Communication is the process by which knowledge, or information, is transferred between members of a society. Traditionally, the model of communication involved a centralized sender of communication, mainly newspapers or television agencies, and the receivers, generally the majority of society who relied on communication to determine what issues were important in society but really had no role in the input side of communication. Certain inventions, such as the printing press and television, helped transform communication into the mass communication we have today. One more recently invention, and arguably the most revolutionary change in the way information is sent and received, is the internet. Even the internet has evolved incredibly since it was introduced to the public in the 1990s, from the slow, loud dial-up connections to the noiseless high speed wireless internet most people enjoy today.
The internet has given basically every member of society a forum to express their ideas, via blogs, message boards, forums, and other social media sites. Grassroots newspapers and websites constantly pop-up as activists for certain issues attempt to have their ideas heard. The invention of the internet has begun to mobilize society to become more informed, to become more politically active, and arguably enhance the democratic process. (pg 1)[1] It has broken the traditional model for mass communication by giving a large group of people who were formerly solely recipients of information the ability to become senders of communication themselves. The internet has had a profound impact on the way people communicate. It is now possible to seamlessly communicate via video message between any two areas in the world with internet access. Perhaps even more so than economically, the mass communication experience in modern society has truly become global.
Mass communication has become even more than just a forum for people to express ideas. With a more active voice, citizenries are able to unite more easily and demand transparency from their governments. Many people are crediting Facebook and Twitter with helping to organize the recent revolution in Egypt. Mass communication determines what is important in society, and I would argue that the decentralization of mass communication, or the change in the sender-receiver paradigm I mentioned earlier, has had overall a positive impact on the way people send and receive information. While it may be true that some people use the internet to deceive or mislead people, generally allowing more people to participate in the mass communication process allows for a wider scope of issues to become available to the masses. I currently follow a blog called Barstool Sports, and the New York Times Energy and Environment blog. Just by following these two blogs regularly, I am able to stay on top of most of the key current event issues as they affect my areas of interest. Mass communication is truly an agenda setter, and the internet has allowed people to not only become senders of information, but also to become their own agenda setters. Hardt explains mass communication as “…an irreplaceable cultural representation of the age. (pg 3)”[2] When history looks back on a time period; it is often to the narratives of the people who lived during the time to determine what life was really like during a particular period in time.
No comments:
Post a Comment