Opinion – Ronaldo Lemos: Digital media are in a time of change

It is always good to remember the usefulness of Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase that “the medium is the message”. With it, the main media theorist of all times emphasizes the fact that any change in the means of communication leads to profound alterations in the way society is organized and even in the modes of individual behavior.

Well, we are in the season of transformation again. There is a new generation of platforms that has been progressively emerging and is now reaching critical force as a means of mass communication. Among them, it is worth mentioning TikTok, Discord, Twitch and Telegram.

The rise of these platforms is changing the game in terms of how digital communication takes place. The previous generation of platforms (YouTube, Facebook and Instagram etc.) was responsible for reconfiguring the role of traditional media (TV, newspapers, magazines etc.). Through them, a new type of celebrity emerged, which took advantage of the new media to project itself independently of the existing editorial channels. In this movement, many new characters emerged, ranging from the fashion blogger to the internet politician.

We are now witnessing the moment when the arrival of new platforms is supplanting the “old ones”.

Anyone who was already comfortable with the way of communicating on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, platforms with more than ten years of existence, is having to relearn a lot.

TikTok, for example, grew out of at least two new elements. The fact of using artificial intelligence as a central element of the platform, capable of identifying conscious and unconscious preferences of users.

And the creation of a new language, consisting of the so-called “short videos”, which demand a new way of exchanging information that is uncomfortable for many people over 30 (and for those who have become too used to the current media ecosystem).

Discord and Twitch grew from the centrality of games to contemporary global culture. Discord is a platform that allows text and voice communication that was initially adopted
by players who sought to communicate while playing collectively.

However, it progressively moved out of this niche and today is the epicenter of several broader innovation and communication movements. Few platforms have the ability to organize communities of interest like Discord.

Twitch, now owned by Amazon, originally bet on the live broadcast of video game matches.

It also managed to extrapolate this niche and become a popular phenomenon. In Brazil, influencer Casimiro (“Casimito”) broke all barriers by becoming a national celebrity projecting the always interesting culture of the north of Rio de Janeiro throughout the country.

Telegram, meanwhile, has seen increasing success in merging WhatsApp’s communication capabilities with Discord’s community-of-interest capabilities. A pity that, with such success, the platform insists on ignoring the law of the countries in which it operates.

In any case, these changes in the media are already starting to produce effects with repercussions in all social fields: in education, science, culture and, unpredictably, also in politics.

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