One might consider that interaction is important in social media. But being there for a while, it may be the case, that like a bird in the tree, one prefers to sing and if other wish to listen, good for them (but the fact they may be listening keeps one going). But it may also be the case that one does not know what the effect of an input is. Nonetheless, the birds have a reason for singing. The idea of making statements with no functional aim, becomes a possibility.
But what may tend to happen, is that the aim becomes rather to enhance or join the set of statements made in the past or recent past, as one drops it in. So the actual set of past statements becomes alive and important.
In conversations this may not necessarily be the case, I might say, indeed one may tend to prefer it not to be the case, from time to time. That is each statement has a strong functional aim from a wide set of possibilities one does not want diminished by past statements.
So can new media move between these points, or does it have a bias towards a point. That is, can we see new media as tending to be a kind of conversation where each statement is a texture within a long set of statements.
So one does not need in a way to necessarily make strong affective statements. One just needs to add something to the stream of outputs. So when somebody new follows one, they come into a connective structure of statements, but lightly connected, initially, by a perceived sense of self, only. That could grow to something more concrete and expressive. That is, expression grows.
Here news inputs perhaps amplify this, creating a powerful song around a topic, but that fades as time progresses. Each individual voice in this, is precisely that, the individual becoming involved in an amplified whole.
It is an idea of freedom, where freedom is about expression itself. I do not necessarily find such activity an easy thing, because it is so free, and perhaps necessarily so, but it has a compelling sense of unspecified direction almost, from both one's activity and the activity of others, that keeps one there. That is, it amplifies the sense of interaction, without necessarily amplifying the why of it. So one does it, but one really does it for something, without that getting in the way of doing it. Not always, but sometimes.
And, on more concrete ground, it is that possibility that here the social and the idea of news may be making for something new. Ideas fight out possibilities in real time, and one can perhaps see winners emerge from this, for a time, perhaps even optimised by all constraints.
That is, social news: news from a free, expressive social interaction, enabled by novelties of advancing technology. But something that maybe can evolve without losing that expressive power, to a state closer that that which can be readily valued. Unless it is already there.
