Paradigm Shifts in Communication

A timeline
What is a Paradigm Shift?
 Paradigm Shift
A Paradigm Shift is when a significant change happens - usually
from one fundamental view to a different view. In most cases, some
type of major discontinuity occurs as well. Thomas Kuhn wrote
about Paradigm Shift during the early 1960s, and explained how
"series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent
revolutions" caused "one conceptual world view to be replaced by
another view.”

In laymen terms, Paradigm Shift is a popular, or perhaps, not so

popular shift or transformation of the way we Humans perceive
events, people, environment, and life altogether. It can be a national
or international shift, and could have dramatic effects -- whether
positive or negative -- on the way we live our lives today and in the
future.
What are examples of some major Paradigm
Shifts in history?
• Globalization 1.0 – amount of power a country had
(steam, coal, wind) to compete with others as competition
left national boundaries
• Globalization 2.0 – Multinational corporations emerge.
Falling labor costs, technologies (tv, phone, internet)
extend corporate reach
• Globalization 3.0 – Flattening of the world. Individuals
now compete alongside corporations. Empowerment on
the community level.
 Media Shifts
• Writing (linear)
• Printing (literacy)
• Mass Media I (photos, newspapers)
• Mass Media II (Radio/TV)
• The Toolshed Home (Bowling Alone)
• Internet Super Highway (New Moveable Type)

Fang, A history of mass communication

 The Medium is the Message?

“…technological media are staples or natural

resources, exactly as are coal and cotton and oil”
(8).
 Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980)
University of Toronto
• The Medium is the Message
• Gutenberg’s Galaxy
• The Global Village
• Hot and Cold Media
• Tetrads
“…it is the medium that shapes and controls the
scale and form of human association and action.
The content or uses of such media are as diverse
as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of
human association” (McLuhan, 1)
“we are as numb in our new electric world as the
native involved in our literate and mechanical
culture” (5-6)

“our conventional response to all media, namely

that it is how they are used that counts, is the
numb stance of the technological idiot” (6)
“the effects of technology do not occur at the
level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense
ratios or patterns of perception steadily and
without any resistance” (7).
• Are paradigm shifts technological? social?
cultural?
• What is gained and lost when the entire earth
shifts because of incremental changes in how
systems work?
#1 – Alphabet / Printing Press
 Johannes Gutenberg

• 1398 – 1468, Mainze, Germany

• Wealthy Parents
• Literate
• Worked in Gem cutting and polishing
• 1436 – 1460 devoted to printing press
• Died without proper recognition for his
accomplishment
 The Gutenberg Press
“Before its invention, all texts had to be copied
by hand which was a long and tedious process.
Handwritten books were called manuscripts
and were made by monks, scholars, and
scribes. The only people that could read, with
few exceptions, were churchmen, government
officials, university professors, and students.”
–
Stephens, A History of News
• Printed first bible in 1456
• As of 2003, the Gutenberg Bible census includes 11
complete copies on vellum, 1 copy of the New
Testament only on vellum, 48 substantially
complete copies on paper
How did the Printing
Press change
society?
What did it enhance?
What did it take
away?
The Beginning of the Information Age?

“Printing made possible the age of science and

discovery, reformations in religion, economic
upheavals giving power to a mercantile class rather
than to the aristocracy, and the transfer of power to
the people through democracy” (Hiebert & Gibbons,
20).
 Manipulation

“There was enough of an appreciation of the power of

information in late medieval Europe to motivate efforts to
hide deaths, close roads by which bad news might
spread… and launch and disseminate false rumors…”
(Heibert & Gibbons, 79).
 Control
“The printing press may have been the first means of
circulating information that would in fact prove mightier
than the sword, but it had one great drawback as a
weapon: its bulkiness made if difficult to conceal, and,
consequently, easy for authorities to regulate” (Heibert &
Gibbons, 82)
 Religion
Education
Industry
Thought
Conflict
Ideas
Community
Organization
Truth
 #2 – Mass Media

“At an accelerating pace throughout the century, the

electronic transmission of news and entertainment
changed virtually all features of American Life” (Robert
Putnam, Bowling Alone, 217).
 How did the Mass Media
change society?
What did it enhance? What did
it take away?
 Social Capital

Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and

human capital refers to the properties of individuals, social
capital refers to connections among individuals – social
networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness
that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely
related to what some have called ‘civic virtue.’
The Bowling Alone Phenomenon

Passive, or cold media

(McLuhan) have an
inverse relationship with
social capital, creating
less community, and
contributing to social
fractures, isolationism,
and lack of empathy for
others
 Caused by TV?

Time Displacement – most all studies correlate negatively

between time spent watching TV and time spent with
others
Effects on the outlooks of viewers – “mean world effect”
heavy watchers of TV are unusually cynical about the
benevolence of other people
Effects on Children – Takes time away from most all of their
socializing functions (play, groups, activities with others,
outdoors, etc.)
Pretty much what we think of TV today…
 Cultivating Reality…

According to a recent
study: Over 3/4 of the
female characters in
TV sitcoms are
underweight, and
only 1 in 20 are
above average in size.
Gender structure

“All family sitcoms —

virtually all sitcoms now
— are about a fat guy
with a hot wife.”
Rick Marin, former NYT television critic “Father
Eats Best.” New York Times, November 24, 2004
 Reinforcing norms

Still Standing
Family Guy
According to Jim
Whether the images are real or animated, the message is an
overweight man can have a happy family life, but an
overweight woman is destined to be alone…
Creating Dynamic Storytelling
 Leisure time
Education
Knowledge of the other
Politics
Global Connections
Speed of Life
Mean World Effect
Minimizing Empathy
#3 – The
World Wide
Web
“The collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to
get together—so much easier, in fact, that it is changing the
world”
(Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, 48)
“It isn’t just that our communication tools are
cheaper; they are also better. In particular, they
are more favorable to innovative uses, because
they are considered more flexible than our old
ones. Radio, Television, and traditional phones
all rely on a handful of commercial firms
owning expensive hardware connected to
cheap consumer devices that aren‘t capable of
very much” (Shirky, 77)
“The splintering of media makes for a lot of
incoherence or selective cognition (look at our
country’s polarization), but it also decentralizes
power and provides a better guarantee that the
complete truth is out there…somewhere…in
pieces” (Friedman, 44)
How did the Internet
change society?
What did it enhance?
What did it take
away?
 Industrial vs. Social Media
• Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale
and enable anyone to reach a global audience.
• Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are
typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are
generally available to anyone at little or no cost.
• Usability - industrial media production typically requires specialized
skills and training. Most social media does not, or in some cases
reinvent skills, so anyone can operate the means of production.
• Recency - the time lag between communications produced by
industrial media can be long, compared to social media (only the
participants determine any delay in response).
• Permanence - industrial media, once created, cannot be altered,
whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by
comments or editing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Shifting Information Flow
1. Sharing
2. Cooperation (Production)
3. Action (Collective)

“Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the

desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or
acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always
been constrained by transaction costs” (54).
The average attention span in 2012 - 8 seconds
The average attention span in 2000 - 12 seconds
The average attention span of a gold fish - 9 seconds
Percent of teens who forget major details of close friends and
relatives - 25 %
Percent of people who forget their own birthdays from time to
time - 7 %
Average number of times per hour an office worker checks
their email inbox - 30
Average length watched of a single internet video - 2.7
minutes
Percent of page views that last less than 4 seconds: 17 %
Percent of page views that lasted more than 10 minutes: 4 %
Percent of words read on web pages with 111 words or less:
49 %
Percent of words read on an average (593 words) web page:
28 %
Users spend only 4.4 seconds more for each additional
100 words

Source: Harald Weinreich, Hartmut Obendorf, Eelco Herder, and Matthias

Mayer: “Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use,” in the
ACM Transactions on the Web, vol. 2, no. 1 (February 2008), article #5.
 Global
Speed
Diversity
Peer-to-peer
Convergence
Education
Cyber war
Talking with your parents (older paradigm
shifts)

How have new tools shifted (FB, Tools,

Mobile Phones) how we and brands
communicate

Do brands have to shift….

Friedman / McLuhan (
 THE MEDIA CASE STUDY:
McLuhan’s Tetrads and Social Media
 Tetrad = Any Set of 4 Things
The tetrad is a means of examining the effects
on society of any technology/medium (put
another way: a means of explaining the social
processes underlying the adoption of a
technology/medium) by dividing its effects
into four categories and displaying them
simultaneously.
 Example #1 – Gun Powder

• Enhance: Range of Steel Bullets

• Retrieve: Individual Hunting / Group Charge
• Reverse: Automated Death / No Code of Honor
• Make Obsolete: Individual Combat
 The Automobile?
• What does the medium enhance?
• What does the medium make obsolete?
• What does the medium retrieve that had been
obsolesced earlier?
• What does the medium flip into when pushed
to extremes?
 Example #2 – The Automobile
• Enhance: Privacy
• Retrieve: The Quest (road trips)
• Reverse: Creates walking and mass transit
(traffic jams & malls)
• Make Obsolete: Horse and Buggy / Wagon
 Broadcasting (Radio & TV)
• What does the medium enhance?
• What does the medium make obsolete?
• What does the medium retrieve that had been
obsolesced earlier?
• What does the medium flip into when pushed
to extremes?
 Example #3 – Broadcasting (radio & tv)

Enhance: Simultaneous access to everyone

Retrieve: Shared events, shared environment
(The world watched 9/11)
Reverse: Theater, events become entertainment
Make Obsolete: Wires, cables, theatres
 Tetrad Concept
• What does the medium enhance?
• What does the medium make obsolete?
• What does the medium retrieve that had been
obsolesced earlier?
• What does the medium flip into when pushed
to extremes?
"We all have possibilities in us that ordinary life won’t
let us realise. We all have only one birth and one death.
We are all different, but in the narrow stream-bed of
everyday life we are rolled together like pebbles until
we all look alike. Or until we shake ourselves free and
begin to act out the other parts that life denies us”
- Michael Frayn, on Max Reinhardt-