Constitutive Choices in Media: United States and Google

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Vaidhyanathan (13) discusses constitutive choices as regards Google’s emergence as the dominant internet company with a global presence. Deliberate choices made, in the information and technology developments, created that World Wide Web to provide a liberal platform for individuals to express themselves without constraint. It was a deliberate attempt at creating a socially inclusive platform in the internet. In its initial stages the Web was deemed unstable, difficult to use and untrustworthy. Google identified this problems with the Web and appointed itself as the entity to stabilize, format, make useable and scan Web content to ensure that it was trustworthy. Its pioneering role and the fact that they had gained a foothold ensured that Google remained the dominant Web policing entity (Vaidhyanathan 13).

The Web was created as part of the internet with the intention to have a liberated platform that was both ungovernable and ungoverned. It was intended to offer an impeccably broadminded platform for users to openly, willingly and spontaneously express themselves without regard for social and political constraints that governed their localities. It was to ensure that users were ideally and essentially beyond government influence and remained anonymous. The ideal was, however, not the case as when it was launched the developers and users discovered that its ungovernable and ungoverned nature posed a threat. Some level of control had to be exercised over content. Countries reacted differently to the problem. Some countries, like China, were proactive and exercised complete control over Web content availability and activities within their boundaries. Other countries like Germany, France and Italy could only exercise minimal control either as a result of constitutional restraints or technological constraints. Yet other countries like Russia did not exercise any form of control either because they saw no need to exercise the control or were technologically incapable of exercising control. Google was never appointed to exercise control on a global level, but they identified the need and assumed control (Vaidhyanathan 13-14).

Google’s control over Web activity is in the form of prioritizing content that they feel best meet the set search parameters, are trafficked often and contain morally accepted content. This is best seen with their control of pornographic sites where an individual can only access such a site if they enter specific search parameter. Users don’t stumble onto such sites. It has also restricted access to suspected and confirmed malware distribution sites to ensure that users’ data is secure. It has also allowed users the chance to create sites with controlled access. This is a clear case of constitutive choices since content availability is prioritized on the basis of moral acceptance with access restricted and limited for content considered morally depraved (Vaidhyanathan 14-15).

In this regard, we must concur that media development as a result of constitutive choices is applicable at both the national level, United States, and international level, Google international. In this case, the media developments discussed were not deliberate but were opportunity oriented. The implication is that whatever media developments are experienced in the future, they will be events of opportunity and not deliberate attempts at developing media.

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Works Cited

Starr, Paul. The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communication. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Print.

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Googlization of Everything (and Why we should Worry). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011. Print.

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