Everything is a media effect
Hi, Andrey Mir is here. I am a media ecologist with 20+ years in journalism and a PhD in comm-cult. Proudly Canadian (Go Leafs go!). This blog is about old and new media and the future of humankind. Find me on Facebook; X/Twitter – @Andrey4Mir. To contact me, send a message here or on X/Twitter.
Books
My latest book: The Digital Reversal. Thread-Saga of Media Evolution (2025). According to McLuhan, when a medium or technology is pushed to its extremes or reaches its limits, its full potential, it tends to reverse its effects into something opposite. Cars enhance mobility and transportation, but when there are too many of them, their effect reverses to the opposite: traffic jams.
Digital media have 1) sped up our interaction with the world and with each other to their limits, 2) encompassed nearly all human activities, and 3) involved nearly all countries and humans. We have reached the limits of speed, scope, and demographics in this new medium.
Reaching the limits of a technology is the condition for reversal. No wonder everything feels upside down. The logic of media is implacable: when digital media reach everyone and everything and speed our interactions up to extreme intensity, things flip into their opposites.
Written in tweets, this book itself is a reversal — from long-form writing to a more digital form. Each paragraph does not exceed 280 characters, making it the first in history “tweetise” — a reversal of treatise. The book contains 1,295 tweets, stitched into a “thread-saga of media evolution.”
The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology (2024). The book explore various aspects of digital media shift, ranging from the competition between CNN and Fox News, the postjournalism of generative AI, and platforms enslaving users while serving them, to political polarization, the shifting epistemology of truth, and the impacts of screens on children.
Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror. Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect (2024), argues that all contemporary disturbances are the outcomes of the reversal of literacy and retrieval of orality – in the form of digital orality. To explore this reversal and retrieval, the book looks back in history at how literacy replaced orality in the past. The idea is that digital media are now replaying this process backward.
Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization (2020), explores the political-economic roots of post-truth and polarization in the news media. Available on Amazon:
Human as media. The emancipation of authorship (2014) introduced the concepts of authorship as a duty and the Viral Editor. It explores the development of online activities into political activism in the early 2010s.
Media
Here is a nice review of my writings by William Kuhns in New Explorations: Mir-roring McLuhan in the digital era.
Here are some other reviews of my books and my media appearances:
El último libro del teórico ruso-canadiense Andrey Mir plantea hipótesis tan lúcidas como inquietantes sobre el futuro de la cultura letrada y de la propia raza humana. Revista Seúl. Eugenio Palopoli, November 2, 2025
Social media explains why markets keep going crazy.
Reuters. Edward Chancellor, November 21, 2025
The Death of Gutenberg.
Is the rise of digital media causing the fall of literacy? A review of Andrey Mir’s Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect. City Journal. Geoff Shullenberger, April 26, 2024.The Fifth Wave: Andrey Mir takes on world history.
In Mir’s big new book, Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror, he explains how media made history and may soon end it. Discourse. Martin Gurri, February 20, 2024.Forsker: Vi står midt i mediernes dødskamp
Flemming Rose har talt med Andrey Mir, som forsker i medier ved York University. Mir, der er forfatter til bøgerne “Human as Media: The Emancipation of Authorship” (2014) og “Postjournalism” (2020), siger at journalistik som vi kender det snart er slut. Frihedsbrevet. Flemming Rose, May 13, 2023.It’s not Big Brother I fear but Huxley’s brave new world of mindless trivia. We’ve never had so much information at our fingertips — and so little wisdom to do anything useful with it. The Sunday Times. Matthew Syed, February 12, 2023.
How the news business’s economics altered the news itself. Essayist Andrey Mir says media in a “post-journalism” world supply not news but “news validation.” The Washington Post. George F. Will, August 2, 2022.
Az újságírásnak kedvező viszonyok eltűnőben Vannak. (“Favorable conditions for journalism are disappearing.” Interview with Andrey Mir.) 444.hu, Márton Bede, January 9, 2022.
L’altro processo ai giornali. Il Foglio, Franco Debenedetti, Ottobre 23, 2021.
Listening to a Herald of Doom. Liberty, Bruce Ramsey, September 1, 2021.
Андрей Мирошниченко: «Редакционная политика, а не новости, — это и есть последний товар СМИ». Journalist, Всеволод Пуля, Сентябрь 2021.
Things fall apart: why journalism might not survive what’s coming next. The Spinoff, Danyl Mclauchlan, August 21, 2021.
The Press Now Depends on Readers for Revenue and That’s a Big Problem for Journalism. Discourse, Andrey Mir, July 28, 2021.
How Economics Drives News Media. Andrey Mir’s Postjournalism offers a powerful, sweeping narrative of how news media have evolved over the centuries. EconLib, Arnold Kling, July 5, 2021.
Чи можлива справжня журналістика в епоху повсюдної поляризації. В чому дослідник медіа Андрєй Мір бачить причину занепаду журналістики та що робити, аби не дозволити медіа та соцмережам поляризувати суспільство ще більше. Detector, Антон Процюк, 1 Липня 2021.
Amerikanske medier tjente kassen på at dyrke Trump-hadet. Nu kommer problemerne. Politiken, Jens Lenler, May 16, 2021.
Media Narratives and the Minds of the Masses. Pairagraph, May 10, 2021.
“Post-Journalism” and the Death of News. Elites have lost control of the information agenda and, despite the “Trump bump,” they’re not getting it back. Discourse, Martin Gurri, April 13, 2021.
Factoids and Fake News. Martin Gurri interviews Andrey Mir about the future of journalism. Discourse, April 13, 2021.
How to live with polarisation. New Money Review, Paul Amery, March 19, 2021.
Có hay không – “hậu báo chí”? Thế giới không phẳng. TTCT – Hết “hậu sự thật” (Post truth) nay người ta đang nói về “hậu báo chí” (Postjournalism). Nguyễn Vạn Phú, March 11, 2021.
How both old and new media polarise society for profit (or survival). Why polarisation is a media effect and what we can do
about it. IPPR Progressive Review, Andrey Mir, Spring 2021.How to Understand the Rage Economy. In “Postjournalism,” media ecologist Andrey Mir analyzes the way the news economy shapes our perceptions of reality. The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain, February 13, 2021.
Slouching Toward Post-Journalism. City Journal, Martin Gurri, Winter 2021.
How the world caught up with media visionary Marshall McLuhan. Post magazine, the South China Morning Post, Mike Hodgkinson, January 23, 2021.
