When Did I Become Bound by the Shackles of my iPhone?
Like many media studies students before me, I own a copy of Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1988). To be perfectly candid, I purchased a copy of the text, read the prescribed first chapter, and have never picked it up since. Sitting on my shelf collecting dust, it flashes its dusty spine at me; Chapter Two ‘Worthy and Unworthy Victims’ is dogeared, knowing that I will never turn another page. I like to be known as someone who owns a copy.
Nothing is worth reading anyway unless it comes with an ‘eight min read’ indicator in the header.
In a world where you can pay someone to collect your lunch from around the corner, our time is valuable. Not in a metaphysical way, but in a very derogatory sense. If we must optimise every moment according to capitalism and continue to contribute to the market, then we couldn’t possibly spare fifteen minutes to walk away from the desk and get some vitamin D. So of course we need to schedule in eight minutes to read an OpEd — I have a three hour long skincare routine after all. My time is precious.
What Chomsky and Herman posit still stands: our attention is bought and sold by meaning-making authorities. No one reads the fine print that allows your data to be farmed and sold for profit. The difference between the late 80s and now is that the authority lives on a device that fits into my pocket and never leaves my side. This is less to do with optimisation and more so the commercialisation and commodification of everyday life. We want to signal to our peers that we are informed; these virtues are marked by who we follow on social media or the infographics we share on our story. In effect, Big Smartphone is to blame for the commodification of knowledge.
As we use our phones to engage with the physical world around us, we lose sight of what valuable communication and information mean. The issue with Big Smartphone is that it means we must sign into an account on a third party platform in order to have access to information. Simply another means for grifters with the financial backing to make an impact on what information you have access to. Why do I need to follow the right people on Instagram when I should just be able to turn on the TV and find out what's going on from public service channels? Why do I need to make an account to be aware of what’s going on in my community and surroundings? If SBS had a minimal-clean-girl-tomato-summer-core aesthetic, would we start to repost their Instagram infographics?
My problem is not with staying informed. I am asking you to consider who you pay your attention-currency to. Traditional mass media and public service media are years behind the quality and reach of online-only news outlets like The Daily Aus or Impact. Being aware of world issues has shifted from an expectation to a strange, gatekept knowledge-club.
But Big Smartphone knows you aren’t really paying attention to the news, you only half watch seasons of Community while doomscrolling ASMR slime videos. Good writing is not necessary, the average audience is not engaged. What’s problematic is that corporate media-makers instruct their writers to avoid nuance. This behaviour has severely damaged our attention spans — or, worse — capacity to give a shit. Information is not reported based on its newsworthy-ness, but its potential to go viral. Fear mongering and clickbaiting, to me, exist in the same realm. They both aim to capture the largest amount of our attention (or rather, our time) possible. Since attention is currency (the more watchtime videos get, the more advertising they can accept), news reports are often constructed in a similar format to MrBeast or David Dobrik’s productions. With fast cutting, an incredibly enthusiastic tone, and an air of something slightly off-putting. They follow the structure of “you've probably heard about [insert topic here], it's really crazy! Let me break it down for you.” This style makes the reader assume the story is more complicated than it is, as if Albanese selling out to gas companies is surprising.
It is so easy to be led by misinformation in a world like this. I have fallen victim to fake news of Frank Ocean dropping a new album one too many times. Except, this doesn’t only happen online, people need to be aware of who is funding their news and where their attention-currency goes. Your brother still watches Sky News. Everytime I find another media outlet has been acquired by NewsCorp or Fairfax, an angel loses their wings. Public service media works because it is funded with taxpayers money who then, in theory, should care about seeing that money used for good.
Some people might push back and say that having access to independent public service media is a privilege since many don’t trust their governments or the quality of commercial outlets is better. I don’t think that good news journalism or criticism should only be accessed behind a paywall.
If traditional meaning authorities no longer hold cultural capital, then where ought we look to for guidance? Influencers? Content creators? Podcasters? Charming and cool radio presenters?
I’m reminded of a billboard I saw in New York earlier this year. Patrick Dempsey was informing passers-by to practise safe driving and put on a seatbelt. The New York State road safety authority (whatever it’s called, I didn’t have time to notice) paid an actor who played a doctor for many years on Grey’s Anatomy to tell the public to wear a seatbelt or else they’d end up in hospital. This man is not a real doctor. And it made me wonder if New York State knew that too. The justification I made here is that his character, Derek Shepherd, was on screen for eleven seasons as a medical professional. It is easier for people to immediately draw the connection to health and wellbeing when they see his face. Even simpler: people find him attractive so they listen to what he has to say. Celebrity endorsement is not limited to billboards. I am embarrassed for people that need Billie Eilish to tell them who to vote for, or are reliant on Brittany Broski to remind them to register to vote in the first place.
Performative activism is bad but I acknowledge I am not better than my peers: RuPaul taught me how to change a tyre on TikTok. I do think that this kind of influence is powerful and there is an onus on celebrities to use their platform in times of extreme crisis, but only using celebrities as your beacons of political thought is not a means to get solid, reliable information (unless you are Slavoj Žižek, Hasan Piker, or Chappell Roan).
All we have as net-citizens and knowledge seekers is our ability to spend our attention-currency in the right ways. Removing yourself from the idea that politics is a performance but rather an action, and starting small, are great ways to get started on your journey towards loving the old reliable public service broadcasting. The benefits it has had for regional communities can be reflected in our own consumption of media too (see WIN, NITV, and the CBAA network). This process is about self-discovery and realisation. By de-influencing ourselves, and focusing more on grassroots, localised issues, you become connected with your immediate community which has enormous positive outcomes. The rental crisis does bring some push back to this statement but it's beyond the scope of the argument.
What I’m asking is that you think more about where you are spending your attention-currency. Subscribe to the ABC’s daily newsletter; it comes into your inbox at 7:35am and there’s a quiz on Fridays. If you have time to listen to a podcast about influencer drama, you have time to read the news.