Understanding the media ecosystem becomes a more complex task on a daily basis. I’m referring here just to the daily task of “being informed” or, even worse, being opinionated. Consuming the news, scrolling the feed, and brain-rotting—all are activities loaded with baggage. This baggage includes topics of biases, free speech, echo chambers, AI-generated information, and the sheer interconnectedness of all things revolving in the media.

In response, we often consciously cultivate the algorithm as if to remain authentic to ourselves. We can’t really trust the media or what we consume to be true—in the era of post-truth, trusting the media is just not something we do.

What is “the media” anyway?

I do feel like defining what “the media” we are referring to here might be useful. “The media” now refers to the traditional news, movies, and advertisements, but it also includes the digital media, social media, and all the in-between interactions among them.

The media are no longer just the news station and the journalists; even the more direct approaches like the social profiles of the main actors (politicians, celebrities) in the media are nothing new. The media now is an all-encompassing experience of Facebook posts, news outlets, reactions to reactions on YouTube, the funny cat video that Elon Musk posted, the viral trend on TikTok, the Lubobo doll, Google’s Gemini Black Pope generated image, or a world-changing decision enunciated on Truth Social; the woke vs. the far-right, Andrew Tate and his response to what he thinks feminism is, the conspiracy theories, and the Gen Z protests; etc., etc., etc.

The overwhelming amount of information is at times incomprehensible, and it leaves incomprehensible consequences on our daily lives, our sense of selves, our health, and our social reality.

This series of articles will explore our (Western) media ecosystem for recognizable patterns in order to disentangle the complex ways we interact with the media. Hopefully, a healthier approach towards the media is something to be articulated.

For that reason, we’ll turn to recently spotlighted philosopher Jean Baudrillard. We’ll firstly clarify the terminology he commonly uses and proceed to analyze the simulacrum of “the experts.”

Hyperreality, simulation, and simulacra—our media landscape?

So, there is a reason that Jean Baudrillard’s writings are a very useful theoretical tool for understanding the media dynamics. He famously used the metaphor of a map so detailed and huge it eventually fell over and replaced the territory it represents. There were no actual locations anymore, only landmarks on the map. This is to showcase how in the age of simulations and hyperreality, representations no longer point to an underlying reality (that is, something tangible, real, the world). Instead, an image (the map) is all that’s left of the once-real reality.

Use, exchange, and the sign value

Baudrillard argued that in our reality, starting from the usual commodities (soaps, cars, wardrobes), everything eventually lost its use value (its purpose, i.e., to wash) and its exchange value (the cost of something in a given system). Use and exchange value lost their importance relative to a new phenomenon: sign value.

Sign value is the symbolic or prestige value of an object—what it means in a social code and how it signifies status, relevance, or identity. I think intuitively for most of us, this definition is something we recognize as befitting our social media understanding.

To go deeper: for the media ecosystem, any information creates value. And I mean literally any information: a disposable commodity, a trend, social networks, a post, or even the news. Everything can become content, and everything is consumed as content. In most digital settings, this is quantifiable by attention-measuring statistics: likes, engagement, time spent, and number of views.

The concept of sign value exposes something clearly: if the news are a commodity, and consuming it is related to its sign value, there’s a lot more incentive to make the news as digestible, as interesting, as exclusive, and as engaging as possible. The truth (use value) or even the exchange value is not really relevant—news in a digital attention economy requires signifying value.

Simulacrum

A simulacrum is a sign that refers only to other signs, detached from any original reality.

To clarify: anything that is mediated is a representation of something from unmediated reality. For example, before the news we consume online, there was an event that was narrated and packed to fit a certain form. This form is what we recognize as “news.” An event is transformed into news, a neatly arranged, coherent, consumable unit. The news signifies the event; the event is converted into a sign.

Over time, Baudrillard argued, the media started referencing not the reality but other representations of reality. Events happening in reality started to lose their importance: what was more important were those mediatized, consumable units. At some point, most connection to unmediated reality was lost, leaving us with something that represents the reality without actually ever experiencing the reality it represents.

As this logic took over the major part of the global world, any real reference started to be a relationship among the signs and images of mass media consumption, becoming a simulacrum—a signifier that replaced an un-mediatized experience, with no original of its own.

For example, the most plastic way to think about this is the A.I.-generated influencers. They’re the amalgam of everything perfect with the reality they are supposedly representing, but what they are is a combination of all the other mediatized versions of influencers.

Simulation

This process of sign exchange, Baudrillard calls simulation: the network of simulacrums referencing other simulacrums instead of what we know as reality. Although these processes are sometimes understood as a virtual simulation (e.g., the movie The Matrix or AI-generated deepfakes), Baudrillard, by “simulation” means a simulation of sense and meaning rather than some virtual reality opposed to the “real” reality.

Simulacrums don’t have to be absolutely virtual; most often real humans represent a perfect idea of something. But the interchange between other signs, images, and content makes it impossible to distinguish what is simulated and if anything is “real.”

Hyperreality

This all creates a social reality Baudrillard refers to as “hyperreality.”

The hyperreal experience is a state of indistinguishability between the real and the simulated. This is what’s constituting our social reality. Being no longer able to distinguish virtual and real, along with the sheer volume of complex images fluctuating through the media, is what constitutes our understanding of reality.

What this means is that making the distinction between simulacra and the real is not only impossible but also, in its function, irrelevant because hyperreal blends the media and reality as one. Viewed like this, the post-truth state is just one of the possible symptoms the hyperreal experience makes.

Let’s apply some of this theory to something more specific.

The expert—a simulacrum of knowledge

Knowledge/Power

The position of the expert is more important than it might seem at first glance.

This is something that Foucault argued throughout his life's work. Power and knowledge are inseparable; knowledge is never neutral but is shaped by power relations, while power itself operates through the production and control of knowledge. A nice showcase of these dynamics.

The experts are people who inform us about a given topic from a position of knowledge authority. These could be political analysts attending the talk shows, influencers promoting supplemental food, life coaches, sport podcasters, or scientists who discovered that a glass of wine a day is not good for you, just like the ones who discovered that it was good. In the traditional media, the position of an expert is often recognized as a journalist.

And to be more specific, experts are people like Andrew Huberman, Jordan Peterson, Stephen A. Smith, Alex Jones, and Dr. Phill (or Dr. Oz or Dr. Joe Dispenza). Experts are also people like HasanAbi and the deceased Charlie Kirk.

From trivialities to existential issues, experts are the people who represent the authority over a truth claim. This refers to any topic you are interested in: cooking, yoga, sports, entertainment, politics, or nutrition and mental health issues. What gives them legitimacy is an academic, scientific degree, exposure to the topic, or just great rhetorical skills. Preferably, it would be a scientific method that’s used to gain knowledge on topics where it’s applicable.

Knowledge/Power and/Influence

Experts are the people whom we’ve grown to trust or distrust. And indeed, it is this media space of distrust where the position of competing experts is created. Upon a closer look, the majority of the experts we mentioned are not really legitimate experts—they just fulfill the role of the “expert” in the media space. This is a transition where experts are transformed into “the experts”—the media sign value.

In the media discourse, “expert” serves as a function in a narrative as a presupposed point of validity for information. A great example is Dr. Phil, no longer a practicing or licensed doctor, presenting psychological advice as entertainment, a disclaimer you might have heard online too. Nothing more fun than seeking psychological advice.

Over time this ability to represent (sign value) became more or just as important as an ability to share relevant information (use value). Inside the media logic, “expert” is used for its sign values, as if mentioning that something is “as confirmed by psychologists” is automatically valid. These are the simulacra of experts, and by extension, simulacra of science too. The value is determined within the attention economy, measurable by the metrics of influence.

Precisely because the media only simulates experts, we get situations where discussing a flat Earth is just as valid as discussing financing for CERN, where 2 days of “doing my own research” on COVID is just as valid as studying microbiology and working within the field.

As there is also a huge demand for mental health solutions (and we obviously don’t have societies that can foster better support), we also have a number of self-proclaimed psychotherapists, gurus, life coaches, etc., some of whom are really doing their best and a great job. Some of them offer the most toxic, harmful-in-every-way solutions.

Conclusion

The position of an expert is important in any social formation: those are the people we trust and seek to lead us. They’re also found in every aspect of our lives, and their position, along with what they’re saying, is heavily influenced by society's power relationships and how knowledge shaped those powers.

But if knowledge is no longer an equal factor, and the expert’s value is determined by attention economy metrics, we can start to understand several tendencies of the contemporary internet:

  • Distrust is not just an expected sentiment but a desirable norm for the attention economy.

Distrust towards (scientific) authorities creates a need for alternatives (which is not bad in itself, but is bad when the alternative is pseudoscience). These alternatives have their own public and provide great engagement value.

  • “Experts” on various topics are preferably great content creators, not necessarily subject matter experts. This is what leads to deterioration of trust towards the media and the experts. Scientific method should not be a matter of belief, but using the name and authority of science for biased content delivery is what leaves the science at a difficult position right now.