A new media culture

Some attention has been dedicated to online media in recent weeks, perceivably because of a number of forums on the topic, such as the New Media Conference and the 16th Asian Media Information and Communication Centre seminars.

The topics of discussion – or at least what was highlighted in our local dailies – revolve around two themes: regulation and market share. Invariably, the experts and mainstream media pundits at these forums seem overtly interested in deciding on the fate of our online media environment as either something to be controlled or a channel through which their objectives can be promoted.

What was sorely lacking, however, seems to be an understanding of online media – websites, blogs, vlogs, forums and the ever-expanding variety of bold new online communication concepts – as a cultural phenomenon unique to our times.

In reflecting on the rise in terrorism in recent years, regulation of online communication is a valid concern. Add to that the volumes of petty strife, malicious content and what can best be described as byte anarchy floating and churning over the modem lines, and the temptation to clamp down on ‘radical’, politically incorrect and plain rude websites and blogs is an impossible itch to ignore. The futility of that is, of course, common knowledge today.

Yet another take on online media is their market potential, both as a source of revenue for their eyeball-magnet owners and as another platform on which mainstream media can ride on to steal the attention of said eyeballs. A very enterprising gesture, but hardly given to consideration of what kind of “wild child” online media really is.

The horse is hitched on the online bandwagon, rearing to go, but the wagon might very well be facing the wrong direction. It is sad to see that, with so much talk about online media, not much of it revolves around trying to understand what it really is to begin with.

Perhaps a simpler approach is to go back to basics and view online media as a communication tool, not too different from every media in its time – television, radio and print – that was viewed with as much suspicion, repulse, and a smart money-making motive waiting in the wing.When television first appeared, pundits thought it would carry nothing but crass to rot the brain, forever eroding the literacy people have taken pain to cultivate. No points for guessing what the adamant views were, then, when the printed press first hit the streets.

What they did not count on, for each and every emerging media, is a tenacity that draws energy from one key source: The desire for people to reach out and communicate. It was a pervasive tide that no one could have resisted, because people craved information that the media was invented to provide, first within a localised scale, and slowly expanding its sphere of influence. People crave to know everything, not just what their neighbbours did, but also what was happening in the world, and why it was happening. The floating messages were captured, internalised and discussed, giving us greater awareness of both the people we can and cannot see with our own bare eyes.

Online media would likely bear the same marks for our generation, reflecting our desire to reach out and communicate. But there is one important difference: Instead of information from an external source, the individual seeks to create his own information and exchange it with someone else. Hence, we arrive at the term “user-generated content” or what some would ungainly acronymise as UGC.

Sadly, we are still stuck at thinking of it purely in terms of UGC. The content, and not the impetus behind it, becomes the focus. Have we bothered to ask why our youths prefer to spend hours blogging in detail about the mispronunciations in a politician’s speech, just so that their pals staying in the opposite block can read it and have a good laugh, rather than engage each other in constructive political dialogue? Or are we more inclined to see it as an unavoidable trend that we need to catch up with to re-focus their eyeballs on our mature causes and worthy pursuits?

Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that we are a more educated generation, even as we become more enclosed and inward looking as a society. Not only are we more adept at languages and communicating, but we begin to form our own independent ideas and ideals. Ideals cannot be constraint in the mind, and we seek a channel for its expression. If the local dailies cannot carry it, we are confident and savvy enough to start a forum thread or blog that can.

It is also increasingly clear that online media is evolving, even in Singapore where the rules of engagement for politically correct content preceded our first blogger. Online media creators are constantly pushing the boundaries of a cyberspace they have already decided belongs to them. We can always build fences around it and install alarms within, but you can be sure that these measures will be something the savvy citizen journalist will be quick enough to step around and the emerging social journalist will be bold enough to defy. Of course, not before critical thinking gets a beating, and our small brain-dependent nation can ill afford that.

Let’s face it, unless we start looking at online media in its own terms, to see that this is a realm where ideals are more important than the news, we will forever miss the picture and no amount of cajoling monkey tricks, talking down or stern regulation can bring online media in line with the mainstream media we have become so familiar with.

More alarmingly, what would have been a meaningful form of communication can give way to and endless flow of accusations and rebuttals, serious or jokingly, in virtual or actual reality. The stakes are not just values and eyeball-market share, but a disjointed society that becomes increasingly fragmented when we fail to understand and vehemently resist what we cannot align to our own ideals. N