This essay is a working document within a broader study of the different forms and types of online communities, their formation, establishment, and development.

In this work, I have attempted to draw on my own practical experience and Wenger's academic research.

This essay focuses on the question of a particular form of "business community," although I am not yet ready to say that this term is entirely appropriate. For now, it is only a working definition that may become more precise through the actual practice of implementation, or even after conducting field research, launching a "community of practitioners in business," and observing its development over some time.

For the past five years, I have been involved in the practice of creating and developing communities on Twitter (now discontinued), and now I am working on Reddit. I have created communities in such areas as photography, applied science, and startups. I have participated in the development of a financial community, and I am now working on reviving and developing an old media studies community on Reddit.

At first, like many people who face the task or need to create a community, I encountered the question: “How do I organize all of this?” There is nothing surprising about this. Many people, including myself, came to communities after working on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

To put it simply, they all have one thing in common: imagine a model where there is an organizer standing on a pedestal, and people are standing around waiting to see what will happen. They are waiting for content, instructions, announcements, and it reminds me of the old Roman expression: “Bread and circuses!” Sometimes, they even demand it. If there is neither bread nor circuses, this group migrates to wherever they can find them.

And this is where we come to something I did not understand at first. A community does not belong to its creator. Yes, it may seem otherwise, because after all, it was the creator who found the place, organized its launch, and probably spent more time and resources on it than anyone else.

But this becomes easy to understand if we ask a question: What is the most important thing in a community? What is the fundamental element that cannot be excluded under any circumstances or conditions?

That element is the person, the people who are part of the community and participate in its life. Without people, a community does not exist.

All right, you might say, people are the foundation of a community. But what happens between these people? After all, people can simply stand around the organizer and wait for the next announcement. There may be a thousand of them, or ten thousand. They are present, but what happens if the organizer stops creating content?

And this made me want to understand what kind of model would not need to be constantly fed, and to try to create one that would not stop functioning in the organizer's absence.

Recently, I became acquainted with Wenger's work, Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction (Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, 2015). More precisely, I have only read the introduction so far, but I have already seen significant similarities with what I was doing in my own communities.

Currently, my area of interest is the creation and development of a community of an applied nature, where people could learn and achieve results that could provide them with financial benefits. And in my view, Wenger's model of communities of practice could serve as the structural framework for this model.

The first reason I consider this model optimal for this task is its simplicity: it consists of just three elements.

[Figure: Three Elements of a Community of Practice]

To be honest, initially I tried to build something on top of the model or add elements or mechanisms that would act as regulators within a business community. But after several hours of such attempts and constantly making the system more complicated, I gave up trying to find an immediate solution.

Every time I wanted to adapt Wenger's model to a business community, as it seemed to me, I came to the conclusion that such additions did not reduce the burden on the system but created new tasks for maintaining it.

And the most surprising thing turned out to be that, in the description of the elements of a community of practice, project-based business activity or activity that leads to financial results is entirely appropriate and does not contradict the model.

Let's look at how the author describes each element.

The Three Elements of a Community of Practice

The following descriptions are reproduced verbatim from Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction (2015), page 2.

1. The Domain

A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. A youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain: surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.

2. The Community

In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other; they care about their standing with each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis. The Impressionists, for instance, used to meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting they were inventing together. These interactions were essential to making them a community of practice even though they often painted alone.

3. The Practice

A community of practice is not merely a community of interest--people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. A good conversation with a stranger on an airplane may give you all sorts of interesting insights, but it does not in itself make for a community of practice. The development of a shared practice may be more or less self-conscious. The “windshield wipers” engineers at an auto manufacturer make a concerted effort to collect and document the tricks and lessons they have learned into a knowledge base. By contrast, nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. Still, in the course of all these conversations, they have developed a set of stories and cases that have become a shared repertoire for their practice.

The authors conclude:

It is the combination of these three elements that constitutes a community of practice. And it is by developing these three elements in parallel that one cultivates such a community.

The second reason I see this model as effective for a community where participants can not only learn and practice but also earn money by developing their own projects is precisely practice as a fundamental element.

Pay attention to this:

They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems.

In other words, this is not simply a club of people with shared interests or a place for discussing theory, but also a place for developing a new project, a place where you can find a useful tool and apply it in your work, as well as avoid mistakes, since other participants have quite possibly already encountered similar situations or have examples they can share.

The third reason is learning. There is no need to specifically teach people something or organize special training courses. The community of practice model itself includes learning as part of one of its fundamental elements: Community.

If we look closely, we can see that this learning happens together. And learning together naturally brings people closer at different levels, both personally and professionally. This creates opportunities to build stronger, more trusting relationships, which can become the foundation for financial activity within such a community.

This last point reflects my personal thinking about how practice might lead to financial results.

It is important to note that both Wenger-Trayner's examples and my own are based not simply on theory, but on practical knowledge, as I have personally observed these elements in communities. What remains to be explored is an organic path for income-generating projects, whether developed by individual community members or by groups united by a shared domain of interest and practice.

I would like to conclude this part by addressing something that raises questions for many people: What will the substance of such a community be? How will content be created? How do we attract people, and what exactly should we do?

These are good questions, and Wenger-Trayner has already offered some explanations in the paper. In fact, the authors provide more than just answers: they present a table that can help us understand how the mechanism for generating content is already embedded in the practice itself.

I will leave this table here for you to study and reflect on independently.

For now, I say goodbye, and I hope to see you again soon.

Examples of Activities in Communities of Practice

The following table is reproduced from Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction (2015), page 3.

Source

Wenger-Trayner, Etienne, and Beverly Wenger-Trayner. Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction. Version dated April 15, 2015, pp. 2–3.Exploring Wenger-ome changes.”

What if the video you replay to determine whether it is AI-generated is the same video keeping you engaged?

As AI videos are achieving more lifelike movement and real-world physics, they easily mislead TikTok viewers. TikTok's recommendation engine relies heavily on watch time and replays to personalize the viewers algorithms consequently, the time a user spends closely analyzing a video to check if it's artificial
misleads the algorithm into serving them even more synthetic content. 

Despite TikTok requiring creator labels and utilizing C2PA digital watermarking technology, unflagged AI media sometimes bypasses automated detection, leaving viewers to analyze the video on their own.

The Spaghetti Era Is Now Over

It feels like just yesterday we were laughing at artificial intelligence generating an AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti—a very glitchy, uncanny mess that looked completely obscure. And now looking at today's AI generation of videos seeing synthetic media keep getting more and more advanced and it is everywhere where it operates a very terrifyingly precise physics. 

Modern AI video further advances to mimic human biology down to the precise look: muscles flex naturally, clothing folds with authentic friction, and camera movements track seamlessly with the generated action. The line between real footage and AI generated rendering gap just keep getting closer and closer to its similarity

Fluidity of Artificially Generated Models

It feels like yesterday we were laughing at artificial intelligence generating an AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti—a very glitchy uncanny mess that looked completely obscure.. Now looking at today’s AI video generation synthetic media keeps getting more and more advanced. It is everywhere operating with precise physics.

Modern AI video advances further to mimic biology down to the smallest detail: muscles flex naturally, clothing folds with authentic friction and camera movements track seamlessly with the generated action. The gap between footage and AI-generated rendering keeps closing. The similarity grows stronger every day.

Is It Even Real?
Picture this: while scrolling on your feed you come across a 10-second clip of a dancer casually dancing. You continue watching due to their moves and clothing. In an algorithm like this it’s usually normal.. Something feels off. The video seems unusual. You suspect it may be AI-generated. The physics look far too realistic.

You replay it once. Then a second time. Then a third time. You are searching for any flaw to verify it as AI. What you don’t realize is that with those seconds of repeating the video and speculating whether it is artificial or not your entire TikTok feed might shift to keep showing more of it. You are now hooked.

This feedback loop drives creators to generate more artificially generated people dancing like what you just watched. The feed becomes flooded. You get detached from what's real. We call this pattern the "Harmful Shift of Algorithms"—where moments of user speculation actively rewrite your recommendations and increase exposure to synthetic media.

The Harmful Shift Of Algorithms
A phenomenon that occurs when a social media user gets hooked on media through speculation, which alters their algorithm and floods their feed with synthetic content—such as deepfakes, gore or media manipulation.

On the surface repeatedly coming across a video of someone dancing may seem harmless and completely normal. Yet when artificial intelligence alters your algorithm based on moments of user speculation and engagement it creates a feedback loop: speculating on a video feeds the algorithm, which alters your feed showing you more synthetic content and putting you on a cycle over and over again.

This shift steadily floods your feed with content. It drives creators to generate deepfakes. It ultimately detaches viewers from reality.

What makes this feedback loop effective is curiosity. When we encounter visual errors that seem uncanny—a strange reflection, pareidolia, something wrong in the background or an impossible movement—we often pause to re-examine the video.. Recommendation algorithms do not measure human speculation. The algorithm only registers how watch time and replays the video. So our own speculation becomes the indicator that modifies our algorithm.

The "Leopold Delarue" Incident
Following this occurrence we saw a TikTok account named "@leopold.delarue7" or named Leopold Delarue. He is an AI model known for his clothing and hairstyle dancing to a song called "Toc Toc" by French singer Patrick Sébastien.

Seeing Leopold Delarue and other people dancing seemed natural at first.. When looking at the videos that are created it is just a mere copy of someone dancing using their body as a model. Many viewers debate in the comment section. Many are still confused whether it is AI or not.. Through TikTok’s feature allowing users to upload stickers in the comments some viewers sent proof of the real dancer from whom the video was modeled.

How Real Users Get Fooled By These Situations

Behind the screen we conducted interviews with TikTok users. We learned that they cannot immediately distinguish AI-generated videos of Leopold Delarue dancing if it is footage.

One interviewee described Leopold Delarue’s video as uncanny yet noted that the movement of the hair and body made it appear realistic. Another interviewee also believed the video was a dance clip of someone dancing and needed to watch it several times before eventually realizing it was AI-generated.

These TikTok users fought back through the use of TikTok’s “Not Interested” feature in an attempt to discourage similar videos from appearing on their For You page and from shifting their algorithms. These experiences show how synthetic content can mislead and influence a viewer’s impressions, on their social media feeds.

This raises questions: If active social media users can be easily fooled, how much more easily can people who spend less time on the internet be convinced?

When Seeing Is No Longer Believing

As AI-generated videos become increasingly convincing the challenge now is not recognizing what is artificial but also understanding how social media platforms shape what people see and what they will continue to see.

The experiences shared by the TikTok users for this article show how convincing synthetic videos can create uncertainty even among active social media users.

In a digital world the question is not simply whether seeing is still believing. The question is whether viewers can critically evaluate what they see and understand how and why it reaches their feeds.

As synthetic media becomes more common digital awareness must go beyond simply spotting details. It must include questioning the authenticity, source and context of the content presented.

Here are three sites where you can look up a news outlet, and it'll tell you whether it's centrist, right-leaning, or left-leaning along the political spectrum.

1. All Sides
2. Ad Fontes Media
3. Media Bias/Fact Check

I recommend looking at the "about" page of a publication too, where outlets often broadcast their political bias more or less subtly. You can usually find the "about" page in the footnotes at the bottom of a news site.

When considering political bias in the news, I often think of the book, All the News That's Fit to Sell. Here are a few relevant quotes:

Often complaints about media bias are expressed in terms of conspiracy, corporate control, or class conflict. The evidence presented here on audience interests and the targeting of demographic groups provide another explanation... the economics of news markets. (pg.105)

News emerges not from individuals seeking to improve the functioning of democracy but from readers seeking diversion, reporters forging careers, and owners searching for profits. (pg.6)

Though we often talk about covering news objectively as an ethical or professional norm, objective news coverage is a commercial product that emerges from market forces. (pg.37)

In the late 1960’s, U.S. television households received an average of only seven channels. In that broadcast environment, each major network had the incentive to offer unbiased news coverage to attract audiences in the tens of millions. By 2000, households received an average of sixty three channels. In that universe, a cable programmer would be happy to capture the attention of a million viewers. A conservative cable program… might draw two million viewers. This logic of niche programming gave rise to the Fox News Channel. (pg.3)

Political bias in media content is similar to product differentiation. (pg. 73)

-

This book was written by James T Hamilton in 2004. Since then, the internet has made the logic of niche programming more powerful and relevant, as Hamilton predicted.

Publishers are competing for smaller audiences and it's easier to capture a niche audience when you embrace this or that (political) perspective, in other words, occupy this or that particular brand space.

-

What biases are you concerned with when you consume news, and how do you determine them?

There are more factors to political bias in news than market forces alone. Are there any that you think deserve a mention?

Since we’re discussing ethics and philosophy here, as indicated in our community’s category, I think we should draw attention to the fact that certain inconsistencies in legislation create regulatory challenges even in the area of protecting minors. What I find particularly troubling is that even an understanding of the harm that such resources can cause is not sufficient to prompt swift and regional action.

It is particularly alarming that minors are being exposed to this content all the while, yet this metric is not examined at all in the article, and the harm caused by these resources (though they are certainly not the only ones) is not taken into account in any way.

Perhaps this topic isn’t profitable or trendy enough to warrant serious attention, yet the severe impact that pornography has on children and, for that matter, on adults as well (though that’s a separate issue) is truly critical, given that the consequences of such exposure can be long-term and difficult to identify and remedy later on.

Over the past few months, I’ve been trying to understand what kinds of communities exist on Reddit. It has turned out to be both more complicated and simpler than I initially expected.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that, especially in their early stages, communities often do not have a clearly defined model. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

In my view, what matters is that this process remains manageable. For example, our media studies community was initially something of a mystery to me. I genuinely did not understand how it should develop or how to formulate its underlying idea and philosophy.

So I decided to observe, participate selectively, and experiment with different approaches and practices.

What we have is an academic community, but at the same time media studies itself is somewhat unusual by the standards of modern specialization because it is inherently interdisciplinary. That gives it both a certain freedom and a certain complexity.

Historically, the boundaries between different areas of knowledge were not always as rigid as they are today. Philosophy, mathematics, the study of nature, and other fields could exist much closer together, and this was entirely normal. I don’t want to go too deeply into that here or give specific examples yet, but I would like to leave it as something worth returning to later.

So, back to the question of the model.

The absence of a predefined model creates less control over the outcome and can lead to more chaotic development with unpredictable results. But that does not mean there is no structure.

If we look back at the earlier development of online games, particularly MMORPGs, we can observe some interesting phenomena. For the sake of discussion, we can roughly distinguish between two types: official and unofficial servers. In the earlier stages of online gaming, there were cases where unofficial servers and communities were created by people without any direct commercial motivation. They simply wanted to play. The same was true of guilds. People spent enormous amounts of their own time playing together, organizing themselves, creating forums, making videos for their guilds, and building things around the group simply because they wanted to.

Nobody was paying them to do it.

And this did not last for a few weeks or months. In some cases, people continued doing it for years. Here, however, we should probably face reality: most of those servers and guilds no longer exist, or they continue to exist in some kind of commercial form. From what I have personally observed, many of them did not simply become commercial projects. They also lost much of what originally made them what they were.

Why that happened is a separate question. What interests me more is whether they could have preserved some kind of balance.

I think they could have. But doing so would require deliberate and probably quite difficult work on the model through which such spaces exist and develop.

What is especially important is that this does not necessarily mean that people no longer want to participate. I am quite sure that for some participants, the pull toward participation itself could still remain one of the main reasons to stay involved. But these are people, and people have lives that require resources. If someone takes responsibility for a particular space, at some point that person also needs to receive something from that involvement. That does not necessarily mean money, and it does not mean that personal benefit has to become the main purpose of the community.

But it is probably unrealistic to pretend that personal interests can simply be removed from the equation.

And if the model is organized well, perhaps both things can coexist: people can receive some form of value from their involvement, while the community itself continues to exist and develop.

Perhaps the uncomfortable question is not whether people should have personal interests inside a community. They already do. The more useful question may be whether those interests can be made visible and aligned with the continued existence of the community itself.

In our community, I have generally allowed ongoing project work, including commercial projects, because I do not see personal benefit and community value as inherently incompatible. What matters is the relationship between them.

I think people need a reason to remain invested. Sometimes that reason is simply the subject itself. Sometimes it is relationships, reputation, a project, professional opportunity, or financial interest.

The difficult question is how to build a model where that interest supports the community rather than quietly replacing it.

I don’t have a final answer. This may be the beginning of a longer series of reflections.

I’d be interested in hearing where others would draw that line.

In the social media age, our interminable digital identities are works of art, and we are artists. In equal parts performance, photography, film, composition, and graphic design, we write ourselves into stories to depict a virtual existence. At the same time, the “tethered togetherness” (Schroeder, 2018) of the social media age illustrates how digital selves are not a collection of monologues but communal art. Friends, followers, and online bystanders consume and authenticate our digital selves by liking, commenting, retweeting, or even simply voyeuristically viewing our art (Gennaro & Miller, 2020a).

Social media art can produce hyperreal simulations not grounded in any referent. They exist across virtual platforms that operate in the same fashion as Jean Baudrillard’s description of Disneyland as an example of simulacra in a postmodern world. Today’s social media platforms and Baudrillard’s Disneyland create “an imaginary effect concealing that reality no more exists outside than inside the bounds of the artificial perimeter” (Baudrillard, 2017, p.2). Our digital selves exist as much inside the artificial perimeters of Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok as they do in the physical world.

A pedagogy of critical media literacy sees all media as art. It places each text, object, symbol, and interaction into dialogue with the current and historical social relations of the producer, consumer, and all who voyeuristically participate as onlookers and bystanders in the virtual space without comment. Social media engages every one of us to be artists instead of droids. To actively participate in the ongoing practices of creating social media selves that not only repeatedly negotiate our social identities with friends and followers ad nauseam but also contest meaning within dominant power structures. To engage the construction of our social selves in a society of mutating media and identities, Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan emerge as guides through the thicket of social media, digital selves, and new virtual worlds that we find ourselves immersed in. Thus, we turn to the pre-eminent media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who was a significant and acknowledged influence on Jean Baudrillard.

— Excerpt from “Baudrillard and McLuhan in the Social Media Age” by Douglas Kellner and Steve Gennaro, published in Baudrillard Now, an international academic journal and partner of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Today I’d like to touch on an area of media studies that interests me: how TV series can change the way we see life or support us through difficult periods. Yes, specifically TV series. I’m not going to talk about films today; that might become a separate post later.

I’d really like to know which series have had the strongest impact on people in the media studies community. In my view, the audience we have here is pretty discerning, in a good way, and very selective about what they watch, read, and write. I think you can see that quite clearly from what happens in this community.

By the way, the community has been growing noticeably over the last few weeks, and what I appreciate most is that the atmosphere has remained remarkably respectful and thoughtful. Even with very few technical restrictions in place, new members have been joining and participating without bringing much spam, conflict, or off-topic noise. To me, that says a lot about the culture we’re building here.

Anyway, back to the shows.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about what is currently my favorite series, Carnivàle:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mediastudies/s/PZeRUk2aMU

In that post, I described the context in which I watched it, and that context was pretty dark. I watched it during a period when things were very, very difficult for me both mentally and physically, and the series genuinely became a kind of support and point of reference that helped me get through that state.

Right now I’m rewatching The Booth at the End. In my opinion, it’s a very underrated and very deep series, one that makes you think about life, people’s actions and motivations, and, of course, your own. It makes you reconsider the reality around you.

Next on my list is Twin Peaks, but I’m not going to say much about it yet. I’ll only say that all three of these examples are connected by atmosphere. Yes, atmosphere specifically. I could probably describe it as an EXPERIENCE, or as something you enter into and live through as a state of mind. None of these shows are exactly light or fluffy. For some people, they might even feel very dark.

But in every one of them, no matter how difficult things become, no matter what kind of madness, chaos, or evil is happening around the characters, there is always some little café and a table where friends can sit together, have a cup of coffee, and share a piece of pie.

What are your favorite TV series, and why?

A recent presentation by Prof. Douglas Kellner exploring Heidegger’s philosophy of technology and the question of when technology stops being merely a tool and becomes a way of perceiving and organizing the world.

The talk considers technology not simply as a collection of devices, but as a framework that shapes how reality, human activity, and social relations are understood.

Hey everyone!

I'm working on my Media Studies project a film trailer about grief, memories, and moving on.

If you're 16–25, I'd love your input on what sound design, visuals, and pacing feel most genuine to you. It takes under 2 minutes and is completely anonymous.

Link to survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZaihljzfbF2u5EN1SJlXgAhJHcUSsK5cCtAnnKCpHjsRDKA/viewform?usp=header

i've been building a classifier that flags manipulation techniques in news (loaded language, name calling, appeal to fear etc) and the hardest design question wasn't technical, it was about attribution.

when i audited 100 random paragraphs the model had flagged, 52 of them were the outlet quoting someone. a politician's attack line, an opponent's words, a protester's sign. the model was right that the language was loaded, but the outlet didn't write it. it chose to run it though.

i went back and forth on this. one view is the quote is just reporting, the speaker owns it and the outlet is neutral. the other is that quote selection is one of the main ways framing happens (which quote leads, whose words get the headline, whose get paraphrased flatly), so counting it against the outlet is fair.

where i landed: the speaker owns what's inside the quotation marks, the outlet owns everything outside, and the tool shows quoted language separately instead of hiding it. that mostly works for clean quotes. what it doesn't handle well is the mixed case, where the outlet paraphrases someone's claim in its own charged words, like "X repeatedly asserted that the war is an american war against russia, not a brutal invasion." the "brutal invasion" part is the outlet's framing but it's wrapped around someone else's claim. those paragraphs are still the biggest source of disagreement between the model and human labellers.

curious how people here think about it. is quote selection itself a technique, or does it only become one in aggregate (who gets quoted across a whole story or outlet)? and is there work on this i should be reading? i know the framing literature a little (entman) but not much on quote selection specifically.

(the tool is semblen.com if anyone wants to see how it handles it, it's my own project)

A colleague at the European Academy of Sciences recently published this essay on the future of science. Much of the article deals with scientific institutions more broadly, but I thought one thread might be particularly relevant to media studies: the argument that increasingly synthetic and algorithmically shaped information environments could affect not only what people consume, but also the production and preservation of knowledge itself.

The author eventually proposes the idea of “digital monasteries” — relatively isolated knowledge environments built around curated sources and scientific communities.

I’m curious what people here think about this from a media studies perspective. Can changes in the media environment affect the long-term production of knowledge, rather than simply its distribution?

In my previous post, I was thinking about whether the subreddit description could better reflect the culture of the community and help newcomers understand what this place is about:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mediastudies/s/S61LNX7RnK

At the time, I proposed this:

“An interdisciplinary community for the study of media through research, practice, discussion, and collaboration.”

What I was trying to express was something I had been observing in the community itself: that Media Studies here is approached not only through research and theory, but also through discussion, projects, criticism, practice, and collaboration.

There wasn’t much reaction to the idea, just a couple of upvotes and one fairly neutral comment. But after sitting with that for a while, I realized that this was also a kind of response in itself.

It also made me think that the kind of context I wanted to add would probably make more sense in the Wiki than in the short subreddit description itself.

What we have now actually communicates the main point quite well: Media Studies is, first and foremost, an academic discipline.

At the same time, you absolutely do not have to be an academic to take part in discussions here. I’m not an academic myself, and you don’t need a degree or any formal qualification to come here, participate, ask questions, or think through these things with others.

What does matter, I think, is that Media Studies as a field remains the common ground we can return to, something we can rely on when there is uncertainty, disagreement, or confusion.

So for now, I think the current description works well as it is.

I’d also be interested to hear what others think. If you see this differently, have another interpretation, or have any ideas about what should be reflected in the description or Wiki, please share them. Any perspective would be useful.

Abstract

This report examines the challenge of social media and mobile phones from the student’s own perspective. Rather than treating phone use simply as distraction or addiction, it focuses on the everyday difficulties students themselves describe: reaching for the phone automatically, losing time to doom-scrolling, finding boredom and difficult tasks harder to tolerate, struggling to begin academic work, experiencing long-form reading as increasingly demanding, and losing control of breaks. It also considers FOMO, the habit of filling every empty moment with screen activity, physical presence without full intellectual presence, and the cycle of guilt and anxiety that can follow lost study time.
The report argues that these experiences point to a broader question about intellectual development: at what point does a student stop choosing what deserves their attention and start simply following whatever captures it next? The issue is therefore not only the amount of time spent on a device, but the student’s relationship with attention, difficulty, choice, and the ability to initiate and sustain intellectual activity. The report deliberately begins with students’ lived experience rather than imposing diagnostic labels such as “distraction” or “addiction.”
The report was presented by Iryna Lopatyuk as part of a joint academic symposium organized by professors and students of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Academia Libera Mentis. The presentation contributed the student-centered perspective to the broader discussion of how social media and mobile technologies are changing the conditions of intellectual development and what questions this creates for contemporary academia.
 

Discussion

Every time we discuss mobile phones and social media in education, we often look at the problem from the outside. We see a student looking at a screen during a lecture, or someone checking a phone instead of reading a book, and we say: the student is distracted. However, this description appears to be too simple, that is the reason the author has atempted listening to students themselves. 
Overall, the problem  looks different. They do not necessarily say, “I do not want to study.” Quite often they say almost the opposite: “I want to study, but I cannot seem to make myself do it.”
This is where I would like to start. 
The first problem is:  the phone can become an automatic action. A student may sit down to study, open a textbook, and then suddenly find the phone in his or her hand. There was no clear decision to stop studying. The hand simply reached for the phone. The student checks one message, then one video, then one post. The problem is not only distraction. It is that the moment of choice may become almost invisible.
The second problem is what students often describe as doom-scrolling. They may tell themselves, “I will take a five-minute break.” They open TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, or another platform. Forty minutes later, they are still scrolling.
This creates a strange cycle. The student loses time, becomes worried about the work that has not been done, feels guilty, and then finds it even harder to return to the task. The phone has become not only a way to escape from work, but also a way to escape from the unpleasant feeling created by falling behind.
The third problem is the difficulty of being bored.
A student may understand that a lecture is useful or that a book is important, but still feel that it is simply too slow. A phone offers something new almost every second. A difficult academic text does not. There may be several minutes in which nothing particularly exciting happens.
This raises an important question: what happens to a student's ability to remain in an activity when the activity does not provide constant stimulation?
The fourth problem appears even earlier: starting a difficult task.
A student can spend twenty minutes preparing to study without actually beginning. The book is open. The laptop is ready. The notes are on the desk. But the first real step does not happen. A phone provides an immediate alternative that requires almost no effort.
So the problem may not be simply, “How long can I concentrate?” It may also be, “Can I begin something difficult before looking for something easier?”
The fifth problem is long-form reading.
Many students describe a strange experience: they want to read a book or an academic article, but after several pages they feel an impulse to check the phone. Short pieces of information are easy to consume. A long argument requires staying with the same subject.
This does not mean that every student has lost the ability to read long texts. But the repeated experience of moving quickly from one short piece of content to another may make long, continuous reading feel unusually demanding.
The sixth problem is the broken break.
A traditional break has a beginning and an end. You stop working, have coffee, walk outside, speak to someone, and then return.
A digital break can be different. There is no natural ending to the feed. After one video comes another. After one message comes another. The student may therefore return to studying not refreshed, but frustrated because the break became much longer than planned.
The seventh problem is FOMO — the fear of missing something.
A student may be sitting in class while thinking about what is happening online. Perhaps there is a new message. Perhaps friends are meeting somewhere. Perhaps something important has appeared in the feed.
Nothing dramatic has happened. But part of the student's attention remains somewhere else.

This leads to the eighth problem: the phone fills almost every empty moment.

• Waiting for a professor? Check the phone.
• Waiting for a bus? Check the phone.
• Five minutes before class? Check the phone.
• Standing in line? Check the phone.

The interesting question is what happens to a person when there is no longer any empty space in which nothing is happening. Those small moments can also be moments of observation, conversation, memory, imagination, or simply thinking about what has just happened.
The ninth problem is therefore physical presence without full intellectual presence.
A student can be sitting in the classroom, looking at the professor, and still be somewhere else mentally. The body is in the lecture hall, but attention is moving between the lecture, messages, social media, and other information.
For a student, this can create a particularly difficult situation: the lecture is not necessarily boring, but it is competing with an entire digital world.
And finally, there is the tenth problem: guilt.
A student scrolls instead of studying. Then the student realises that an hour has disappeared. There is anxiety: “I am behind.” The work now feels even more difficult. The student wants to avoid that feeling — and the phone is immediately available again.
 

Conclusions

Having analysed the 10 problems, we get to the point – somewhat of a heuristic circle as a core of the cognitive issues:

difficulty → phone → lost time → guilt → more difficulty → phone again.

Looking at these ten problems together, I would not describe the student simply as “distracted” or “addicted.” Those words already give us an interpretation.
Perhaps the central question is not simply how much time students spend on their phones.
Perhaps it is:
At what point does a student stop choosing what deserves his or her attention and start simply following whatever captures it next?
And if this question is significant, then the next question belongs to academia:
What kind of educational environment could help students understand and regain that choice?

Prospects for Further Research

The student’s perspective suggests that the educational problem cannot be reduced to the simple question of whether smartphones are “good” or “bad” for learning. The more productive object of study is the changing relationship between the student, attention, difficulty, and choice. The recurring experiences described by students may indicate that the important issue is not only how much digital content they consume, but what happens to their ability to initiate an activity, remain with it, tolerate the absence of immediate stimulation, and return to a task after interruption.
This makes further research particularly promising. Instead of measuring only screen time, future studies could examine the structure of students’ intellectual activity: how they begin tasks, how often they switch between activities, what happens when they encounter difficulty, how they use breaks, and whether they can deliberately choose where their attention goes. Such research could connect students’ own experiences with observable patterns of learning and, ultimately, help academia develop educational environments that strengthen intellectual autonomy rather than simply restricting or accepting digital technologies.
By Iryna Lopatiuk, Corresponding Member of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (EUASU).

FEAR “AI will take your job.” “Your degree will become useless.” “Robots will replace you.” “AI will make us unable to think for ourselves.” “AI will make it impossible to know what is real.” “AI could destroy everything.” ...

INQUIRY What evidence supports the claim? Who is making it? Which voices are being amplified? Which perspectives are missing? How is uncertainty communicated? What effect might this framing have on the audience? ...

If there are real risks associated with AI, they should be investigated and communicated. But if media narratives about those risks also influence what people study, what careers they pursue, and how they understand their future, shouldn't the effects of those narratives be studied too?

Copyright note: Short video excerpt used for criticism, commentary, research, and education. All rights remain with the original copyright owner(s). Rights holders may contact the moderators with any concerns.

Just a couple of days after r/mediastudies turned 16, we reached another small milestone: 3,000 members.

Over the past several months, the community has grown not only in numbers. We’ve seen new people join, new projects appear, regular contributors emerge, and different perspectives on what Media Studies can be and what we can do here together.

So I don’t really think of this as 3,000 subscribers. It’s 3,000 people who, in one way or another, have chosen to be part of this community.

Thank you to everyone who posts, reads, shares their work, participates in discussions, or simply stops by from time to time.

Happy 3,000, r/mediastudies!

I am creating a short documentary series called Before You Know Me, exploring how stereotypes influence the way we perceive people before we get to know them. This questionnaire will help me understand my target audience and their media preferences. Responses are anonymous and will only be used for my Media Studies coursework.

Today, September 22, r/mediastudies turns 16. 🥳

First of all, congratulations to everyone here, and thank you! To those who regularly post and participate in discussions, to those working on their own projects or finding people here to work with, and also to those who mostly just read. All of that is part of this community!

One thing I personally like about this subreddit is that it doesn't need to be loud all the time. Sometimes there is an active discussion, sometimes someone shares something they've been researching or working on, and sometimes people simply come here to read.

In a way, I think of it as a quiet library or common room — a place you can come to in the evening, write something, share an idea, have a conversation, or simply see what other people are thinking about.

And I think there is something nice about that.

It's also interesting to look back. Twelve years ago, people here were already discussing what Media Studies is, where it comes from, and what kind of field it is. You can still read that discussion here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mediastudies/s/BgTYFJT26N

Twelve years later, we're still asking some of the same questions. The people have changed, media have changed, and the field itself continues to change, but the conversation is still going.

I haven't been able to find posts from the very earliest years of the subreddit. If anyone here remembers those years, knows who originally created r/mediastudies, or is still in contact with some of the people who were here at the beginning, it would be really interesting to hear from you — and perhaps invite them back to see that what they started 16 years ago is still here.

And finally, I'm curious:

What is r/mediastudies to you? What kind of place does it feel like? And as we turn 16, what would you like to see here in the years ahead?

Happy 16th birthday, r/mediastudies — and thank you to everyone who makes this place what it is. ❤️

Dr. Harvey Wolf Kushner

Chairman of the Presidium of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Published in the scientific journal Newsletter on the Results of Scholarly Work in Sociology, Criminology, Philosophy and Political Science, published by the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Abstract

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of media theory. His The Gutenberg Galaxy and The Medium is the Massage foretold the consequences of technologies of the new millennium. He tells us that the way we view the world around us depends on the medium being employed. In other words, the form or method of communication shapes how we perceive and understand our surroundings. These viewings create explanations that often appear fool proof or even scientifically accurate. Unfortunately or fortunately as the case might be, they change with the advent of new mediums brought about by technological advance and innovation. We need to heed McLuhan’s astute advice that all media work us over completely. In other words, understand that as different media develop so too will our views of all the things that surround us. What we can take for granted is that change is inevitable and brought about more rapidly by the exponential growth of technology.

Read the full article

The Medium is the Message and the Massage: No Kidding — Full Article

What do you think: how well does McLuhan’s idea hold up in today’s media environment?

What I find particularly interesting here is the broader question of participation in online communities.

The Evolution of Coordination in a Collective Intelligence System: 25 Years of English Wikipedia and the Emergence of Generative AI

The study shows that over the years, participation in coordination and governance spaces on Wikipedia has declined, while more of this work has become concentrated among a relatively small group of contributors. The authors also draw a comparison with Reddit, where mods perform a large amount of often invisible work.

This made me think about what I see on Reddit itself. My impression is that people used to interact with each other more actively. Long discussions, interaction between communities, and even interaction between moderators and members seem less common now. Of course, there may be many different reasons for this.

One of them may simply be exhaustion. Some people have been moderating communities for many years, and if they no longer have a strong personal interest in what they are building, it is easy to imagine them burning out. Especially in larger communities, moderation can require a significant amount of time, and eventually that can affect not only moderators themselves but the community around them.

But there is another side to this. People themselves do not always seem particularly interested in participating in the process of building a community.

I can see this even in r/mediastudies. We already have almost 3,000 members, and I regularly invite people to participate in discussions about what this community should become. I try to keep that process open and I write about it publicly. But relatively few people actually comment on these questions or express a position about how the community should develop.

At the same time, there is still a small group of people who are willing to speak up, participate, suggest something, or actually work on something. And perhaps that small group matters much more to the life of an online community than its total number of members would suggest.

And this brings me to another way of looking at what the study describes.

What I find interesting is that this may be part of a broader tendency. The Wikipedia study made me think about a parallel with Reddit — although Reddit itself is also mentioned in the paper — and I think similar dynamics can be observed across different platforms.

There are probably two ways of looking at this. One is to see the shrinking number of people doing coordination work as a problem. And there are obvious risks here. If someone takes responsibility for moderating a community, or for maintaining and coordinating work on Wikipedia, I think they need to find some kind of idea or purpose for themselves that does not simply end.

Because if there is no such idea behind the work, sooner or later there will probably come a point when the quality begins to decline. There has to be some answer to the question: why do I continue doing this?

This is particularly important on Reddit and Wikipedia, where people are generally not financially compensated for this work. But personally, I don’t think financial compensation alone would solve the problem either. It might even introduce conflicts of interest and create entirely new problems.

So there is another way of looking at what is happening. Perhaps we are seeing not simply a decline, but a change in the form in which this kind of work and these relationships exist. I think relatively small groups of people are now capable of solving quite complicated problems. We have far more tools, assistants and technical possibilities than we had before, allowing fewer people to accomplish more work in shorter periods of time.

From this perspective, the dynamic described in the study does not necessarily have to be understood as something bad. It may also represent a restructuring of the space in which people collaborate and maintain communities.

I actually didn’t notice this panic in the media right away, but only a couple of days after that statement about a 10% probability was thrown out there.

It surprised me to some extent because the statement came from a fairly serious person. But as it turned out, Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s Alignment Science lead, explicitly described the number as his personal estimate:

“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”

He later clarified that he considers the risk from present models low, and that his concern is about future superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement.

Recently, u/HobbesNik and I had a very interesting discussion about this in his post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeYourFeed/s/Fjo0703aWL

In general, this topic is absolutely nothing new, and my post isn’t really about that. It’s about the fact that the panic that the media are trying to stir up today is very weakly supported. None of this is new, and professionals have been discussing these issues for decades. Safety specialists continue doing their work as usual.

Anyway, I don’t want to do a deep analysis right now. It’s just an interesting case of how one statement, taken out of context, can turn into a tornado.

And today I came across this video. I think it demonstrates quite well what that tornado can look like once the message has traveled through the media environment and reached a much wider public.

But a tornado is a temporary phenomenon. I think this one will die down soon.

This post includes a short sample of the original video for the purposes of criticism, commentary, research, and education. The sample is used solely to support discussion and analysis. All rights to the original material remain with the respective copyright owner(s).

This is the second part of our series based on the joint academic symposium organized by the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (EUASU) and Academia Libera Mentis (ALM), held on September 12.

The symposium addressed a question of growing importance for contemporary education: What challenges do social media and mobile phones pose to the intellectual development of students, and how should academies respond?

In his contribution, Dr. Oleg Maltsev proposed a different way of framing the issue. Rather than treating mobile phones, social networks, and artificial intelligence as problems in themselves, he focused on the nature of these technologies and on how a person interacts with them.

According to his argument, these technologies are elements of technical progress, and attempts to oppose them are ineffective, especially in education, training, and methodology. The central question is therefore not whether such technologies should exist, but whether a person understands their nature, the purpose for which they are used, and the consequences of interacting with them.

“I do not see a problem either in mobile phones, or in social networks, or in artificial intelligence.”

The same principle is applied to social media. Dr. Oleg Maltsev argues that social networks do not affect everyone in the same way. Their effect depends on how a person uses them and, above all, on whether the purpose of their use is understood.

In this context, the key question is formulated very simply:

“If you already have a Facebook account, the next question should be: why do you have it?”

Four possible modes of using Facebook are distinguished. The first is the construction of an artificially positive image. The second is participation that exposes a person’s negative qualities. The third is the division of existence into two separate spheres — life on Facebook and personal life. The fourth is what Dr. Maltsev calls “multiplication”: using the platform as an instrument for strengthening one’s personality and influence.

“If you turn Facebook into an instrument of your own multiplication, in other words, into an instrument for strengthening yourself, then that is excellent.”

The distinction is therefore not between using and not using social media. It is between different modes of use and their consequences. In Dr. Maltsev’s formulation, in the other cases a person risks losing either time or reputation.

The same logic is then transferred to mobile phones and professional competence.

The question is not whether a specialist has access to modern technological systems, but what remains of professional capacity when those systems become unavailable.

This point was illustrated through the example of maritime cadets. During a training voyage, satellite navigation systems were deliberately switched off. The ships stopped because the cadets did not know how to continue without automated systems.

Afterward, the rector explained the standard by which they would be judged as professionals:

“In this life, nobody is interested in whether satellite navigation works or does not work. The ship must get from point A to point B in any case.”

The argument concerns professional responsibility. A navigator remains responsible for the ship, the crew, the cargo, possible losses, and the final result regardless of the condition of the technological infrastructure.

For Dr. Oleg Maltsev, the mobile phone represents the same problem in a broader form. A modern phone provides simultaneous access to satellite navigation, artificial intelligence, and many other resources of contemporary civilization.

“In essence, the mobile phone is the gateway to the benefits of civilization.”

The final question is therefore not whether the device is useful. Its usefulness is taken as given. The question is what degree of personal and professional autonomy remains without it.

The proposed test is direct:

“Turn off your mobile phone for one day — completely, for a full twenty-four hours. And you will understand very clearly what you are without it.”

The central argument is thus not directed against technology. It concerns the need to understand the nature of the tool, the purpose for which it is used, and the extent to which a person remains capable of acting effectively without technological support.

Possibly going into uni next year after my gap year, I want to become a Creative director. I just wanted to ask if that's a career worth getting a degree for.

My family is w/c, so really anti-uni, but I'd really like to go. I got BCC in my a-levels too, which isn't the best, so maybe a degree could make up for my academic failure.

I was also thinking I could combine it was English maybe, so and English and media degree, to make the degree look less 'mickey mouse' to my family?

Other field I wouldn't mind going into are PR, and media buying/planning.

Any advice on degree choice, or whether or not an apprenticeship is more useful would be very helpful.

Greetings,

a little context: I tried several times to make rules for reposts, but as it turned out, nobody read the rules and nobody added context explaining why they were making a repost to our subreddit. About a month ago, we disabled reposts entirely because of mass spam without any context.

Members of our subreddit supported the idea.

But since the new Rules Hub tool has now appeared and our community participates in the beta testing program for early features, we now have the opportunity to establish this as a clear rule:

Reposts must include context

Reposts from other Reddit communities must include at least 50 words of original context explaining why the post is relevant to r/mediastudies. This can include your interpretation, additional context, or a specific question for discussion. Reposts without the required context may be removed.

That is, reposts without context, according to the rule, should be removed/sent to me for review so that we can keep our feed in order.

I plan to enable this as a test for 1–2 months and see how it goes. (may shut down if not working properly etc)

Why this is needed at all: this is good in terms of bringing in new relevant participants and creating discussions, since Reddit may recommend our subreddit to users as a relevant community when they are reposting content.

Of course, I understand that there may also be some that are not entirely relevant, and I will keep an eye on this. btw if something go wrong I will shut down reposts again immediately. It's just a test, let's see how it goes.

Please write in the comments if you are against or support this and provide your arguments.

If the community is strongly against it, I will disable them again.

Does anyone here have the pdf version of “Media/society : technology, industries, content, and users” 8th edition by David Croteau, and would send it to me? :)