The new Architecture of Communications

Abstract

The new architecture of communications has two symbiotic features: an overwhelming abundance of information and communications and the emergence of narrow, ‘silos’ of information and opinion that have developed partly in response to the copious complexity available, partly because of the enhanced tools developed to navigate the variety. The weak ‘bridging’ links to many opinions that the media used to produce can be replaced by ‘strong’ personalised links to narrow views. In addition the democratic space of negotiated, re-distributive communicative space is dis-appearing. The article examines the practical working out of these tendencies in institutions by examining the new British Army doctrine which puts communications at the centre of action, and considers the ways in which silos emerge. It argues that we need new kinds of oversight. It argues that the UK tradition of extending the range of voices given platforms is a better response to the contemporary architecture of communications than the classic focus on individual freedoms of speech. It argues that the BBC, international and domestic, concerned with tone and feelings, is one of the few institutions we have constituted and built (albeit accidentally) to perfectly match this contemporary shape of communications.

KEYWORDS:

• army
• BBC
• BBC monitoring
• opinion silos
• online-community
• terrorism
• social democratic communicative space

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper was informed by the workshops conducted for the AHRC networking award on the history of BBC Monitoring for which Jean Seaton is principal investigator together with Dr Suzanne Bardgett. The award was a collaboration between the BBC, The Imperial War Museum, Westminster University, King’s College London, and the Universities of Sussex, Reading and Cambridge; it was cross-disciplinary.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Not that the possibility of land-war on the European continent has disappeared as it was expected to. That is the contemporary condition: old and novel forms of conflict co-exist.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/M004007/1].