Social stratification. Communications & Media Essay

Social Stratification
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February 27, 2020
Due to its sheer dominance in every aspect of a person’s life, digital media (including social media and the internet) is perhaps one of the most utilized tools these days. In fact, due to its capacity to air out different opinions, collect the views of others, and provide access towards almost every information with the click of a finger, it is also viewed as the most ‘neutral’ media among others. However, just like any other mediums of communication and interaction, digital media infrastructures are not without its own flaws. In fact, recent studies show that this medium is also subject to problems of transparency, accountability, and neutrality, among many others. In this article, the author would like to discuss the issue of ‘subjectivity’ as one of the most significant ethical issues of digital media, especially with regards to the stratification of society. The author believes that by looking at the specific processes behind digital media production (particularly the internet), it would be easier to identify the inherently subjective nature of this medium.
The subjectivity of Digital Media
One of the reasons why digital media suffers from subjectivity is due to indispensable ‘human nature’. In an article written by Matsakis (2018), the author discussed the problems of transparency and decision-making that underlies digital media and AI technologies. On the one hand, the author described that transparency has been one of the most challenging issues to resolve due to the heavy dependence of current technologies on the use of codes, which only a few percentages of the population could understand. On the other hand, despite addressing this issues, the author also noted that specific decision-making of AIs still fail to be objective enough since the criteria for every action has already been pre-programmed by a person who has his own set o...