How does digital media affect personality and contribute to superficial communication and cultural populism？
What is Container Human？
In the era of mass communication, addiction to intelligent media leads humans to live in a mutually independent and isolated condition. People’s inner world seems like a canned container, and the individual’s self is closed inside.
Key behaviors：
- Addicted to electronic entertainment and social networking
- Like to communicate with people online and escape from reality
- Emotional on the Internet and actively participate in public opinion discussions
- Easy to be influenced by consumerist culture and consume too much
- Like using cyber-symbol-language
Background：
Examples of container Human: Chinese Zhai culture
Chinese Zhai culture refers to a lifestyle of staying at home, which usually includes the love and pursuit of virtual worlds such as anime, games, novels and TV series. The Zhai culture originated in Japan and has since spread and developed widely in China. Usually alone or with a few close friends, they stay at home watching anime, playing games, reading novels, etc., and rarely participate in social activities. The Zhai culture has also become a cultural phenomenon.
The Attributes of Container Human？
1. Refuse to admit the truth
The container human indulges in its own media world, creating a set of theories and rules by rejecting reality and truth.
2. Pursue distinction
In order to avoid being invisible in a flood of information, container humans have their manifesto. They are eager to absorb unique and customized information.
3. Against authorities
Container humans reject authoritative and verified theories outside their container. For them, authorities outside mean unequal.
Changes in the media ——From TV Human to Container Human
Japanese scholar YūJirō Hayashi first proposed the concept of “TV human” in 1969.
At that time, “TV human” emphasized the popularization of TV and how the media environment it built changed the human’s characteristics or personalities.
The transformation from “TV human” to “container human” depicts that the development of human communication mode and personality socialization would constantly change in line with the media technology upgrade.
Causes of The ’Container Human‘ Phenomenon
- The formative effect of media
The emergence of the Internet has subverted the way people used to live. It is everywhere. Intellectual Internet media plays a significant role in shaping and controlling the scale and form of human association and action (McLuhan, 2005) no matter in business, social contact or entertainment.
‘Container Human’ was born to the occasion. They live in and have a strong dependence on the interconnected digital world physically and spiritually.
Contextual Research
Human beings live in a world of technology, subject to its indomitable dominance, and understand the world according to the tech’s order.
The Internet forcibly sets the mode of thinking and action of contemporary people. Network technology is created by people, and in turn, tamed people’s daily life (Heidegger, 2013).
2. Centralization of capital power behind
People shape algorithms and vice versa. The personalized recommendation is the standardization stipulated by the algorithm. That is to say, using a new keyword search to cover the original tag is another kind of standardization.
Container human is the standard product under digital capitalism. When everything is run according to the rules of Internet companies, people’s fight and freedom will be harmed. They would be trapped in containers, and become the container human.
Contextual Research
Digital Capitalism
Internet companies make use of AI algorithms to provide filtered results for individual searches and recommend to users with personalized but homogeneous information. That could make people addicted to it.
Behind the algorithm is the profit-seeking nature of capital, whose purpose is to obtain users’ clicks and pageviews and cause users’ addiction to social media so as to maximize their interests. (Chen, 2021)
Negative impacts of the container Human.
- For People
- Escape from reality and immerse oneself in the world of container entertainment
- Materialization of interpersonal relationships and indifference
- Short attention span and loss of ability to think deeply and deal with negativity
- Disruption of the biological clock, affecting sleep, feeling lonely and emotional.
2. For Society
- leads to social polarization
- undermines public perception and leads to a post-truth era
The Container Human under Cultural Populism
Jim McGuigan defines cultural populism as the intellectual formula defined by some popular culture professionals, who believe that the symbolic experiences and activities of ordinary people are more political and thoughtful than orthodox culture.
Cultural populism is a kind of cultural expression against cultural monopoly and hegemony. It excessively caters to the consumption interests of citizens. That causes the loss of consciousness of reflection and criticism. The world of entertainment and vulgar, therefore, flourish. It is a great Spectacle for immersion. Individual as container human becomes a reality.
How cultural populism became popular?
1. The enhancement of users’ cultural discourse
In the new media era, users have expanded their autonomy, getting rid of their dependence on the dominant culture and, more, challenging its authority. Social media, characterized by real-time interaction, enables ordinary people to achieve business success by becoming internet celebrities. They have more power to intervene in the cultural discourse. The culture becomes closer and closer to individuals.
2. The conspiracy of populism and capital
Capital and populism restrict the production of media culture together. Capital focuses on efficiency. Populism is about respect and satisfaction. They co-produce a culture of emotional pleasure and adrenaline. The cultural connotation is becoming more and more empty and boring, as a pastime. The character of culture is getting closer to the ‘horizon’.
3. The value orientation of media culture
Current digital media culture caters to popular culture and obeys users’ tastes. Media culture has entered a value tunnel of civilianization and initialization. Click rate has become the yardstick for media culture value. The culture that involves the most people is a good culture.