The media in a state of “present shock”

What on earth you may ask is “present shock”?

This might be a question to ponder as your mobile device begs your social media attention with constant beeps, buzzes and status updates, while a good book or periodical lies idle beside you.

Rushkoff: “If the end of the twentieth century can be characterized by futurism, the twenty-first can be defined by presentism.” Photo: Johannes Kroemer

In his latest book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff writes, “Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. Everything is live, real time, and always-on.”

In an interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, Rushkoff offers some interesting thoughts on how “present shock” affects media – especially the move towards live blogging, live tweeting or live streaming news versus journalism that gathers the facts and provides analysis.

“In regards to legacy journalism, a lot of people are disconnected from it partly because of present shock. When they’re living on digital platforms that emphasize choice over any kind of prescriptive pathways, they tend to lose any sense of value in pretty much anything professional or authoritative. They sort of descent into a very relativistic view of things — where anybody who can blog or get on the net is pretty much as valuable as anybody else, so there’s no authoritative opinion.”

Rushkoff says there are some media outlets that realize they are “better off explaining the news than driving it or trying to keep up with it”. The Wall Street Journal, he says, is still “anchored in time” to make sense of the day’s events. The New York Times on the other hand has “so many New York Timeses”, it’s “schizophrenic”.