I’ve been amusing myself with watching some Bill O’Reilly clips on Youtube. Rather than speak about his style of interviewing or political beliefs, which are most commonly discussed, I was curious about his thoughts on blogs. He basically regarded blogs as where the far left would generate and spread conspiracy theories. What interested me about this point was it demonstrated the broadcast model of the first media age feels threatened by the second media age. What I mean is the ideological interpellation that Althussar identifies becomes difficult as mediums are more participatory and not only Debord’s ‘Society of Spectacle.’ In other words it makes the flowing of a hegemonic discourse more problematic as different mediums enter into everyday life. I found it funny to hear O’Reilly dismiss these blogs, which came across as TV being threatened by the Internet. Also related, it is interesting to note that paper circulation has fallen in the UK and USA. This is not to claim ‘TV is dead’, but rather imply (some) assemblages are in what DeLanda terms as phase transitions. It will be interesting to see how these phase transitions play out, or ‘solidify.’
*The second media age is a concept created by Mark Poster in 1995, which is basically used to argue that ‘new media’ are entering us into a new period.
2 comments:
Hi, Im from Melbourne.
What I find remarkable about O'Reilly's comment is the reference to the "far left"---who, what and where is that?
O'Reilly is a psychotic!
I spend a lot of time on the net and my observation is is that it has provided a means for all the benighted ghouls on the "right" to spread their venom to every last cubic millimetre of the collective body politic.
And to try to close off all possibilities for the NECESSARY individual and collective self-understanding, to prevent the unspeakably dreadful destiny that awaits us all in the very near future, unless we change what we are doing.
The politics of binary exclusions and its inevitable (sooner of later) scape-goating.
OReilly and Fox, so called "news" are very much a part of this toxifying process.
thanks for the comment.
I suppose the far-left is who fox create as the 'irrational' in an attempt for them to come across as the rational. But this is just them trying to rely on the broadcast model of TV, where a small number of producers produce to a large amount of consumers. However, it interesting to see how Fox and related industries are buying up the Internet (e.g. my space) to exploit it for capitalism.
There is an interesting interview with Rupert Murdoch on Youtube where he states this as the main purpose. Advertisment is then targeted at the individual through their monitored actions on myspace.
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