The omnipotence of mass media was already felt in the beginning of the twentieth century even though the main media present were only newspapers, magazines and radio. Of course, media attained the status of a religion only with the arrival of television – family altars were replaced with the “idiot box”; television,“the big medium”, by the end of the twentieth century became the surrogate parent, teacher and god. And then the omnipresence of the media was felt with the launching ofthe internet enabling instant social networking. It should be noted here that in the age of media convergence information technology has to be considered integral to media operations. FB, Twitter, Whatsapp, Pintrest, Instagram … would be rendered ineffective without the internet. FB has captured the imagination of more than 1.5 billion people, one hundred million and growing in India alone. Twitter and Whatsapp are catching up. In the early 21 century the world moved beyond the “global village” ending up as a “global living room”. No wonder Alexander Bard, the prophet who calls for triumph of the ‘netocracy’ in his latest book ‘Syntheism – Creating God in the Internet Age’, speaks of the internet as the new Holy Spirit. Indeed with the New Media a new culture, religion, sanctuary idols and priesthood are emerging.
Media - The All-Pervasive Being/Entity of Our Time
Abstract
The omnipotence of mass media was already felt in the beginning of the twentieth century even though the main media present were only newspapers, magazines and radio. Of course, media attained the status of a religion only with the arrival of television – family altars were replaced with the “idiot box”; television,“the big medium”, by the end of the twentieth century became the surrogate parent, teacher and god. And then the omnipresence of the media was felt with the launching ofthe internet enabling instant social networking. It should be noted here that in the age of media convergence information technology has to be considered integral to media operations. FB, Twitter, Whatsapp, Pintrest, Instagram … would be rendered ineffective without the internet. FB has captured the imagination of more than 1.5 billion people, one hundred million and growing in India alone. Twitter and Whatsapp are catching up. In the early 21 century the world moved beyond the “global village” ending up as a “global living room”. No wonder Alexander Bard, the prophet who calls for triumph of the ‘netocracy’ in his latest book ‘Syntheism – Creating God in the Internet Age’, speaks of the internet as the new Holy Spirit. Indeed with the New Media a new culture, religion, sanctuary idols and priesthood are emerging.
1. Introduction
Medium (media being plural) is as old as human existence – human communication has gone through the stages of mere gestures, signs, symbols, cave paintings, a signal (smoke), a noise (drum beating), petro glyphs, pictograms, ideograms. Words and writing (manuscripts) developed later. It is obvious then that one cannot communicate without a medium. In technological terms Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press was the first paradigm shift in communication by which books began to be available everywhere. This was followed by newspapers, the telegraph, telephone, film, radio, television in that order. Marshall McLuhan1 ’s vision of the “Global Village” became a reality. The invention of mobile phone further enhanced the connectivity – richly deserving the term “the ubiquitous cellphone”. The next paradigm shift was made possible by the launching of the Internet, which made possible the World Wide Web (www). The net revolution of the late twentieth century “has given communication a new dimension and meaning”2. The ever ongoing technological advances and “available choices in mobile communication devices are responsible for this paradigm shift, converting communication into a passionate necessity today from the luxury it was! … Communicating through letters that were delivered by ships, homing pigeons and runners is beyond the comprehension of [today’s] generation.”3 The instantaneous social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, You Tube, Flickr – have been embraced by the whole world. Social Media has spread like wild-fire, and emerged as the most effective and economical medium to disseminate information. The world has moved from “Global Village” to “Global Living Room” and with that the omnipresence of the media is complete. The omnipresent media is also omnipotent and vice versa, almost acquiring the status of a new religion.
2. Clarifying Media Terms
2.1 Communication and Medium
Communication “is a process through which the exchange and sharing of meaning is made possible, and by which social relationships, and as a result, social institutions are created and maintained.”4 The process includes five fundamental factors: sender, receiver, message, medium, and feedback. “Simply expressed, the communication process begins when a message is conceived by the sender. It is then encoded and transmitted via a particular medium or channel to a receiver who then decodes and interprets the message, returning a signal in some way that the message has or has not been understood.”5
Medium is the vehicle used for transmitting the message. Television for example is a medium (an audio-visual one). John Fiske in Introduction to Communication Studies divides media into three categories: 1) The presentational media: the voice, face, body; the spoken word, gesture where the medium is actually the communicator. 2) Representational media: books, paintings, photographs, etc., using cultural and aesthetic conventions ‘to create a “text” of some sort’; they become independent of the communicator, being works of communication (whereas presentational media are acts of communication). 3) Mechanical media: Telephone, Radio, Television, Film, [Computer, Internet] and they are transmitters of 1 and 2.6
Marshall McLuhan, one of the pioneers of media studies, went on to characterize “medium as [is] the message”. Medium is the message is the first chapter of his classic work Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. It meant that the medium – whether human voice or printed page, radio, television – influences the sender, the message, the audience, and the effects of mass communication far more than was previously understood. In other words, the medium is as important as the message, if not more [at times]. The way one packages a message, especially in a packaging culture as ours today, is as important as the content itself. Taking into account today’s media scenario McLuhan was indeed prophetic. McLuhan later rephrased “the medium is the message” to “the medium is the massage”. The use of “massage” instead of “message” emphasizes the carrier rather than the content. Because the mass media affect the message’s content, the message’s sender, the message’s audience, it is evident that if we do not understand mass media, we cannot understand mass communication.
Therefore it is pertinent here to state some of the characteristics of mass media: they normally require complex formal organizations; they transmit to large, heterogeneous, anonymous, geographically dispersed, and socially distance audience; they make possible only low level of interaction with the audience; hence the receiver often has low degree of control over message content; and speed is the distinct character of today’s mass media.
2.2. Traditional Mass Media
In today’s media context newspapers, magazines, film, radio and television are considered traditional mass media. From inception they were regarded as public sphere where rational-critical debate could take place.7 It is said history makes one wise and so it is worthwhile here to delve very briefly into the meaning, origin and development of these media.
2.2.1 Newspapers
For generations there had been8 a quiet understanding about what newspapers were. We can define a newspaper in terms of what it is and what it does. A newspaper is a written publication containing news, information and advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. Newspapers were primarily society’s story-tellers; diffusers of information. They were a medium between subjects and rulers, citizens and legislators, legislators and citizens, citizens and citizens. The Enlightenment inspired the need for decent liberal democracies to have a sufficient number of adequately or reasonably informed citizens. Needless to say, it would be difficult to maintain a liberal democracy – in all its subtlety and with all its finely-tuned balancing acts – if the people were ill-prepared, ill-informed, or, worse still, misinformed. Newspapers were there to entertain as well.
One can safely say that there isn’t a country without a newspaper. The newspaper since its arrival more than three centuries ego has been continuously evolving in itself and in response to other media. However, getting the attention of readers through trivia and titillation cannot be a long-term goal for newspapers. People want serious issues and they read serious issues. The newspaper of tomorrow should not be a compendium of ads, interspersed with news. It must retain its function as a disseminator of information, as a change agent and as a powerful tool for the people. Once Thomas Jefferson said: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without the government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Of course, Jefferson also said the only reliable truths in newspapers were the advertisements, and that he was happiest when not reading the papers. But as to his iconic quote, it’s no secret that we’re trending towards the former, especially in the developed countries. And anyone who cheers the collapse of the newspaper industry should consider why Jefferson put aside his distaste for the vitriol and nonsense of the press for the larger principle of healthy democracies needing informed citizens.
E-newspapers have transformed newspaper reading. Seen as a threat initially, by most media houses, today almost every newspaper puts out an e-version. This has only helped popularizing newspaper as a medium, rather than diminishing it, especially among the young.
2.2.2 Magazines
In the traditional9 sense magazines are printed on paper. At the most basic level, a magazine provides information that may be more in-depth but less timely than that of, for example, a newspaper. A magazine can typically focus on trends or issues, and it can provide background information for news events.
Magazines have the luxury of focusing on a smaller target audience, which means they do not have to try to please all of the people all of the time. Instead, they can narrow their audience to a very specific population – such as the sports enthusiasts or amateur gourmet chefs. By focusing on a specific target audience or niche, magazines know what their readers want to see in the magazine, and advertisers know more about the target audience for their advertisements.
Magazine publishing started in the eighteenth century in the United States. The magazines targeted the elite and were quite expensive for they weren’t mass produced and their distribution was difficult. It was not until improved roads and railway systems were in place in the nineteenth century that the distribution of magazines became easier. At the beginning of the twentieth century magazines began to appear in households that did not even contain books. Since the early 1980s, computers have significantly changed the production process for magazines.
And so today magazines are everywhere. They are easily accessible and geared toward all facets of the population. Technology, such as television was first thought to be a great competitor for the magazine, but many magazines now have television shows as counterparts, and vice versa. In addition, specialized cable channels resemble magazines in many ways. As with television, the Internet was initially considered to be a major foe for the magazine. However, many magazines have already developed a “new media” staff to produce an online version of the magazine. The people in charge of magazines realized that the Internet provides a viable way to maintain a close relationship with readers. Since there are no real production costs, the Internet is a very practical way for magazines to reach potential new subscribers.
2.2.3 Film
Film medium emerged in the 1920s in the U.S. Its historical development falls into three phases: 1)10 1930 – 1950, 2) 1951-1969, and 3) 1970 to present. The first period is known as the “classical era”. Television had not yet become widespread, demand was strong and box office revenues were healthy. The industry was run by a cartel of eight studios which had a virtually guaranteed market for even the most unpromising films.11
The second phase is known as the ‘New Hollywood’ in the U.S. This involved a changing role for studios, a growth in independent production and changes in patterns of media consumption. The studios had to compete and find new ways to differentiate their products from those on television. This period also marked the beginnings of the ‘block-buster’: expensive, high profile movies. Also there began a trend for major studios to become part of diversified media conglomerates that were active in a wide range of activities ranging from books to theme parks. Hollywood was successful in finding international markets thereby giving rise to the allegation of media imperialism and its consequent cultural imperialism.
The third phase dates from the mid-1970s. The early part of this phase was characterized by the efforts to consolidate the industry. In the U.S. due to the arrival of cable television, home video recorders, and changes to lifestyle as a result of suburban migration, annual cinema admissions fell from 4 billion in mid 1950s to 1.7 billion at the start of this phase. Over the next three decades the industry responded by enforcing the blockbuster model even more aggressively, cutting back on quantity but boosting quality, at least in the technical dimension, by increasing special effects. The top grossing films from 1970s to 2003 all featured extraordinary special effects.
The mid-1970s also saw a new relationship develop between television and cinema. The quality of television programming improved and in response movies became yet more sophisticated and costs galloped. High special effects budgets did not translate always into strong box office performance, and audiences became increasingly unpredictable and appeared to tire more quickly of particular genres or stars.
[...]
1 McLuhan was a Canadian academic, a literary scholar, whose studies of the effects of advertising and of print media blossomed into a new discipline of media studies. It is to be noted here that far from being an ardent technophile, his attitude toward technology was decidedly ambivalent!
2 Pawan Agrawal, “Social Media and its Impinging Ominipresence!” <http://www.dsalert.org/dialogue/2014/08/social-media-and-its-impinging-omnipresence> (22 December 2014).
3 Pawan Agrawal, “Social Media and its Impinging Ominipresence!” <http://www.dsalert.org/dialogue/2014/08/social-media-and-its-impinging-omnipresence> (22 December 2014).
4 Jacob Srampickal, Communications Can Renew the Church Kochi: Karunikan Books, 2009, 20.
5 James Watson and Anne Hill, A Dictionary of Communication and Media Studies London: Edward Arnold Ltd., 1984, 43.
6 Watson and Hill, A Dictionary of Communication, 104.
7 Jurgan Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article,” New German Critique, No. 3 (Autumn 1974): 49-55.
8 Francis Arackal, The Indian Media: How Credible? Bombay: Pauline Publications, 2010, 99, 294-295.
9 Jorge Reina Schement (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Communication and Information, Vol 2, 2002, 568-571.
10 Lucy Küng, Strategic Management in the Media: Theory and Practice London: Sage, 2008, 65-68.
11 Bart, P. and Guber, P, Shoot Out: Surviving Fame and (Mis) Fortune in Hollywood. London: Faber and Faber, 2003.
- Citation du texte
- Prof. Francis Arackal Thummy (Auteur), 2015, Types of Media and Media Omnipresence, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1337139
-
Téléchargez vos propres textes! Gagnez de l'argent et un iPhone X. -
Téléchargez vos propres textes! Gagnez de l'argent et un iPhone X. -
Téléchargez vos propres textes! Gagnez de l'argent et un iPhone X. -
Téléchargez vos propres textes! Gagnez de l'argent et un iPhone X. -
Téléchargez vos propres textes! Gagnez de l'argent et un iPhone X. -
Téléchargez vos propres textes! Gagnez de l'argent et un iPhone X.