism.
The need to pursue reader revenue and therefore the dependence on the audience, with the news no longer being a commodity, is pushing journalism to mutate into postjournalism. Journalism wants its picture to match the world; postjournalism wants the world to match its picture. The media are turning into crowdfunded Ministries of post-truth not because of some underlying conspiracies but due to their business needs and the settings of a broader media environment.
The book investigates the origins and propelling forces of this mutation from the perspectives of media ecology and the political economy of communications. The author explores polarization as a media effect, seeing polarization studies as media studies.

Over 6,000 years of literary civilisation, there have been perhaps 300 million authors: people capable of communicating their opinion beyond their own physical circles. Now, thanks to the Internet, in the historical blink of an eye, the number of authors has reached two billion people.
In his book, "Human as Media. The Emancipation of Authorship", the media futurist Andrey Miroshnichenko examines the impact of emancipated authorship on the media, culture, and politics in closed and open societies. Miroshnichenko demonstrates that, becoming themselves the media, people unavoidably engage in the evolution of media activism. For the sake of response and better socialisation, the former audience gets increasingly infected by authorship and inevitably moves from everyday idle talk, to funny cats, then to communal subjects, and finally, to political activities.
The conflict between emancipated authorship and the old broadcast media model will stir up antagonisms between developed and developing countries, and will also intensify social and cultural conflicts within developing countries.
Robert K. Logan, a colleague and co-author of Marshall McLuhan, author of "Understanding New Media: Extending Marshall McLuhan", wrote: "Dr. Andrey Miroshnichenko… has written a very important book. I would go even further and say that a new star is born that students of media ecology, communications and digital media need to pay special attention to by first reading his book and then integrating his insights into their own understanding of the Internet, the World Wide Web and social media... The book is a blockbuster full of insights into the nature of communication, socialization, authorship, culture, politics and their connection to the Web... Dr. Miroshnichenko has extended McLuhan’s ideas to create totally new insights of his own." (See the full text of the Robert Logan's review on http://human-as-media.com)
Andrey Miroshnichenko is a Russian media futurist, journalist, writer and public speaker, doctor of philology, coordinator for the Russian Association of Futurologists, Fulbright-Kennan scholar (2012-2013), and the author of a number of books on linguistics, journalism and communications. He is also a regular contributor to influential Russian media outlets, including Forbes.ru, Slon.ru, The Moscow News, Colta.ru and others. Andrey Miroshnichenko is known for his concept of the Viral Editor and his research in the media sphere. After working in print media for twenty years, Miroshnichenko wrote his book, When Newspapers Die (2010), which became a bestseller in Russian media circles, subsequently leaving the press himself. Over the past few years, he has been consulting major corporations and politicians on issues of media behaviour. He also researches and advises on the development of new, old and corporate media.
The book is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HLT7H0E
The author’s blog: http://human-as-media.com/.

A tie between cyber journalists and bio-journalists has already occurred. – Three threats to journalism. – News story on earthquake and tectonic shifts. – Generative journalism. – Two arguments about “robots’ incapability”. – Road map for robot journalism. – Forecasts and suggestions.

The shutdown of two of the oldest Canadian newspapers on the last Friday of January, 2016, was accompanied by mystical coincidences. Not only were the newspapers closed on the same day, but they also illustrated their last front pages in the same way – with a mysterious number “30”.