SURRENDERING CONTROL TO

SOCIAL MEDIA

Bernard Keane

Crikey writer, allegedly influential Twitter user

Copyright: MUFC

Copyright: Celebrityphotodvd.com

Interconnectivity

• Connecting with other people without anyone

else mediating the connection.

• Forming communities disconnected from

geography, based on interest

• Behaving as humans normally do in

communities.

• Information physics changed

“Superconnectivity”

• Always connected

• Geography no longer relevant due to mobile

connectedness

• Unitary superplatforms e.g. Twitter, Facebook

• Phones cameras extending the panopticon to

universality.

Traditional broadcast media model

Consumer

New fangled “internet” media model*

*May not

be to scaleCopyright: The Opte

Project

Sage advice from McLuhan

“We shape our tools, and thereafter

our tools shape us.”

“The medium is the message.”

What is it doing to us?

• Reverses the atomisation of mass media

• Rewiring our brains: short attention span, “I’ll

remember that later”, fragmentation

• Less privacy

• Reduces information inequality and flattens

information hierarchies

What does it mean?

• It’s a users’ space, and users’ rules

• Hostile to gatekeepers

• A delivery mechanism for the Streisand Effect

• Superfast distribution and consumption

• Prizes authenticity

Key lessons

• It’s not about the platform, the software, the

technology, it’s about the people

• People can still be manipulated, but the

network has antibodies to manipulation

• Surrender control