Noam Chomsky has long been a critic of mainstream media, accusing them of dominating public opinion by “crowding out” the thoughts and opinions of everyday people. However, on the subject of social media, he seems to be equally critical. Some, like Nathan Jorgensen of Salon.com, have criticized Chomsky for what they see as a double standard, deriding big media for discounting the everyman and then turning around doing the same to individuals on social media. Jurgensen says that, “Chomsky and Co. are making assertions that one way of communicating, thinking and knowing is better than another.” Of course, anyone that has tried to use smoke signals to tell a story, or has taken dictation from interpretive dance, understands that to be the case. In my opinion, Jurgensen is simply defending communication in social media because he depends on it and his readership is that community.

Jurgensen is purposeful in characterizing Noam Chomsky as a “left-wing icon”, before attacking his linguistic concerns, which among other things, lead me to think that this may be just as much about political ax-grinding as it is about his critique of digital media. That said, Chomsky has criticized social media on several occasions, saying, “Text messaging, Twitter, that sort of thing […] is extremely rapid, very shallow communication,” he said to a D.C. interviewer, “[I] think it erodes normal human relations. It makes them more superficial, shallow, evanescent.” Although social media allows many people to quickly and efficiently share ideas and opinions, it’s not conducive to important human communication. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook updates, and text messaging, in the political, social, and philosophical arena, is conducive to creating sound bites but does not provide the adequate depth to tackle complex social issues. It effectively reduces what would otherwise be meaningful discourse on an intricate topic to something more likely to be seen on a Fox News ticker. Many linguists, some of who are named in Jurgensen’s op-ed, are concerned that the social media “brand” of communication might replace more complex and deep modes of communication between people as subsequent generations grow up using it.

Although Jurgensen qualifies his statements, saying that the bulk of Chomsky’s work in the world of communication theory of critiques of mainstream media have been “terrific”, I believe there’s some inherent defensiveness within his assertions, some territoriality in how he refutes Chomsky’s criticism. Social media is shallow and is fast, that’s why it works in the digital world and why it’s very useful for certain modes of communication (like organizing a protest). However, when it begins to replace the other more socially, politically, and philosophically complex modes of communication, it threatens to essentially do the same thing that mainstream media has done… reduce human dialogue to a series of headlines and sound bites.