Fragmentation of Media Reality

The challenges to mainstream media are messier as the challengers do not necessarily fill the gaps left by a poorly performing mainstream media — they instead often create fake or ‘unreal’ media, deep fakes, memes, or engage in outright propaganda or perpetuate mistruths. Not all new media do this, but there is no doubt that lots of new media are up for sale, up for political harnessing, up for attention and celebritization of their platforms and content.