A theory of the internet and the art of protest

"The working theory

You may recall a little while back that I posted a blog entry about the Five Ages of Media. My contention is that digital media – and specifically the internet – works differently than broadcast media.

Simply put, on the web, you don’t have a platform to shout to an undifferentiated mass of people – so just putting up a webpage that acts as a brochure, and says “come to our exhibition” doesn’t really work.

Instead, the web is a conversational medium – and there are really only two main types of content:

1) The conversation;
2) The stuff about which the conversation is taking place.

This second category of thing is what is often referred to as a ’social object’ – a term coined by Jyri Engeström to describe the way in which sociality online is not simply about relationships, but particularly about sharing things like videos, photos, audio and text."

in reference to:

"And why was it so powerful as a part of the conversation? Because it’s a good and very simple story. People are hard-wired for narrative. The theory that there are only really seven stories and we keep telling them to ourselves over and over through different media contexts is a reasonably compelling one."
- A theory of the internet and the art of protest by Andrew Dubber (view on Google Sidewiki)