In the process of writing my new book, THE RISE OF THE MEDIAVERSE, I have been reading Susan Sontag’s excellent tome, On Photography.
It’s an analysis of the impact of the invention of photography on society, but what Sontag has to say about photography works equally well for both video and for Twitter for that matter.
“Photography,” Sontag notes, “implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding.”
That is because there is an editorial power attached to which photograph the photographer (or the editor) chooses to show us, and more importantly, what they choose not to show us. The image gives us the illusion of knowing something.
In the world of Twitter, that illusion can now be married to instant outrage, which is exactly what happened this morning. Twitter is excellent at instant outrage.
My Twitter feed erupted with outrage over a story, carried by a more than marginal ‘news’ organization, but vastly magnified on Twitter.
Camilla, the Queen Consort (let’s remember I live in the UK now, so this is big stuff here) was visiting a children’s school.
As you can plainly see from the still lifted from the video that was taken, Camilla clearly “picks up a Black child’s arm by her sleeve.” Clearly she is a racist who refrains from even touching a Black person.
The Twitterverse (the Mediaverse in my mind) quickly erupts with outrage.
On and on.
You get the idea.
Outrage.
Yet, if we take a look at the complete video, this is clearly not the case. Camilla is in fact simply examining and then complimenting the child on her bracelet.
Not everyone was taken in:
But one never misses the opportunity to bring up the ever-sainted Diana as a comparison, particularly as she is starring in this week’s episode of The Crown.
Sontag makes the point that a photograph gives us what she calls “the semblance of wisdom.” This is not at all dissimilar from Neil Postman’s “illusion of knowledge,” in his seminal work, Amusing Ourselves to Death. It’s a main theme in my own book. We see it, and having seen it, now believe it. Seeing, after all, is believing. The idea that an image can be manipulated, and not even though photoshop, but simply by selective editorial choice, warps our idea of what is true and what is false. The grabbed frame, after all, is true, in a way, but out of context carries and entirely different meaning.
It doesn’t matter. So long as it provokes outrage it is good enough.
Good enough to garner eyeballs, and so drive traffic and so increases ad rates – and that, in the end, is what it is generally all about.
Twitter, after all, is a business. It does not exist for public service, it exists to make a profit. If Elon Musk wanted to do public service, he would have given his $44B to PBS, which would have been interesting in the extreme. But he didn’t. So caveat emptor. Know what you are getting into with eyes wide open.
You can read more about this in my new book, THE RISE OF THE MEDIAVERSE.
