Permission to reprint via civicsoftechnology.org
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about technodeterminism— that is, the mindset that assumes technologies will continue to develop on their own terms, according to their own fixed logic, and society needs to adjust itself to whatever comes next. Even the stuff we don’t particularly like or that doesn’t really make us feel good… well, there’s not much any of us can do about it. Get on board or get left behind.
I encounter this mentality everywhere, both in my classroom and in everyday interactions. For example, recently my cousin bemoaned “The Metaverse,” complaining that we won’t be sitting around the table—as we were in that moment, sharing a pizza and catching up—because soon we’ll all be avatars in The Metaverse. I protested, “But why does that have to happen? If we don’t want that, we can still decide we want to gather around this table, can’t we?”
“Besides,” I added, “The Metaverse isn’t real. It’s a marketing scheme.”
And so I’ve been wondering: how can I respond to this technodeterministic attitude when I encounter it? Readers of this blog are likely already familiar with Civics of Technology’s growing collection of curriculum resources, all of which are helpful here. The technoskeptical orientation that these resources nurture helps us interrogate the narratives about technologies, their effects, and their perceived inevitability that are often just taken for granted.
I wanted to share with the CoT community another conceptual resource—the mean world syndrome—which I’ve discovered can also be put to use in the classroom to foster technoskepticism. I first encountered mean world syndrome this past semester when I taught a media effects course to undergraduate communication majors. “Media effects” is a corner of communication research that seeks to determine the short- and long-term impact of different kinds of media and media messages on various audiences. Some media effects theories are probably familiar to you, such as framing, agenda setting, and persuasion, while others like third person effect and social cognitive theory might be unfamiliar.
Mean world syndrome comes from cultivation theory, which was developed in the 1960s and 1970s as an attempt to understand the long-term impact that television viewing has on audiences. The theory states that messages communicated via television programming cultivate in audiences certain perceptions about the world, and the more time someone spends watching TV the greater that cultivating effect will be. Mean world syndrome explains one of the most common perceptions cultivated by TV watching: that the world is a violent and dangerous place, more violent and dangerous than it actually is.
My students and I discussed what this looks like on television today. We talked about the constant BREAKING NEWS visuals we see on cable news channels, and the hyperfocus on crime in the news media and “non-literal commentary” shows, despite the statistics that demonstrate falling crime rates over the past several decades. We talked about fictionalized TV shows like Law and Order and CSI, and how decades of research demonstrate that this kind of programming has not only distorted audiences’ perceptions of the prevalence of crime in the real world, but has also led to misunderstandings about the criminal justice system.
Researchers have found that if we believe the world is a more dangerous place than it actually is—in other words, if we fall prey to mean world syndrome—then we may start to adopt behaviors and support policies that match the level of danger we have been persuaded to perceive, not the reality. This can be highly problematic, as this leads to, for example, ever-increasing budgets for law enforcement—because more policing feels necessary—even though over-policing not only doesn’t make communities safer, but actually introduces more harm, including in our schools.
The possibility for the study of mean world syndrome to support a developing technoskeptical perspective became clear to me when, later in the semester, my students and I turned our attention to critically analyzing Amazon Ring doorbells. This home surveillance technology was familiar to my students, many of whom shared that they or their parents have a Ring installed at home. My students and I were able to identify what ideas about safety, danger, and control are cultivated via Ring marketing materials, and then compared these ideas to the scant evidence that this technology actually reduces crime or helps uncover criminal activity. We identified this gap between perception and reality as another manifestation of mean world syndrome.
What’s more, this opportunity to pause and critically consider a technology that they had so far taken for granted also inspired some powerful personal reflection for my students. After class discussion, many of them shared with me that they had come to realize that having a Ring doorbell installed has ultimately made them feel less safe in their home and more disconnected from their neighbors, because the mere presence of the Ring technology had cultivated a perception that their neighborhood is a more dangerous place than it actually is. In fact, many of these students were surprised by this clear evidence that they and their families had fallen for the mean world syndrome—something they had assumed they were able to see through. Some students said they now wanted to remove this technology from their home.
Through this critical analysis of Ring, I saw how calling attention to the cultivating effect of a particular technology can disrupt and disturb a technodeterministic attitude towards that technology, even one that might feel commonplace. Mean world syndrome helped me and my students identify how particular technologies come to be understood as key to making our world better and safer, and how buying into these ideas means abandoning what we otherwise hold as important values, such as community, trust, and generosity. I learned that by identifying and naming the mean world syndrome at play we can reject it, and instead see that the safety and resilience of our communities lies in the solidarity we build when we turn to each other instead of particular technological solutions.
I didn’t expect this concept born over 50 years ago to have such resonance with my students, but my experience in the classroom convinces me that this can be a helpful tool in the technoskeptic’s toolkit. How might the mean world syndrome be useful in your context?
Resources
For more on mean world syndrome, watch the 2010 documentary from the Media Education Foundation called The Mean World Syndrome.
For more on the effects of Ring, listen to this episode of The Sunday Show podcast, which features an interview with Evan Selinger and Chris Gilliard.
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