I am always surprised to hear the outbursts that come from all sides regarding the media crisis. The media crisis had existed for a long time, but since it was in regions where the market was not sufficient, no one wanted to see it. This was one of our observations after the Quebec Press Council tour in 2008. A year before, the first iPhone appeared and gradually the era of individualized mass media took hold. They will become actors as anonymous as they are powerful in the processes of distribution of information or disinformation.
Vast changes are occurring, but within the same continuity. The advertising market finds a new El Dorado and big capital sees a new resource open before it, the user himself; It’s the attention economy. Colossal sums become available, but this gold mine is reserved for a few conglomerates who will invade the world. It’s in the logic of capitalism, it’s in the order of things. But new media with their loyalty algorithms will monopolize the advertising market, leaving little to traditional media.
The foundations of media information financing since their foundation have just collapsed. However, the advertising engine continues to increase (850 billion in 2023). The fundamentals of the system are expanding, everything is going well. The main logics are still in place. Except that these giants of information distribution borrow news from traditional media, but not only that, they create information “events” on a fantastic scale.
But even more, as Fox “News” has well explained, the relationship to reality does not matter, it is a question here of saying what an audience wants to hear. It’s business, “we must not make it a personal matter”. The logic is clear, we no longer finance information, we no longer produce information, we do business. Commercial logic supplants the logic of information, that which is validated by facts.
But, we must not be satisfied with this part of the equation, the search for the totality of social phenomena is necessary, said Hegel. These gigantic oligopolies, more powerful than States, induce a listening practice that is as new as it is normal depending on the media used. The formidable and never-before-seen operation of individual exchanges, a unique thing in the history of humanity, will focus all attention on the individual, throwing the notion of the collective into the background.
We will see the creation of false friends with real enemies on social media. It will not just be the abandonment of grand narratives, but the abandonment of narrative itself. The issues will become hyper individual in all possible horizons, from the intimate to the redefinition of biological sex. With the accumulation of intro-experience, will we witness a form of compartmentalization of consciousness?
For a new generation, in any case, the reading of reality can only be achieved through a screen in which everything is within fingertip reach. The idea of paying for information is inconceivable. For mega-corporations spanning the entire planet, this bodes well for good times; a new commodity, the multiplication of the power of influence and social detachment with a market without constraints, in short, something to dream about.
A false note
Everything is going so well, but now a wrong note is heard. This is the state of the planet. In this existential threat, the media are plunged into a double bind. In the crisis that is hitting them, the media can no longer do without advertising to survive, but, in doing so, they encourage this broad movement of overconsumption, a movement that must be reversed at all costs. Advertising is, in fact, one of the great promoters of stimulated needs. This unbridled pursuit of consumption is exhausting the earth and creating ever more threatening pollution.
Advertising, with its colossal sums, becomes the loudest voice which considerably diminishes all the efforts at moderation found in the columns of the media themselves. However, the signs of the risk society are becoming more and more evident, we are moving from a Rousseauist reading of nature, to an anxiety-provoking environment whose tentacles are beginning to resurface where we least expect them. The possibility of obtaining insurance, as we are already seeing among our neighbors to the South, will become a privilege within the reach of a few, food and material insecurity will manifest itself through breakdowns in supply chains, etc.
Beck strongly denounced the blind collaboration of all technical knowledge in the advent of this uncertain world. Giddens, for his part, urged us to consider that the media curriculum was much more developed and attractive than the school curriculum and that consequently, the media must participate in this essential information effort in order to establish a reflective society, the only one capable of confronting the risk society in a collaborative manner.
Reducing media dependence on advertising becomes doubly relevant; we give ourselves the means to not only obey the laws of the market by providing information to as many people as possible and we reduce calls for overconsumption. This is necessary, because a reflective society is based on a premise, that of the right to information. And one day we will have to take this right seriously.
The right to information means support for the media, but only to those who offer an ethical guarantee with a real Press Council, not the distorted organization that we know today. The right to information also means free access to government information, without artifice that prevents the paying citizen from obtaining the information that belongs to them.
The right to information also means real courses on critical media education, with teachers trained in this regard, with specific curricula. Without pretending that we teach media literacy everywhere when we don’t do it anywhere. Learning to read the media critically also means relearning how to socialize. Everyone must review their assumptions before the organizational disorder inherent in the risk society gets out of control. We realize that information is essential to confront the looming civilizational crisis.