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Why Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson Can't Replace Pravda
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.by Georgy Bovt Russian political scientist, candidate of historical sciences [REGNUM] Former popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson , who left the channel a few weeks ago with a scandal, launched his own talk show on social networks, which gained 35 million views in a day. This is about 20 times more than any popular political show is gaining viewers, including the former transfer of Tucker Carlson himself on the same Fox News.  Now former employers have set out to somehow pinch the former employee in the courts so that he finally shuts up. Like, this was not provided for in the parting contract. In fact, this is the result of black envy. The former popular TV presenter was just one of those who “shot” on social networks, confirming the extraordinary liveliness of such a phenomenon as a mass media person, when a single content producer outnumbers the so-called traditional media by dozens of times in terms of the number of users, subscribers and viewers. This once again restarted the discussions about whether it is time, they say, to completely bury these same traditional media and play some kind of multimedia funeral march over them. I remember that earlier paper newspapers were buried in the same way, then radio. Then they said that the Internet would kill the TV, and along with the cinema. However, many decades have passed, and all these shortcomings are still alive and even feel good. Although many individuals have died in the terrible suffering of bankruptcy and neglect by former fans. And now a new attack. Thanks to the flourishing of social networks, on which some regular man-orchestra sings and dances in splendid isolation, he is also a man-mass media. If we take the top ten or even at least a hundred content producers in terms of the number of users and readers, then there is not a single so-called traditional mass media now. In first place will probably be Elon Musk with 140 million followers on his Twitter account alone. A little, by 10 million, former US President Barack Obama lags behind . He is still on the "information horse". Further four places in a row are occupied by no politicians, and Canadian musician Justin Bieber (112 million), football player Cristiano Ronaldo (108 million), singer Rihanna (108 million), musicians Katy Perry and Taylor Swift (107 and 92 million respectively). Only in 8th place in terms of the number of users is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (89 million, which, with India's one and a half billion population, is a drop in the ocean of people) and the former US presidentDonald Trump (86 million). And closes the top ten again representative of pop culture singer Lady Gaga . Today Russia has its own specifics. Numerous, moderately thoughtful and analytical bloggers, as well as completely frivolous so-called insta-females, in recent years have gained millions of fan subscribers, which numbers could not be dreamed of by any Pravda newspaper even in the most totalitarian Soviet times, when every communist was obliged to subscribe to it (and in the CPSU at its peak there were 18 million), and not only them. CPSU is the acronym for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a banned organization in Russia.
As of the end of 2021, just under 70,000 media outlets were registered in Russia, of which a little more than half were print media, more than 20,000 electronic media, and more than a thousand had the status of news agencies. However, without a doubt, none of these mass media could boast of a number of subscribers comparable to that of top bloggers (they are now pompously called content producers). Does this mean that now the latter will kill and finally bury the former. No no and one more time no. For a variety of reasons. One of the reasons for the rise in popularity of individual content producers is that new technological opportunities (namely, the possibilities of social networks and various electronic platforms) give them the right and chance to distribute their content almost free of charge or with minimal promotion costs. Moreover, in fact, on an equal footing with the so-called “old status media”, which also contain editorial offices, numerous service personnel and, most often, also rent some kind of premises. They also pay all taxes. At the same time, in the minds of the mass user-reader, the content produced by "status media" and distributed by amateur bloggers often has absolutely equal value. Largely because status media sometimes confine themselves to censorship or self-censorship, so-called personal content also often gains a notorious advantage. For example, the same military correspondents are much less restrained by considerations of military censorship, which is quite understandable in wartime conditions, than the speaker of the Ministry of Defense Konashenkov. At the same time, it is far from always possible to limit the dissemination of objectionable information even for the Ministry of Defense. At the same time, it is very difficult for a modern consumer of information content to independently build in his head an adequate hierarchy of information flows that fall upon him. All this often represents a kind of white noise for him, in which an unprepared user is absolutely unable to distinguish between the main and the secondary, or to separate the truth from the truth, or to accurately define what is called the term “fake”. It should also be noted that many, if not the vast majority of millionaire bloggers working in the information field, in fact, often parasitize, exploit the results of the work of status media. Often their posts are either reposts of content already produced by traditional media, or an expression of a purely subjective value judgment. Which, of course, from the lips of some Elon Musk has a self-sufficient meaning, however, relatively speaking, the entire information space cannot be sown with subjective "columns of opinions". Someone has to get "primary news", someone has to make expensive reports. Finally, someone must cross-check the information received in several sources, checking it first of all for reliability. And in this regard, the importance of status media remains indispensable, since the demand for verified information in society remains. And finally, the last one. The current triumph of social media and the millionaire bloggers they have elevated is also, in fact, temporary. And at some point they will begin to say that this format is dying, that they are tired, that this format has come to an end and the time has come for some “completely new” media formats. For example, many are already predicting the rise in popularity of the so-called “augmented reality”, when a subscriber user will not only be a consumer of some information content, but thanks to this very augmented reality, he will have the full impression that he is already a direct participant in this content. . In general, wait and see. Posted by: badanov 2023-06-10 |
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