Core Response (Week 2)

This week’s readings deal with scholarship by Raymond Williams, Marshall McLuhan, and Jane Feuer. To me, putting it simply, Williams and McLuhan are rivals. Williams attempts to situate his analysis of television within the larger social context, as a technology, a social practice, and a cultural form; McLuhan’s argument, or slogan – ‘the medium is the message’, leans toward technological determinism and somewhat formalism. In addition, drawing on Williams’s concept of ‘flow’ and redefining it as “segmentation without closure”, Feuer discusses the concept of liveness in television. Such a concept may not be true in an ontological sense, as in practice, instantaneous transmission is rare, but it has been employed to serve an ideological purpose. Feuer explores the strengthening of the ideology of family and nation unity through ideological problematic, i.e. ‘theme’, and mode of address with a detailed analysis of Good Morning, America.

These readings are primarily concerned with defining television and exploring its ontological significance in a time when live television prevailed. Nowadays, watching television is a greatly different social practice; hence, I find it hard to delve deep into their discussions. Instead, I am more interested in the broader question Williams raised at the end of his book: Will television contribute to “the long revolution towards an educated and participatory democracy” or become “the tools of … counter-revolution”? And how to use media to establish a democratic common culture? For Williams, more of a cultural critic and sociologist, television is foremost a cultural product with social import and can lead the human society toward something profound. And he’s trying to examine if television can benefit the democratization of information and thus the empowerment of the viewing public.

I turn to examine live-streaming culture in the light of Williams’s vision. First, I want to make one thing clear: Choosing this example does not mean that I consider live streaming as the television of our time but it does inherit most of its legacies from television, such as the “liveness”, direct mode of address, the concept of ‘mobile privatization’. Similar to the television at that time, live streaming app features never-ending shows with real-time content. No matter when you open the app, there are new, instantaneous contents waiting for discovery. Compared with the centralized production and the individualized mass reception of television, the mode of communication adopted in live streaming – a radically decentralized and individualized medium – seems much more democratic. The streamer has the chance to share their life and engage in real-time conversation with viewers; the viewer can participate in a more direct way, such as real-time commentary and even real money transaction. And these two roles are exchangeable.

What lies beneath the surface is the competition between the appearance of democratization, embodied by giving the mass public a platform for self-expression, and the hidden control, as the platform is indeed driven by the interests of commercial companies, similar to the competition between ‘public service’ and ‘commercial’ in Williams’s words. Data, content, and information are a result of algorithm aiming for business interests, and maybe political gains. We may see algorithm as a new form of programming, somewhat centralized, as it dictates everybody’s very first user experience and controls the access to information, although search function to some extent compensates for it. The user, either as a streamer or as a viewer, is indeed invulnerable, as he/she will be influenced by any regulation implemented by the platform. And capital flows can easily change the landscape of this platform and even the entire industry, whose inextricable link with the real world, especially regarding the financial transaction, implicates the significance of commercial penetration. In this sense, the participatory, democratic impression seems more rhetorical than real.

Williams saw television as a democratizing medium and the value of such culture cannot be pre-determined but created in an ever-evolving process with mass participation. Extending this view to the analysis of today’s new media, maybe the democratization of content sharing should be read as the goal rather than a step further toward the goal, as the fact that the public participates actively in such a platform means something positive to ‘the long revolution.’ 

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