What people like

A few weeks ago Jeff Jarvis had an interesting debate of sorts with BBC One controller Peter Fincham, about which I already wrote a post. A few more thoughts:

Jarvis attacks Fincham's use of the term "people" as in "people like programmes", suggesting that "we" the people shouldn't be grouped in an anonymous mass. Elsewhere he fondly quotes Raymond Williams' motto that "there are no masses, there are only ways of seeing people as masses", and he has recently implied that (audience) "fragmentation is another word for democracy".

Now, Jarvis never quite says this, but taking his argument beyond where he goes, you could say that "the people" are a collection of individuals, each with his or her own views, tastes and allegiances. The demise of broadcast media will finally allow us to choose and find our own groups (presumably a matter of compatibility or coincidence of views, tastes, etc), without powerful voices telling us where we belong.

This is a statement of liberal individualism, and if we see it as such then we must also acknowledge the various similarly appealing counterarguments that have been given in a wider context. Would individuals be what they are without first belonging to communities that define their values and common-sense? Would our communities be what they are without newspapers and television? And would a completely fluid society, one where people choose their own identities at will (if such a thing is possible) be a better, more democratic one?

No point trying to do justice to this old and profound debate. Just three points: both sides appeal to democratic ideals; neither is invulnerable to criticism; and it's possible to look for a middle ground, as Yochai Benkler (in a closely related context) does:

Liberal political theory needs a theory of culture and agency that is viscous enough to matter normatively, but loose enough to give its core foci—-the individual and the political system—room to be effective independently, not as a mere expression or extension of culture.

To go back to Jarvis' post, imagine a world in which the promise of on-demand media has come true: all content is available on-demand, and anyone can watch anything. Would that be a media world of individuals' natural choices, as I think Jarvis suggests, or would people's choices continue to be largely influenced by a few massively shared, one-to-many voices? (Of course the two are not mutually contradictory.)

My take is that this world would be a hybrid between the two extremes. This is because:

1. Most of the time people don't want anything in particular and want to be proposed choices. (More here.)
2. Often, people just want to watch what others are watching (or have watched recently, or are about to watch), because others are watching it. (More here.)
3. Even when you do know what you want, the question of how you came to want what you want remains. Word-of-mouth and affinity do play a role, but these can also be manipulated. Marketing won't go away. (More here.)
4. The economics of content distribution still favor the one-to-many model. In particular, the Internet is doing very little to change this for live video content. (More here.)

I feel Jeff would agree with much of this, so this should not be taken as an attack on his views. My only intention is to point out some of the problems of the web 2.0 ideology in its more extreme variants.