In response to Gauntlett’s proposition in his video about his new book Making Media Studies: The Creativity Turn in Media and Cultural Studies (2015) that media is, and particularly now, active and creative and moving away from the traditional view of there being a flow of Institutions > Texts > Audience we discussed in our workshop how that platforms used today by everyone with a phone to make media is in fact determined less and less by institutions.
Where Facebook was initially a space for students at Harvard to connect, it has now become a pseudo morning newspaper that is used to gather news and watch videos. Where Snapchat initially came to be popular because of it’s ability to ‘safely’ distribute explicit material, it now a space where our most authentic selves in a digital context can be found. Where Twitter was yet another social network for individuals to share their ideas, it has become a breaking news platform and the place to go to question the quality of data services of Telcos and an interrogation room for finding out where your train is.
It was determined by our group that the modern day platforms of the post-broadcast era can’t be entirely planned out by institutions in terms of what their ultimate use is. Not only this but how these platforms are used by communities is dynamic, whilst the current uses of popular platforms was outlined above there is no more certainty than the time that these platforms were created that in six or twenty-four months they will carry the same use and purpose. Ultimately the community determines the platform’s validity, benefits and uses.
What is really interesting is communities often overlap, Venn diagrams of social connections exist over Instagram, Peach, Facebook, Instagram, Beme, Twitter and Ello, yet each of these are used in their own bespoke manner by the community. There isn’t a single platform that suits all.
While Twitter isn’t dead, it’s purpose and use is mobile. Though the institution develops new aspects of the platform and how it can be used, how it is used will determine it’s longevity and contributions to society.
Image used is by Luis Prado and can be found at https://thenounproject.com/term/dead-bird/3298/ Under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0