{"id":10707,"date":"2020-06-02T09:21:52","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T14:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=10707"},"modified":"2021-06-14T07:17:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T12:17:50","slug":"more-conspiratology-the-internet-as-monochord-storm-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/06\/02\/more-conspiratology-the-internet-as-monochord-storm-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"More conspiratology: the internet as monochord & storm machine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post continues my thinking about the cultural fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic (see here<\/a> for previous posts) and about conspiracy theories and new media (see here<\/a>) — all very relevant as the George Floyd protests and Trump’s response to them reveal this country’s open wounds. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a longtime observer of global-subcultural<\/a> epistemic cultures (ways of collectively making sense of a rapidly changing world), I’ve been fascinated, and occasionally disconcerted, to observe some unusual forms of interplay — what I will call “network realignment” — between media-based subcultures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two forms of this that I want to comment on in this post. The first is a “strange bedfellows” variety that has been evident in the response to Covid-19 — specifically to do with the increasing overlaps and sometimes convergences between what used to be called New Age culture<\/a> and what is now called alt-right culture<\/a>. The second, which has to do with the “alt-right” and the “alt-left,” is more difficult to put one’s finger on, but may ultimately be the more interesting one. I’m going to suggest a possible link between the two, a link that is in the very nature of social media, and which is evident in the way the George Floyd murder<\/a> is playing itself out across the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Let me start with the first example of network realignment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

New Age and alt-right<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By “alt-right<\/a> culture,” I mean the panoply<\/a> of far-right, identity-based (generally white-nationalist) movements and groups whose spread has been facilitated in part by the internet (including its shadier realms such as 4chan<\/a>, 8chan<\/a>, the QAnon<\/a> cult, and others) and in part by the dramatic rise<\/a> of the hardcore Trump movement (which could itself legitimately be called a cult<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By “New Age culture,” I mean the post-Sixties counterculture movement of holistic and spiritual thinking that emerged<\/a> in the 1970s, consolidated<\/a> in the 1980s, diversified<\/a> in the 1990s, and simmers<\/a> along in many different forms around the world today without having much of a noticeable impact on power structures anywhere. (My first book, Claiming Sacred Ground<\/em><\/a>, examined the environmental politics of that movement during its diversification and, to some extent, divergence<\/a> into “ecospirituality” and a range of more neo-gnostic, esotericist currents that I then called the “New Age millenarianism” or “ascensionism<\/a>.”) Today, this “post New Age culture” (as I will be calling it, for lack of a more credible name) includes the wide popular interest in “Mind, Body, Spirit<\/a>” literature and practices, the wellness culture<\/a> of alternative<\/a> and complementary health<\/a> practice, and many of the nearer and farther reaches of popular spirituality<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their origins, these are vastly different subcultures with apparently little in common. If the last half-century<\/a> of U.S. cultural politics has been in large part an obsessive renegotiation of the divisions of the 1960s<\/a>, New Age culture clearly came out of two trends: the political “softening” of the New Left and (more obviously) the institutionalization and\/or co-optation of the Sixties counterculture. The alt-right, on the other hand, comes from the right-wing reaction against<\/em> the Sixties, which first manifested in what might be called the Ramboization<\/a> of the right, that is, the resuscitation of masculinity as a kind of libertarian, anti-government fighter, which contributed to the rise of Reaganism in the 1980s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But “left” and “right” remain a fairly blunt tool of cultural analysis, and at the very least need a more permanent supplementation by some recognition of another structuring dyad, that which distinguishes between pro-status quo positions (which we could simply call “In”) and anti-status quo positions (“Out”). Both post-New Age culture, at least in its more extreme variants, and the alt-right can be fairly simply located on the “Out” side of that spectrum, and it shouldn’t be surprising, in highly networked and connective media conditions, to find connections being forged between these epistemic communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s interesting is that these should have become particularly evident in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The role<\/a> of the anti-vaccination<\/a> movement (which overlaps strongly with the post New Age alternative health community) has been especially prominent in spreading Covid<\/a> conspiracies more at home on the far right, such as about Bill Gates’ designs<\/a> on world rulership. But that of UFO enthusiasts (a much larger<\/a> subset of the U.S. population than typically assumed) has been there all along (as I documented in my 2001 book), with New Age extraterrestrial “contactees,” channelers, and other extraterrestrial enthusiasts finding common cause with more paranoid forms of X-Files <\/em>type conspiracism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the ascendancy to the presidency of Donald Trump, himself prone to bouts of conspiracism and beholden to leading lights within the alt-right, some have even begun to speak of America as a “conspiratocracy<\/a>,” with conspiracy cultures connecting parts of mainstream America with the farther reaches of its many subcultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philosopher Jules Evans refers to the New Age\/far-right overlap as a form of “conspirituality<\/a>,” to which spiritual seekers seem particularly prone. Evans starts with a fairly accurate observation — that the history of western esotericism (or “occultism”) includes an overrepresentation of “secret orders of spiritual-political ecstatic globalists dedicated to a Millennarian project of global transformation” — and moves on to a claim that is interesting but perhaps overgeneralized: that the same form of thinking that underlies these “ecstatic” spiritual “globalists” — “schizotypal, magical, prone to seeing secret influences, hidden connections, and Grand Plans” — is found in an obverse current of “resentful, pessimistic, paranoid, disempowered conspirators.” He argues that both forms of thinking are extremes of more typical kinds of thinking that need to be brought into balance: the ecstatic “enriches” life and work, while the skeptical “holds power to account.” While this neurologizing gesture finds something to appreciate in both camps, it doesn’t help us understand the cultural dynamics at work between them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing in the same venue (Medium<\/em>), Julian Walker agrees<\/a> that the overlap between the New Agers and the alt-right conspiratorialists<\/a> is historically rooted (he points to nineteenth century “nature cure” movements, Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, and other metaphysical groups). Walker more pointedly argues that for the “spiritual folks” the nub is a form of “spiritual bypass,” a “fetishization” of practices of “being defiantly out of touch with reality” as if these practices offered their practitioners a higher and more powerful truth. The spiritual bypass in turn creates a powerful “seeding ground” for the “Venn-diagram overlap between the alt-right\/QAnon\/libertarian\/2nd amendment\/prepper-bunker crowd and our pseudoscience\/natural medicine\/the Secret\/higher truth crowd.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overlap<\/strong> is organized around 5G, vaccines, and the right to not have the government tell you what to do. The shared and now oddly bi-partisan conspiracy reasoning style <\/strong>perceives itself as skeptical, independent, open-minded and brave.<\/em> [italics and bold in original]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So it’s actually skepticism<\/em> that is the common attractor between the two movements (I agree with that), though Walker calls it \u201cfreshman skepticism,”<\/em> arising out of a “lack of general knowledge, critical thinking, and scientific understanding” mixed with “paranoid speculation, fallacious reasoning, and glib over-generalization.” (In my own post-constructivist<\/a> and “post-truth<\/a>” accounting, that analysis doesn’t necessarily suffice.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Eisenstein raises some more interesting questions<\/a> about how there’s “myth” beneath both the conspiratorialists’ claims and the orthodox attacks on them, but what I want to get at is something more specific to the workings of media today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, on to the second development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Participatory conspiratology<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the interesting claims made about QAnon<\/a> (see my earlier post<\/a>) is that it diverges from \u201ctraditional\u201d conspiracy theories (and traditional Christian-right endtimes cults<\/a>) in its radically participatory nature. Writing in MIT\u2019s Journal of Design and Science<\/em> last year, Ethan Zuckerman notes<\/a> that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the process of deciphering and interpreting these vague clues is a hell of a lot more interesting than reading the rantings of a paranoid mind. Author Walter Kirn identifies Q as a storyteller who has mastered a fundamental truth of narrative on the internet: \u201cThe audience for internet narratives doesn\u2019t want to read, it wants to write. It doesn\u2019t want answers provided, it wants to search for them.\u201d Members of the QAnon aren\u2019t just readers of Q\u2019s \u201cdrops\u201d\u2014they are the \u201cbakers,\u201d assembling crumbs into coherent narratives and predictions. And while assembling and re-baking crumbs is unlikely to yield anything culinarily appealing, participation in constructing the Q narrative is clearly a fascinating pursuit for thousands of co-creators.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

At a time when mainstream \u201ctruth\u201d appears unsatisfying and\nreality seems elusive, QAnon offers an exciting form of decentralized and participatory\ntruth-crafting in which support for Donald Trump equates with support for a\ndramatic clearing of the slate of a world seemingly captured by nefarious \u201cdeep\nstate\u201d interests. Where such ontological \u201cfan fiction\u201d would have remained\nutterly marginal in the era of mass media, today\u2019s algorithmically distributed\nmedia ecosystem provides opportunities for such marginal actors to become key\nplayers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the broadcast model of media, the events of the world were interpreted by a group of professionals who selected a subset of possible narratives to amplify, then delivered them to audiences who had extremely limited channels in which to offer feedback and input. That model has been largely replaced by one in which the audience is a full participant, an essential circulator of information by retweeting, sharing and remixing it. The new centers of power in this ecosystem are discovery engines like Google and Facebook, which rely on feedback from users to determine what stories to feature or ignore. Additionally, the people formerly known as the audience are now creators of content, adding new chapters to existing stories, and telling entirely new stories.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In this new media landscape, as Zuckerman puts it<\/a>,\n\u201cEach story reported or ignored, each fact marshaled or forgotten is weaponized.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

QAnon\u2019s talk of \u201cred pills\u201d and \u201cblue pills\u201d is not just a sly reference to The Matrix<\/em>; it’s a full-scale revival of Gnostic<\/a>-style dualism<\/a>, an antagonism toward consensus reality that two millennia ago resulted in some sects building their own realities in the deserts of the eastern Mediterranean basin and others in failed revolutionary movements, and that contributed to the rise of Christianity as the power structure that replaced the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a time when the U.S. itself appears on the brink of collapse<\/a> — with riots<\/a> in the streets<\/a>, a pandemic crippling the country\u2019s heath care system and wreaking havoc on its economy, a president tweeting out nods<\/a> of recognition<\/a> to his QAnon fan base<\/a> and hinting<\/a> at \u201cthe Storm<\/a>\u201d that is coming — the sense-making apparatus of digital media is rife with opportunities for disinformational entrepreneurs<\/a> to make headway in various directions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These actors do not necessarily announce themselves. Americans have become aware of RT<\/a>, Russia’s Internet Research Agency<\/a>, Cambridge Analytica<\/a>, and various other players active in influencing<\/a> the 2016 US election, Brexit, and other global debacles. What’s more interesting to me is that there are likely to be actors whose goals and allegiances are not as easy to pin down, and may even be intended more to perplex and scramble the system than it is to have any specific and measurable impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, there is evidence<\/a> that the QAnon cult may have begun as a fictional spoof of right-wing thinking that has taken on a life of its own, possibly thanks to some \u201ccounter-pranksters<\/a>\u201d located somewhere in the alt-right\/4chan\/8chan\/reddit universe. (Q<\/em> was the name of a fictional novel, or “unidentified narrative object<\/a>,” written by the Italian radical Luther Blissett<\/a> collective, now known as the Wu Ming Foundation<\/a>. The QAnon narrative follows the book in several notable details, though connections between the two remain speculative.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If so, this would be an example of fiction reshaping reality not as a direct form of intentional meme warfare, but in a kind of prankster variation of Umberto Eco-esque<\/a>, spy-versus-spy counter-intelligence squared, which then mixes with real people’s mixed agendas and produces… well, something no one can entirely predict. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

QAnon is sometimes taken to be a prank on older right-wingers<\/a>, especially conservative and disaffected baby boomers, who are perceived to be gullible and lacking in media savvy. The latter trait is something that might be broadly shared with the New Age health subculture<\/a>, and if sly media pranksters with a loosely disinformational agenda wanted to test out their skills on a widely distributed population of middle-class Americans, why not that one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Internet as monochord<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What matters, for the case I am making here, is not that there are<\/em> people out there practicing social media “psychic warfare,” as the Wu Ming group calls it<\/a>, on unsuspecting populations, but simply that social media today enable<\/em> that to happen. Networks like QAnon<\/a> exist, and affect the broader body politic,<\/a> because of that simple fact<\/a>. The anti-vaccination movement is as large as it is for that reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a highway is built to connect two cities, or a tunnel burrowed out between separated underground bunkers<\/a>, that highway and that tunnel will be used. If traffic is allowed to flow through that underground tunnel (however invisible it remains to the overground world), someone will figure out ways to direct<\/a> that traffic and refine their skills at traffic modulation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The internet is like a huge instrument — a hyper-complex, Robert Fluddian<\/a> monochord (see image above), that works by allowing for an infinity of connections<\/a> through which flow the sounds and vibrations of human emotional<\/a> and affective<\/a> contagion<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When protests erupt across the country over the senseless killing of a black man in Minneapolis, the time scale in which large-scale action occurs speeds up and becomes affect-driven time<\/em>, not a time in which collective deliberation is really possible. This means that informational, and therefore disinformational<\/a>, bursts into that monochord become all the more powerful (see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a> for examples affecting the George Floyd protests). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the informational storm surrounding such events, new coalitions<\/a> and cultural realignments become possible. That is neither good nor bad; it is simply a fact that indicates the viscosity, amplitude, and hyper-instability of a world connected by digital social media networks that are developing at a pace that can hardly be managed, either centrally or in any collective, distributed fashion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

QAnon may be right here in its meteorological prediction, if quite wrong in the details: Welcome to the storm. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We may be able to modulate<\/a> our own participation in that storm, but the broader question may be whether there is a systemic surge protector in place somewhere. We were (most of us) surprised that the global economy had an emergency brake<\/a> on it. But evidence for a surge protector isn’t plentiful. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a time when the U.S. itself appears on the brink of collapse — with riots in the streets, a pandemic crippling the country\u2019s heath care system and wreaking havoc on its economy, a president tweeting out nods of recognition to his QAnon fan base and hinting at \u201cthe Storm\u201d that is coming — the sense-making apparatus of digital media is rife with opportunities for disinformational entrepreneurs to make headway in various directions. […]<\/p>\n

The internet is like a huge instrument — a hyper-complex, Robert Fluddian monochord, that works by allowing for an infinity of connections through which flow the sounds and vibrations of human emotional and affective contagion. When protests erupt across the country over the senseless killing of a black man in Minneapolis, the time scale in which large-scale action occurs speeds up and become affect-driven time, not a time in which collective deliberation is really possible. This means that informational, and therefore “disinformational,” bursts into that monochord become all the more powerful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[689701,691847],"tags":[4427,455094,628437,454936,455193,660441,628436,628435,455194,103256,520579,628391,628446,628444,628445,628432,628384,628441,628448,628449,628439,520554,103299,4478,454981,454985,628442,628433,628434,520580,454984,628389,628443,650,454932,628438],"class_list":["post-10707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media_ecology","category-religion-spirituality","tag-affect","tag-affective-contagion","tag-alt-left","tag-alt-right","tag-alternative-health","tag-anomalies","tag-anti-vaccination-movement","tag-anti-vaxx","tag-complementary-health","tag-conspiracies","tag-conspiracy-culture","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-conspiratistics","tag-conspiratology","tag-conspirology","tag-digital-media","tag-disinformation","tag-emotional-contagion","tag-emotional-surge-protection","tag-george-floyd","tag-george-floyd-protests","tag-illiberalism","tag-infowar","tag-media-ecology","tag-media-politics","tag-mediasphere","tag-monochord","tag-new-age-culture","tag-new-age-movement","tag-populism","tag-post-truth","tag-qanon","tag-robert-fludd","tag-social-media","tag-trump","tag-wu-ming-foundation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2MH","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11121,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/10\/18\/the-qanization-of-the-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":10707,"position":0},"title":"The Qanization of the world","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 18, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"As I\u2019ve been preparing to cover QAnon in my media course (and trying to keep up with it, since it's really been ramping up ahead of the election), I\u2019ve seriously begun to think of it is a work of evil genius. Let me explain why. For starters, it's worth reminding\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/102801077_q.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/102801077_q.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/102801077_q.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/102801077_q.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11253,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/01\/05\/do-your-own-research-conspiracy-practice-as-media-virus\/","url_meta":{"origin":10707,"position":1},"title":"‘Do your own research’: Conspiracy practice as media virus","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 5, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Conspiracy movements like QAnon are a kind of cultural virus that spreads rapidly and widely in the new global media environment. Like invasive species, they spread into diverse cultural ecosystems, colonizing them even as they take on new forms that mimic each environment\u2019s original inhabitants. To understand how they do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/the-kraken-legend-or-beast.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/the-kraken-legend-or-beast.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/the-kraken-legend-or-beast.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/the-kraken-legend-or-beast.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/the-kraken-legend-or-beast.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13767,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2024\/10\/15\/the-hurricane-conspiracy-complex\/","url_meta":{"origin":10707,"position":2},"title":"The hurricane conspiracy complex","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 15, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The big question around these back-to-back hurricanes in the southeast U.S. is not why they are happening (that\u2019s easy enough to answer), but why so many people find it easier to believe they were artificially generated by the U.S. government, the \u201cdeep state,\u201d FEMA, industry, or some euphemistic \u201cthey\u201d (and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2024\/10\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10784,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/06\/04\/eco-ethico-aesthetics-and-george-floyd\/","url_meta":{"origin":10707,"position":3},"title":"Eco-ethico-aesthetics and George Floyd","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"As I explain in Shadowing the Anthropocene, process-relational philosophy in a Peircian-Whiteheadian vein takes aesthetics to be first, ethics to be second, and logic (which, in our time, we need to think of also as eco-logic) to be third. This is not a temporal sequence, but a logical one: aesthetics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9151,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/04\/03\/parsing-the-alternative-media-ecosystem\/","url_meta":{"origin":10707,"position":4},"title":"Parsing the “alternative media ecosystem”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"We all know the media ecosystem has been changing rapidly, with media scholars scrambling to understand how and where things are headed.\u00a0\"Fake news\" and \"post-truth\" are the glib catchwords of the day; \"filter bubbles,\" \"echo chambers,\" \"ideological segregation,\" \"information cascades,\" \"algorithmic filtering\" (along with the all-encompassing \"Algoricene\"), and \"meme magic\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10961,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/07\/30\/the-new-media-regime\/","url_meta":{"origin":10707,"position":5},"title":"The new media regime","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Here\u2019s a back-of-the-envelope hypothesis on the \"new media regime\" and some open questions that follow from it. Two groups are faring best these days under the current (new) media regime.* The first is surveillance capitalists, who have developed ways to monetize and harvest new data technologies directly for the accumulation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/07\/matrix-code.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/07\/matrix-code.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/07\/matrix-code.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10707"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10782,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10707\/revisions\/10782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}