Transmedia transnational video journalism | Paul Levinson | TEDxSaintPetersUniversity

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Paul Levinson is a professor of Communications and Media Studies at Fordham University. He has authored numerous nonfiction and science-fiction books whose themes revolve around the history and the future of communications media, the First Amendment, the importance of space exploration, and popular cultural themes.

Paul Levinson: So, how are you doing?
(Audience) Good!

PL: That was a a nice introduction.

So I'm trying to decide should I talk
about science fiction, time travel,

the First Amendment,

but I'll stick
to what I'm supposed to talk about

which is I think one
of the most revolutionary developments

in our history as a species.

What I'm talking about is a development

which for the first time
has put the power

not only to communicate to one another
which we've always had

but the power to communicate
to the world at large

in everyone's hands

and not only through the written word

but through speech
and audiovisual content.

That is a major path-breaking development

and let me just start by giving you
a couple of examples,

and then we'll trace
a little bit of the history of that

to put it into a proper context.

I'm sure most of you know

that Barack Obama won
his reelection campaign a few months ago,

and I'm sure most of you also know,
if you follow the news at all,

that one of the key factors
in Obama's victory

was Mitt Romney's statement

that 47% the American population

were not of interest to him,
his supporters, and the Republican Party.

In a very contemptuous way, Romney said

47% of Americans are only
interested in a handout;

we're never going
to get their vote anyway.

That was actually a statement

that a political candidate
might well have made

to his or her rich supporters,

and in fact, that is indeed
the physical premise

where Romney made that statement.

But as I'm sure most of you also know,

it was not just those people
at that fundraising event

who heard and saw
Romney make that statement.

In fact, eventually, most Americans
saw that statement.

Why was that?

A bartender had brought in
a little video camera

not much bigger at all
than a typical smartphone,

had put it on the bar,
had pointed it to Romney,

had turned on the recording
and just let the video recording run

while Romney made that statement.

We could talk about
the ethics of doing that.

Is it ethical to record someone

when they don't know
they're being recorded?

I think those are
very interesting issues there;

I think by and large,

it's not particularly the height of ethics

to record someone when they don't know
they're being recorded,

but as in most things in life,

sometimes we have a collision

of ethical problems and ethical concerns.

And so, against that questionable practice

of recording someone
without his or her knowledge,

you have the other important point

that don't the American people
deserve to know

who they are voting for?

I think of those two issues

the greater good resides with

the American people knowing
a little bit more about the candidates.

As a matter of fact,

what happened was this very hour
of Romney making those remarks

was not only recorded
on this little video camera

it was put up on YouTube, and it was
eventually picked up by the mass media.

And so, although the actual recording
took place in May,

it wasn't until September
that everyone began talking about it.

One of the words
in my talk is transmedia.

And it's important to recognize

that social media, in and of themselves,

don't have the power all the time
to get information out to the world.

In fact, what you often need
are the traditional mass media

to come into the system

and amplify the message

that the social medium has created

and put up to the world
in the first place.

So that's a key component
of this revolution.

It's transmedia,
meaning it rarely operates

just from one medium
going to other media

or just one medium going
to other inconsequential media;

rather, it operates

by going from one medium
to other media

and then hitting the jackpot
of the more consequential mass media

which still have an enormous
amount of power in our society.

Often, we hear people talking
about television versus the Internet,

cable television versus YouTube,

the newspaper versus Twitter

as a source of news.

In fact that's not, I think,

the most accurate way to look
at this current media environment,

because what you find on Twitter
are links to news reporting

in the New York Times, in newspapers,
on television, and so forth.

Conversely what you find
in the New York Times,

and on conventional,
traditional news broadcasts

are clips from YouTube
and various events

that otherwise you would not see
covered in the mass media.

So to use a fancy word,
this is a synergistic

- or another phrase -

mutually catalytic development

in which the social media contribute,
and the mass media contribute.

There's a transnational
aspect to this as well,

and obviously, whoever is elected
President of the United States

is by definition --

that event by definition is something
that has international import.

So in fact Romney's 47% remark

was not only seen by Americans
who voted in the election,

but was seen by people
all over the world.

Marshall McLuhan, back in 1962,

observed that new electronic media

were turning the world
into a global village,

and I'm sure many of you have
heard that term "global village,"

but back in 1962,

the environment was really

neither global nor a village,

because back in 1962

and what got McLuhan to make
that point in the first place,

what you had were national audiences
watching television programs

there was no international
communication really.

The first international satellite Telstar
was launched in that period of time,

but it didn't really have any programming
that was conveying to the world.

So it was not yet global
nor was it a village,

because in a normal village

the citizens of that village
can talk to one another

- just like you can talk to each other -

and can move a conversation along,

can question information
not just receive information.

On traditional television,

there is a one-way communication

in which we are receivers of information,

but we have no way to really question
or even comment upon the information.

All that changes
when we get into social media.

So if you look at videos on YouTube,

some of them have thousands of comments,

and I always think, when I see that,

that, "Ah, here is democracy at work,"

because here in these comments,
you see people

not only receiving news
but sending back information,

sending back commentary.

So the global village that McLuhan
talked about in 1962

was really a metaphor back then
or a sign pointing to the future.

I often like to say that McLuhan
was not writing about his time,

he was writing about our time:

not because he was clairvoyant,
but because he understood

with such depth how human beings
wanted to communicate

that he realized we would be
moving in a direction

in which we did have a village.

And so, Romney's remarks were indeed

truly seen by a global audience.

Let me just give you another example,
a very different example.

Occupy Wall Street --

which was a a global movement

that coincided to some extent
with the Arab Spring

and let me tell you
about one person in particular

who in my view did one of the best jobs

reporting what was happening
in Occupy Wall Street.

We're talking about
something that happened

a year or two ago.

I was teaching a class

at Fordham University in the Fall of 2011

when Occupy Wall Street was going
strong in New York City,

around the country, around the world

I went back to my office,
and I looked at my email.

And right before I was about to sign off
and shut down my computer and drive home,

I looked one more time at my Twitter.

I saw her just a little tweet which said

Tim Pool giving live coverage

to an Occupy Wall Street protest
that was going on at Baruch College.

Baruch College, if you don't know, is part
of the City University of New York System

down in the a East Twenties in Manhattan.

I clicked on the link on YouTube
and pretty quickly I was brought to a page

where there was live streaming coverage,
literally, of that demonstration.

And I was able to see that in real time.

It would be hours before
any of the mass media picked that up.

And, as was the case with YouTube,

there were people who were commenting
on what they were seeing:

literally, the police moving in, pushing
demonstrators out of the way,

in my view, illegally, because it was
violating their First Amendment rights.

But all that was actually shown

in real time through Tim Pool's reporting.

And it was seen internationally, literally
in real time, through his reporting.

And by the way Tim Pool
continued to do that,

he had a New Year's Eve live feed

of another series
of Occupy Wall Street events.

It shows you
what a great party person I am.

It's amazing my wife puts up with me,

because that's what I was doing at least
for an hour or two on New Year's Eve,

looking at Tim Pool's live coverage.

But that's extremely significant,

and by the way,
it has legal import as well,

because the New York City police
arrested many people

that they said
were violating this or that law.

In most cases, on no evidence,

and in one case, I was very happy to see,

the case was thrown out of court,

the person who had been arrested
by the NYPD was found not guilty

and the reason was Tim Pool
had been there with his little phone

-- he just uses a smartphone

hooked up to an internet connection
to report what happened

at another event in which someone
had been arrested

for breaking through a police line
which in fact never happened.

So this has profound
legal consequences as well.

But let me put
some of this in historical context,

and end with a little trip
through history,

just so you have an idea of why I think

this is such a path-breaking development

in our communication history.

Once upon a time, a long long time ago,

we're talking about thousands
and thousands and thousands of years ago,

the only way
we communicated was by talking,

and in that environment
as limited as it was,

because you couldn't communicate
beyond your physical surroundings,

anybody could talk,
and anyone could respond.

And then, we moved
into a written environment,

in which the information
was saved, preserved

in scrolls, in parchment,
papyrus, and eventually paper;

and it was the same thing:
anyone could write, anyone could read,

but very limited distribution.

In the Renaissance, in the 1450s,

Gutenberg, as we all know,
introduced the printing press.

Suddenly, millions and millions
of people could read

what anyone had written.

But now, a problem was introduced:

who was to decide who would do
that dissemination?

An editor or a publisher had to decide.

And so, what was set up
was this profound asymmetry

of who knows how many ideas,
how many written works were out there,

could have been out there?

But only a small fraction of them
ever made it into print.

In the 20th century,

we had the introduction
of electronic broadcasting media:

this improved greatly the dissemination.

Millions of people could hear the news,
see the news instantly.

Extraordinary!

But once again, who decided
what would be in that news?

The answer was again: a producer,

a television production crew, an editor.

And who knows how many stories
were left uncovered?

It was not until the Internet
that this began to change.

There actually was one little important
development before the Internet:

the rise of photocopying.

McLuhan again said the Xerox turns
every author into a publisher.

Unfortunately, Xerox manuscripts
don't look like books,

but again McLuhan was onto something

because you didn't need anyone's
permission to Xerox your manuscript.

But that is really small potatoes,

compared to the power
that's now in all of your hands;

each and every one of you,
you have an idea,

you have an opinion about something,
you see something that's happening,

you don't need anyone's permission,

you can upload it to your YouTube channel,
you can put it on your blog,

and you, like this bartender in Florida

who reported Mitt Romney's 47% comment,

you can change the world.

Thank you.

(Applause)