On mediascapes and landscapes: filtering, public space, and serendipity
It is often argued that centrally and corporately controlled mass media limit serendipitous discovery, but on further inspection, in appears to be more a matter of degree. In “The Daily Me”, the first chapter of his book Republic.com, Cass Sunstein lays out a continuum from the completely uncurated to the individually filtered, with the mass media, offering curated content ranging from general interest to esoteric, situated somewhat centrally. He makes a rather compelling analogy between serendipitous encounters with content, when unfiltered by the consumer, and serendipitous encounters with people, situations, and environments in public space. I suggest that, just as public space is designed to afford particular types of interaction, so, too, are our mediascapes designed, with producers and editors playing the roles of urban planner and architect.
The design of public space serves to provide the initial conditions to a complex system of interaction that, if well designed, encourages the emergence of some set of behaviors or norms. Although the environment is designed and certain types of interaction may be preferred by the designer, behavior itself is still dictated by the collective behavior of individual agents; the role of the designer is merely to provide an environment that is more or less conducive to serendipitous interaction. Individuals can choose to frequent some places while avoiding others based on preference, but by virtue of its complex nature, public space must afford some degree of serendipity.
Like an individual navigating public space, an individual may choose to frequent some media outlets while avoiding others, usually because of a preference for a choice made by one producer or editor over that made by another. In deciding which individual pieces of content to publish, producers are creating an environment that offers a greater degree of uniformity or variety, offering a greater or lesser amount of exposure to content that readers or viewers may not have chosen for themselves in an individually filtered environment.
Just as urban planners an architects make decisions that impact the interaction within the spaces they design, through the decisions they make as filters, producers and editors can choose the extent to which the media environments they design afford serendipitous content discovery.
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