I just coined that word, but you are right that it is polarisation in a sense that it's either too light or too heavy.
However, what I mean by "Averagisation" is that all the content begins to look like the previous one and as the trend is to drift either to the most monetizable or most politically extremist.
I wouldn't call this polarisation because these are not polar opposites. The "nice, advertisers friendly" content is not polar opposite to the extremist content, they co-exist without any conflict. So, the content becomes more from the same, just they are in two categories.
What you're describing seems to be pretty much exactly polarization.
You get one set of creators who want monetary gain and so their content fits within certain limits. Over time this will create more similar content as they watch what works for other people.
The other set of creators have different goals and don't care about monetary gain. The popular parts of this content will also tend to local maximum based on the level of extremism that's popular.
You might find more results if you look up "self-censorship" [1] although averagisation might be more subtle than that.
There are certainly examples of things like UK newspapers downplaying reports of crime by their advertisers [2], newspapers with advertorial "the real russia" supplements being less critical of russia, local newspapers that rely on ads from estate agents not reporting on crime by local estate agents, and suchlike. There's not much reporting of this stuff online (who'd report it, after all?) but if you can get a paper copy of Private Eye, there are regular reports of this sort of thing.
And of course, you can easily imagine Youtube video creators not wanting their videos demonetised - while demonetising seems pretty inscrutable, "don't offend advertisers" seems to be the name of the game.
There's also a subtler process at work than reports just not getting run; it's that journalists know they won't find it profitable to focus their career on scrutinising big businesses, and youtubers know channels that talk about sexual health and prescription drug costs tend to not do well - so they focus their careers/channels in different areas.
In this case, there's no spiked report or tagged video serving as a smoking gun - just a "lack of interest" as interested people focus their energy elsewhere.
Just the opposite. The content becomes more bland and inoffensive over time, as advertisers don't want to take the risk of offending even a very small subset of viewers.
Conforming, consciously or subconsciously, due to the ubiquitous presence of surveillance. Averagization is a great euphemism for the beginning of the slippery slope to censorship.
mrtksn|8 years ago
However, what I mean by "Averagisation" is that all the content begins to look like the previous one and as the trend is to drift either to the most monetizable or most politically extremist.
I wouldn't call this polarisation because these are not polar opposites. The "nice, advertisers friendly" content is not polar opposite to the extremist content, they co-exist without any conflict. So, the content becomes more from the same, just they are in two categories.
ctraynor|8 years ago
You get one set of creators who want monetary gain and so their content fits within certain limits. Over time this will create more similar content as they watch what works for other people.
The other set of creators have different goals and don't care about monetary gain. The popular parts of this content will also tend to local maximum based on the level of extremism that's popular.
ableal|8 years ago
(Why ice-cream stands on a beach bunch together in the middle instead of being conveniently - for customers - distributed.)
catamorphismic|8 years ago
michaelt|8 years ago
There are certainly examples of things like UK newspapers downplaying reports of crime by their advertisers [2], newspapers with advertorial "the real russia" supplements being less critical of russia, local newspapers that rely on ads from estate agents not reporting on crime by local estate agents, and suchlike. There's not much reporting of this stuff online (who'd report it, after all?) but if you can get a paper copy of Private Eye, there are regular reports of this sort of thing.
And of course, you can easily imagine Youtube video creators not wanting their videos demonetised - while demonetising seems pretty inscrutable, "don't offend advertisers" seems to be the name of the game.
There's also a subtler process at work than reports just not getting run; it's that journalists know they won't find it profitable to focus their career on scrutinising big businesses, and youtubers know channels that talk about sexual health and prescription drug costs tend to not do well - so they focus their careers/channels in different areas.
In this case, there's no spiked report or tagged video serving as a smoking gun - just a "lack of interest" as interested people focus their energy elsewhere.
[1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=self-censorship+advertisin... [2] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-media-telegraph-id...
chiph|8 years ago
bitxbitxbitcoin|8 years ago