digital media ecology
It’s the social system technology is embedded in that matters
digital media ecology
Trust, in other words, is transferable through parasocial relationships—regardless of whether the institution has done anything to earn it.
Crisis of Trust 2026: The Retreat Into Insularity
With the proliferation of digital speech, communication reversed from information to affirmation. We post to reaffirm our standing in the digital tribe.
Andrey Mir • The Digital Reversal. Thread-saga of Media Evolution
... See morePlatforms have imbued crowds with new qualities. They are no longer fleeting and local, but persistent and global. They engage symbiotically with influencers, but don’t require a leader or physical space to assemble. Platform affordances empowered crowds; they are now active participants in chronicling history and shaping narratives.
Invisible
constant, identity-targeted conflict that drives polarization and grievance.
Renee DiResta • Crisis of Trust 2026: The Retreat Into Insularity
We have changed our environment enough that our current ways of understanding what’s going on no longer hold: technology and globalization have changed our information streams and our patterns of life drastically enough that the ways we calibrate around incoming information are becoming increasingly dangerous for us, and this trend will only... See more
Everyone’s Existential Crisis
Western democracies, by contrast, with our open speech and open systems, are supposed to have a commons, a marketplace of ideas that allows for cross-cutting dialogue and eventual consensus. It has been replaced by an information ecology shaped by algorithmic selection. Content and creators optimized for engagement outcompete everything else—not... See more
Renee DiResta • Crisis of Trust 2026: The Retreat Into Insularity
The collective perspectives that emerge from social media - our understanding of what the public is and wants - are similarly shaped by algorithms that select on some aspects of the public, while sidelining others. And we tend to orient ourselves towards that understanding, through a mixture of reflective beliefs, conformity with shibboleths, and... See more
Henry Farrell • We're Getting the Social Media Crisis Wrong
... See moreAlgorithms shape the flow of information and influence the narratives that users encounter. By tailoring content based on user preferences and engagement patterns, they not only reinforce existing beliefs but nudge users in sometimes terrifying directions. This selective exposure to information can reinforce biases and shape users' perceptions in
Over the twentieth century, almost all scientific and philosophical disciplines discovered ecology, which is the simple idea that everything is interrelated, that it is impossible to study any phenomenon in isolation, because it impacts, and is impacted by, everything around it. This applies to physics as much as biology, in the discovery of the... See more