REF_WEEK_01

When people first encounter a new form of media, one of the most immediate responses is often an instinctive evaluation of its potential benefits and risks. As Baym argues, this impulse emerges from a desire to make sense of unfamiliar technologies by producing understandable explanations for them. Throughout history, new media have repeatedly been met with anxiety, reflecting a deeper discomfort toward the unknown and the unsettling possibility of social change. In the era of computationalized media, Baym points out that the interactivity of computers, mobile phones, and networked platforms raises concerns about authenticity—of relationships, content, and identity—as well as about the boundaries of the self. Constant connectivity enables continuous interaction, which can blur the line between public and private life and disturb both online and offline personal spaces. However, Baym also makes clear that interpreting these concerns through a simple cause-and-effect logic—where technological features are seen as directly producing social consequences—resembles a technological deterministic perspective. Such perspectives, as Baym, Gillespie, and Flew all criticize, tend to overlook the social, cultural, and human factors that together form a complex and dynamic structure in which technologies are invented, shaped, and in turn reshape society. From the viewpoint of these scholars, technological determinism is often treated as one pole in a theoretical spectrum, opposing social constructionism. MacKenzie and Wajcman explain that determinist accounts typically assume technologies develop either through scientific progress or according to an internal logic of their own, and then exert effects on society. They challenge this view by arguing that technologies are not trajectories governed by natural laws, but are materially real and physically constrained, while also being shaped by social processes. In their formulation of the Social Shaping of Technology, “the social” refers not merely to attitudes or ideas, but to economic, organizational, political, and cultural processes through which particular technological paths are selected. While social shaping provides a more nuanced and human-centered explanation of how technologies are developed, it does not fully address what happens after technologies become stabilized and domesticated in everyday life. As a result, many scholars have come to recognize that neither technological determinism nor social constructionism alone can adequately explain the complexity of media and social change. Technology and society are increasingly understood as forming an interwoven fabric, in which each continuously shapes and feeds into the other. This perspective becomes clearer in Baym’s Personal Connections in the Digital Age, where she combines insights from both approaches. Social shaping helps explain the social contexts and forces that guide technological development, while attention to technological features allows us to analyze how technologies, once embedded, continue to shape social interaction and experience. Rather than choosing between determinism and constructionism, Baym demonstrates how technologies and social practices co-evolve. This understanding also reshapes how “new media” should be defined. As Silverstone and Flew argue, the “newness” of new media does not lie primarily in technological novelty, updated functions, or product design. Instead, new media are new because they acquire historically and socially new meanings. They reorganize communication practices, social relationships, and institutional arrangements in ways that matter at a societal level. With the rise of social media platforms, algorithms have become central to contemporary new media. As We Are Data and Race After Technology both observe, algorithmic systems are not neutral. When platforms are designed within biased social contexts, they inevitably inherit pre-existing classifications, distinctions, and inequalities. More troublingly, these systems can go beyond reproducing social structures by actively reshaping them. Once algorithmic identities are operationalized as truth, they become the basis for platform action, influencing visibility, access, and opportunity. This process reflects a form of technological agency, whereby systems operate with a degree of autonomy and produce consequences that exceed human intention. Finally, reflecting on class discussions, I realized that fears surrounding new technology are part of a long historical pattern. As Baym notes, even Socrates distrusted writing, believing it would weaken memory and understanding. Similar anxieties have resurfaced around search engines and now artificial intelligence. These recurring fears reveal less about technology itself than about society’s struggle with change. Rather than adopting deterministic narratives of fear or optimism, these theories encourage a more critical awareness of how technologies are shaped within social contexts—and how they, in turn, shape the conditions of everyday life.