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Platforms Aren’t Prepared for Content Structural Dissonance
Creators posting tragic images reveal social media’s contrast to traditional media structures
On February 23, followers of the Instagram account @sweetminidollhouse witnessed some of the first posts from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The SweetMiniDollHouse account is run by artist Svetlana Pavlova. She uses the account to be the storefront of her long-running Etsy shop where she sells tiny cookie cutters and tiny tools for miniature artists. Svetlana used to live in Kharkov, Ukraine. As the Russian military destroyed her town, Svetlana documented the horror on her SweetMiniDollHouse account, instantly transforming a storefront into a real-time war account.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion, hundreds of niche accounts have pivoted away from their standard content to posting eyewitness images from the devastating war in Ukraine. What the situation has revealed is that platforms are not designed for this type of “structural dissonance,” or the shift in content form from the platform’s typical behavior. Journalist Luke Bailey coined the term to describe how social media doesn’t have the latitude to enable discordant content as serious as war material on commodified, entertainment platforms.
Social media exists as an alternate media superstructure in contrast to traditional media systems. Social media hosts not only millions of channels, but niche user-generated content that both informs the media on each platform, but also defines it. In other words, Instagram influencers are on, well, Instagram, and TikTok dances are made for TikTok’s virality machine. But even more important is the fact people follow accounts — real people — in contrast to the traditional concept of media outlets like on television or radio.
On his podcast, The Content Mines, Bailey, and his co-host Ryan Broderick expand on the idea of how the social media structure operates. Over the long term of your social media use, everything you’ve ever liked or commented on stays liked and commented forever. This network of likes and interactions creates a second…
