What do Louis Theroux and Ron Jonson in their podcast series "How Things Fell Apart" have in common with these young men doing the Jerusalema dance? How does that distinguish them from Boris Johnson and Cristiano Ronaldo this week? And why does this BBC speculation of how the war could escalate only deepen the crisis in Ukraine?

The clue lies in observing the different form of agency being modelled by men, in the full glare of the global media system. How they respond to conflict, how they use the different forms of media to amplify that and what is the likely impact of their news, is worth considering. More on that below.

On the Alternative Global’s journey towards developing an alternative media system we have been interviewing a wide range of providers and innovators. In so doing, we have unearthed a wide range of perspectives, not only on the purpose and goal of a new system but also its potential structure. And also deeper questions about what media is - where does it arise from; how does it operate; what is its relationship to other human activity?

Of course, media studies programmes at school and University have come to a body of knowledge around this inquiry - although even they can come to different conclusions (ref) and are granted different levels of respect. In an age when anyone with a phone is likely to be a media maker of one kind or another its function and impact is continuously evolving.

To understand the media as mostly the news about the facts for an audience waiting to be informed is far from the reality today - or indeed, when closely examined, anytime in modern history. As described in our recent editorial any specific piece of media - a news story, a tweet, a bit of research - implies a communications system that generated it. That comms system will have its own logic, values, capacities and structures.

Media content is largely what is generated from a belief system, communicating its activities in forms that reflect its structural relationship with its audience: what is important, where does the power lie?

For example, while most mainstream news outlets present themselves as simply reporting what is demonstrably true, each of them have an distinct audience defined by the bias they offer. Underneath that is the wider context of how facts become available and to whom.

Much of the mainstream narrative about the public space comes directly from establishment framing - from government and commercially successful businesses (including artists) as the leaders of society. They get to say what matters in our world, what we should pay attention to. When Extinction Rebellion began their work in 2016, it was precisely to challenge the establishment decision to demote climate breakdown in the news agenda.

Within that term “establishment” you will find the prevailing socio-economic-political system and the communications structure that keeps it buoyant. On the surface that might denote systems for sharing information between departments of organisations and their public relations strategy. But at another level, it means understanding to what extent the form of media being used - as Marshall McLuhan described - becomes the message itself. In other words, the way information is communicated carries the structure it is trying the perpetuate. Your media shapes you, you shape others with the media you create.

For example, how often have you participated in an event - or even a meeting - and not been able to recognise your own experience in how others have captured it? Some might make a list of points and recommendations you cannot relate to. Another person might tweet out an observation from that event that robs you of your more complex experience. A third might take a picture that made everything more - or less - profound than verbal reports. At the same time, each of these bits of media has an impact on how you now remember it - often in ways that's hard to quantify.

When we begin to examine the nature of the media we are immersed in, we begin to see explanations for aspects of our behaviour for the first time. Understanding how newspapers carry government propaganda (while barely acknowledging that to themselves), explains how readers come to feel so powerless in the public space. Spotting how advertisers target their products, artfully directing their messages at our emotional needs, explains how we all became addicted to consumerism. In many ways, the 20th Century one-way communication system is responsible for the apathetic state we are in today.

Yet through the growth of the internet over the past 30 years the dynamics have changed. Social media, as a whole, certainly makes everyone more self-aware and pro-active, also performative. Yet each new form of social media brings out something quite different as well. While Facebook was very friends oriented from the start, developing a lot of relational and narrative capacity, it has also made us ever more susceptible to emotional manipulation. Our hearts are brandished on our sleeves, just waiting for an advertiser to swoop in, offering all we need. Twitter, while offering previously unimaginable ways of finding your tribe through hashtags and tagging, also encourages a lot of combative activity, resulting in polarisation. Showing up often leads to being shot down.

Instagram has been so instrumental in shifting the feel of activism, taking it distinctly out of the intellectual space of influence, into the battle - or enrolment capacity - of spectacle and imagery. Tik Tok may eventually be seen as the most democratising of all social media, encouraging the most diverse sharing – in terms of age, culture, identity, privilege - of what grabs attention, unearthing what registers with people.

For those who don't usually partake of these platforms, it can be startlingly diverse: one minute crazy dancing (animals or humans), the next an infinitely subtle exchange of looks between two people who might never have seen the limelight before. Again, our constant (and legitimate) needs for attention, which can be rewarded with millions of eyes upon you , can quickly become a source of addiction if your mundane life offers nothing comparable.

And let’s not forget the Zoom real-time video platform that made sensitive conversation possible during the pandemic for so many people. More than that, it opened up global conversations between people in different parts of the world, sharing similar experiences for the first time. More recently there have been questions about security and some people complain about the seduction of screen time: it’s important to get the balance right.

Knowing so much more than we ever did about the embodied aspect of communication how should we go about designing a new system? If, to put it overly simply, the mainstream media system perpetuates the behaviour now destroying our planet, how can we use the power of new media technologies to amplify new behaviour? How do we move on from the constant repetition of Will Smith's slap (see our editorial) or Cristiano Ronaldo's destruction of a fan's phone (see above)? Or PM Boris Jonson looking to be a military hero alongside PM Zelensky by striding around a war zone (with no victims in sight)?

In each of those cases, whole global communities - Hollywood, football, politics, the vulnerable needing protection from armed forces - are being associated with the idea that violence is unavoidable.

We won't move on by simply by simply moralising or instructing people - these old ways have had limited success. How do we attract those same audiences into new behaviour by the media we are designing? Old rivals Theroux and Jonson's podcast (see above) is a fascinating play for their regular audience. Sharing their habitual stand-off critique of others and slowly drawing listeners into self-inquiry, they ask in what way are they incubating the 'so-called culture wars' themselves? The slow-moving journey to realisation requires investment from the audience, who may be surprised where they are being led.

The Kapata Africana Kids, doing the Jeruselama, are play-fighting through dance, and uplifting us every step of the way. It seems significant that they are generating this media themselves - rather than visitors stumbling across them and reporting their dancing, as highlights in otherwise difficult social circumstances. Their commitment to the power of their dance invites us to think again about how our Western “saviour” stance might sometimes block the resources that are immediately available for change.

The energy their clips radiate through social media offers a real alternative to the 'misery media' about their lives generated from the North. (A parallel approach is the “asset-based framing” that comes from the US school of solutions journalism).

Such shifts in the feel of the news coming from Kapata might draw us slowly towards more complex and alternative perspectives (see Minna Salami’s approach in Sensuous Knowledge).

While the inquiry into the impact of mass and digital media has been going on for decades, it's early days in our design process for a truly Alternative Media System. It won’t simply be lifetime journalists coming up with a new newspaper concept/brand, in order to harness public opinion. There has to be opportunity for readers to participate and self-organise. A new media system implies information inputs from diverse providers, as well as how that information returns to consumers of news - themselves increasingly aware of being actors in the public sphere.

At the same time, ours is not an agenda-free space, filling up with infinite amounts of storytelling. At least from the Alternative Global’s perspective, we are committed to revealing the interdependence of personal, social and cosmolocal change. In the interests of a flourishing planet. Without a clear outcome, what are we organising for? If we are explicit about this goal, then a new journalism can still function professionally – fact-checked, voices properly reported on. But the world these stories seek to bring about becomes explicit, rather than implicit, for each journalist.

So in partnership with 'transformation catalysts' Bounce Beyond, we have begun the process of investigating how active practitioners of regenerative solutions currently do their media. What are the strengths and limitations of their current comms strategies? Who is the current audience and what are the forms of media maintaining that relationship?

Knowing we have to go beyond where we are today is both daunting and exciting. In the past, to get to a new audience, any establishment would simply spend more on their advertising budget - the equivalent of shouting louder. Today, the task is more about relating to more people, in forms that they can respond to. More about listening harder or feeling the collective need more deeply.

If you want to be directly involved in this journey, become a co-creator. If you can help us fund the process, respond in the comments below, or make a donation to speed us on our way. Thank you.

Alternative Editorial: What's The Medium For This Message?