Understanding Social Media: An Increasingly Reflexive Extension of Humanity

This article in Tech Policy Press is the second in a series with Chris Riley (4/27/22)

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. (Marshall McLuhan)

Capsule:

Social media do not behave like other media. Speech is not primarily broadcast, as through megaphones and amplification but rather, propagates more like word-of-mouth, from person to person. Feedback loops of reinforcing interactions by other users can snowball, or just fizzle out. Understanding how to modulate the harmful aspects of wild messaging cascades requires stepping back and, instead of viewing the messages as individual items of content, seeing them as stages in reflexive flows in which we and these new media tools shape each other. The reflexivity is the message. A media ecology perspective can help us understand where current social media have gone wrong and orchestrate the effort to manage increasing reflexivity in a holistic, coherent, inclusive, and effective way. (more)

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This is part of a continuing series of related essays by Reisman and Riley in Tech Policy Press:

1. Delegation, Or, The Twenty Nine Words That The Internet Forgot
2. Understanding Social Media: An Increasingly Reflexive Extension of Humanity
3. Community and Content Moderation in the Digital Public Hypersquare

Additional background and running updates are on my blog.