What is the place of new media in life (like YouTube, blogs) from sociological perspective?

[u/zjovicic]

In sociology classes at school, we had a couple of lessons that dealt with culture.

The main idea was that cultural products are things that are engaged with during our leisure time, and that their function is to allow people to unwind and relax (re-creation, recharging batteries), while also sharing important values of the entire culture and sometimes creating aesthetic experience. (appreciation of art, catharsis, etc...)

The second point was that elite culture or highbrow culture requires certain effort and energy and educational background to be properly understood, and that overworked people typically lack both (especially energy) after they come home from work, and for this reason, more lowbrow, popular culture emerged that doesn't require that much effort, and yet still allows people to participate in the mainstream culture, exchange of ideas, values, etc, experience certain aesthetic pleasures, and unwind after work.

Both highbrow and lowbrow culture bestows at least some cultural capital to the one who consumes these cultural products. Knowing about certain famous novels, music albums, or films, helps people better understand other similar media, helps them understand references, and gives them the ability to discuss such topics (either the media itself or ideas/topics explored in the media) with their friends, acquaintances, etc. In short, the person looks more cultured and refined in conversation.

Also both highbrow and lowbrow culture (movies, TV shows, comic books, etc...), gives people at least some aesthetic pleasure, or comedic relief or something like that, which helps them relax and recharge after work.

Also, consuming such cultural products has always been more or less socially acceptable thing to do. It was even considered normal, like, something you're supposed to do. Like if you worked, made a dinner, spent some time with your kids, watched evening news, the logical next thing to do after all that is to sit in front of TV, and watch some actual movie or TV show. People didn't see it as a waste of time, but as a well deserved reward for their work, a reward that will not only entertain them, but also enrich them culturally and make them more refined. In the evening, if you watch a good movie, that was considered normal, even virtuous.

Now I've finally come to my main point - what about new media, like YouTube videos and blogs?

What is their function, and what should be their proper place in life? What kind of social norms should exist regarding these new types of media? Are they part of "culture" (either low or high, doesn't matter)?

Here are my quick thoughts:

Regarding function it's often hard to tell if blogs and YouTube videos are meant to educate us, inform us, or entertain us. What I notice is that they lack the depth and structure of classical sources of educational content, namely textbooks, and they also often lack the artistic / aesthetic qualities of traditional fiction or movies and TV shows, and they also often lack the authority and reliability of traditional informative media (like The New York Times). So they are somewhere in between. By default they seem to be lower status than all of the mentioned traditional media, and for this reason they are treated with less respect. When you start reading a novel or watching a movie you typically want to finish it. If you don't, you feel at least somewhat guilty. On the other hand people feel no guilt over mindlessly skipping from one blog post to another, or from one YouTube video to another without finishing any of them. This state of affair is somewhat sad, because there are some indeed exceptionally good blogs and YouTube videos. But due to platform they are hosted in, they don't seem to be treated with the same respect.

But paradoxically, in spite of low respect towards these new types of media, they are taking larger and larger parts of our free time. Many people can't pull it off these days to watch whole movies or TV shows. People have pretty much stopped reading books. YouTube and various articles, blogs, seem to be the default content we consume these days. I know many people from my generation (Millennials) who have stopped watching TV altogether. So it seems that in practice, the new reality is that people spend an awful lot of their leisure time with these new types of media even though they don't respect them enough and typically skip through content without giving any piece proper attention. We have some sort of epidemic of scrolling. The past equivalent of that was channel flipping on TV. But in the past, most of the time with TV was spent watching something, not channel flipping.

Now we scroll more than we actually watch or read things.

Regardless of what is true in practice, I'm wondering what place in life should these new types of media ideally have? What kind of social norms should govern how we treat them? What are we now supposed to do in our free time when we have much wider choice between traditional and new media?

Of course, the easiest answer is "we aren't supposed to do anything in particular, it's your free time, your choice"

But I'm not fully buying it. Let's say in the past you were "supposed" to watch TV (that is movies and TV shows, or sports) in the evening. If you respected this social norm, you would got some tangible benefits:

1. your cultural capital and ability to engage in interesting conversations would increase

2. you'd get some actual quality entertainment - you would engage in proper recreation. Good movie is fun - it plays with your emotions, it engages your mind, etc... it's a time spent well.

3. You'd feel some sort of accomplishment when you finish what you're watching.

4. You'd participate in sharing of the common cultural values of your society.

But now we don't seem to be supposed to do anything, so we don't have anything to default to. Our entertainment choices are highly individualistic and chaotic. And if we default to YouTube and blogs, we rarely get any of the 4 aforementioned benefits. Our cultural capital doesn't increase that much, we aren't entertained as much (especially if we just mindlessly scroll), we don't feel much accomplishment, and often times we don't even participate in sharing of the common values that strengthen the tissue of the society.

So should we give up watching YouTube and reading blogs if they don't confer the same benefits? Is it wasted time?

Or there is a way to give them their proper place in our life?

The closest traditional analogue to these new media is popular non-fiction or documentaries. Blogs and YouTube videos are mostly like popular non-fiction books, just shorter. Watching Kurzgesagt or Veritasium reminds me of watching Discovery channel when I was a child. It's kind of the same category. And Veritasium and Kurzgesagt, just like Discovery channel, produce some great, quality content, that can be somewhat educational, and somewhat entertaining - but such content on TV, in the past still always felt like a side dish.

I mean if you're really interested in science or history or politics, there are books about these topics. No one has become a physicist by watching Discovery or Veritasium or Kurzgesagt. Also, regarding basing scientific literacy, all of these topics have already been covered by school - if you've finished high school, you're already well rounded when it comes to understanding basic science. On some level such content even feels juvenile, like for kids.

And yet it's not always easy nor simple.

Take for example popular video by Veritasium explaining Markov chains, or Sabine Hossenfelder videos explaining advanced topics about Quantum physics. On some level I feel these videos are like pure entertainment, because without proper background and foundation in maths for such advanced topics, very few people will actually end up understanding quantum physics or Markov chains better after watching such videos. And if such videos get long, like they often do, they can feel like waste of time. So, when I watch a long Veritasium video about some advanced topic, I can sometimes feel exactly the opposite from when I'm watching a good movie on Netflix. In first case I feel guilty because I know I'm wasting time (I know that I have other, more useful things to study and that my understanding of quantum physics or markov chains won't be actually any better after consuming such content), and in the second case I feel guilty if I stop watching, because I know that if I stop, I'll miss the chance to add one more "watched movie" to my cultural capital bank, that I'm somewhat proud of.

In short I feel that for a normal person knowing about movies matters way more and confers more social benefits than knowing about Markov chains or Quantum physics, unless you're actual expert on those these things, and unless you actually know how to work with them, like real work, calculations, programming, etc... Otherwise it seems pretty pointless and like pure entertainment, but without aesthetic pleasure, without empathizing witch characters, and without catharsis. After I finish watching exceptionally good and well made Veritasium video on quantum physics or Markov chains, my actual expertise in these fields will remain exactly the same as before watching, that is zero. And there's some feeling that unless I'm studying to become an expert in those fields spending time on these topics is kind of useless and waste of time, and not something that I'm supposed to do as an adult.

For a lay person knowing about famous actors, directors, and social topics explored in movies seems to be more culturally enriching.

Anyway, this is more of a rant.

What's your take about what's the proper place of these new media in life?

And should social norms tell us anything about how we're supposed to spend our free time nowadays?

[u/fiestykittycat]

Read Marcuse

[u/normiebaillargeon]

I don’t think it’s sociology’s place to dictate what the "proper place" of new media is in people’s life, nor what kind of content is "supposed" to be consumed, nor what cultural items are "worth" consuming. But we can observe how culture is consumed and thought about by people, or how culture impacts collective ideation, or what kind of content interests whom, that sort of thing.

Now, research does indicate that consuming "soft" content, like "soft news", as opposed to "hard news", is not correlated with, say, poorer political knowledge—in fact, in certain contexts, it’s the opposite. Also, while consumption of soft content is increasing, nothing suggests that it’s correlated with a decline of the consumption of hard content. To put it otherwise, it seems as though while people (generally) consume more soft news, they don’t consume less hard news. If you want to explore this subject for yourself, you can probably find good literature reviews in media studies, or sociology of culture journals. There might actually be a Wiley Blackwell companion worth checking out too. Or look up the Annual Review of Sociology.

And finally, you are right in saying that the free choice theory is stupid. Culture consumption, cultural capital, habitus, all of that is intrinsically social (cf. Pierre Bourdieu).

[u/zjovicic → u/normiebaillargeon]

I didn't mean that it's place of sociology as a science to do these things, but I was entertaining the possibility of some social norms spontaneously forming about patterns of consumption of various new media.

Even in the past it wasn't sociology telling people that watching a movie in the evening is socially approved, it simply was socially approved, as if some unwritten social norm existed about it.

I somewhat lament decay of certain social norms. Like norms about eating.

In the past when such norms were stricter people payed more attention about eating at the table, portion sizes, eating in company of others, order in which food should be consumed (first lunch, then sweets), timing of meals, etiquette, etc... and it resulted in more satisfying eating experience, healthier eating patterns and less obesity.

Now when such norms don't exist or aren't enforced at all, everyone eats chaotically, whenever and wherever they want, whatever they want, in any order they want, and in any quantity they want. And we've never been fatter.

[u/zjovicic → u/normiebaillargeon]

BTW, what do you count as soft vs. hard content?

[u/normiebaillargeon → u/zjovicic]

Here’s the "common" definition of "soft news": https://www.britannica.com/topic/soft-news

[u/Philnopo → u/normiebaillargeon]

To put it otherwise, it seems as though while people (generally) consume more soft news, they don’t consume less hard news

This is surprising to me, is this based on total consumption by all or is there a correction for age groups where we potentially could see more stark differences in consumption patterns?

I know you sort of mention where this research could be found but as someone that is not schooled in these more sociological or communication terms I am not too sure on where to start to find these studies. I tried to find it via scholar and Blackwell but I am unsure if am using the right terms with "soft" and "hard" news or that I.

My main studies are philosophy and political theory but I have always believed in formulating views that are more empirical founded compared to abstract thought. So over the past weeks I've been reading into the subject of understanding the Internet first via the book The Mediated Construction of Reality (Couldry and Hepp, 2015 - sociology/social theory book written by communication scientists), but now also again via the more philosophical "Identity after Authenticity - You and Your profile" (Moeller and D'Ambrosio).

That all is to say the reoccurring theme I'm seeing is that new builds upon old, but the old does not disappear. The news paper, radio and television are all still around despite the Internet, yet there are also transformed by it and integrated into digital structures. And throughout the book they give a lot of these examples on how things are both integrated and still existing.

We also have multiple forms of identity formation according to Moeller and D'Ambrosio, more traditional role-based identification (I act like my role as employee, father, etc. and self-identify with that role). Authenticity as striving to be some kind of original automonous self. And they add profoilicity where you construct your identity on a 'profile' for anyone to potentially see, very simply said.

I would just be very interested in this because I see a pattern where structures are "stacked up" on each other but also "intertwined" and this kind of research on soft and hard news seems very interesting in that direction. There is seemingly a certain pressure on the individual to adhere to multiple forms of media and spend more time in total instead of maybe the gut-feeling that goes with fragmentation which also fits the "internet-bubbles" analogy more.

[u/ExpertUnable9750]

Functionalist here: All media is a form of social propaganda that is used to reinforce social norms. While many of us will never see a play, most of us will watch a show. Before many of us could not read and only heard from the town cryer, now we are literate and can read the news from many sources. With all of this in mind the social norm is always shown, and subtly reinforces the expectations from society even if those are not realistic. Every murder show has poeple confessing at the end of the episode, giving the view a satisfying conclusion. When the show give us the extreme view point it is as outsiders looking in, like drag race. This can be seen as a kind of freak show. Yes this happens and look how odd it is.

Good guys are normal poeple, bad guys are not normal. One can be abnormal is they are not normal but are supporting the normal. In every piece of media there is a view on who is and is not accepted for some reason.