t’s easy to believe that the internet has already demonstrated its disruptive capabilities by pointing to everything from the transformation of the audience to publishers and the rise of disinformation. However disruptive these changes are, they are mainly uses of technology to do things we were already doing — just doing it more easily and efficiently. Real disruption — the invention of entirely new processes and approaches — could take years, decades, even centuries to manifest, according to Jeff Jarvis in his new book, “The Gutenberg Parentheses”. But we are starting to see early examples, and TikTok is the platform on which they are appearing. We’ll share these examples, and provide more insight into Jarvis’s book, in this short midweek episode.

Links from this report:

• TikTok is the most popular news source for 12 to 15-year-olds, says Ofcom
• The 23-Year-Old Getting Her Generation Hooked on … Newspapers?
• This TikTok Influencer Is Translating the News for Gen Z – and They’re Listening
• How TikTok is reshaping the American cookbook
• This Woman Is Going Viral For Translating The News For Gen Z, And Millennials And Gen X’ers Love It Too
• Gen Z loves the newspaper (on TikTok)

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The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 2 (but it will be the September episode).

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request the credentials in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Neville’s Asides blog is also available.

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