A while ago I was interviewed and invited to contribute to BBC R&D’s Future of the Social Internet Report, which explores the shifting dynamics of digital social platforms and online communities.
That report has just dropped: Projections: The Social Internet.
The report explores how audiences are abandoning global timelines in favour of smaller, more human-centric spaces and also the influence of gaming and the limits of engagement metrics. It examines the impact of algorithmic feeds, addictive platform design, and what it means to meaningfully engage with audiences online.
I show up in a few places, playing some of the hits I’ve long spoken about here on the blog, the difficulty of getting people to ‘click out’ of social platforms, the alms race, and the destabilising nature of algorithmic feeds:
“If you’re on Twitter, in the old days, when you’re in a chronological feed, you knew where you were in relation to all the content. But as soon as it becomes an algorithmic feed, you don’t know where you are… The algorithmic feed is constantly shifting, so you can’t find your position and that is destabilising.”
We also talk about the changing shape of ‘now’ online and how contemporary platform design has shattered any shared cultural timeline.
Elsewhere in the report you’ll find contributions from Eli Pariser, Angelica Quicksey, Cory Doctorow (via citation), Ryan Alexander, Wendy Grossman, and others. Discussing everything from ‘enshittification’ and mental health, to fandom, moderation, and multiplayer games as scaffolding for social life. Lots of great stuff.
They even gave me the closing words of the main report: on the need for institutional legitimacy, not trust.
Finally as a public service broadcaster, the BBC relies heavily on trust
in our institution. But that trust is declining and just being present in
social spaces will not necessarily increase that trust as Jay Springett
told us: “I would focus on legitimacy as opposed to trust. How do we
increase the legitimacy that we have of the speech acts that we make
in the world?
“Legitimacy […] comes from acting in the spheres that you’re in as
a genuine actor, and especially not rolling in as a sort of patriarchal
agent going we know what’s best, we’re just going to broadcast that to
you. It’s more about engaging on equal terms with the spaces, on the
terms of those spaces.”
The whole thing is written in a thoughtful, accessible way that doesn’t fall into tech-solutionist trapdoors. If you are interested in online media, communities etc, its well worth your time.
Where is the social internet taking us?
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