Wednesday, 7 August 2013

New and Old Media


Nederveen Pieterse (2004) suggests that 'globalization is being shaped by technological change' as well as the fact that 'globalization means time-space compression.' I find these two quotes to be extremely accurate when linking them to the technological boom which has occurred in new media and resulted in the emergence of massive Media Empires. Powell and Steel (2011) write that, “mediascapes refer both to the distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations and film production studios) which are now available to a growing number of private and public interests throughout the world” (Appadurai, 1990). It has been a massive effort for media empires to keep up with growing technology, and news media has become one of the best examples of this effort.



In response to the massive technological boom where everybody can communicate via the internet across the world, news media empires have sought to keep up by creating 24/7 news websites via the internet as well as creating social media accounts to make sure they are keeping up with the growing trend. Every single news website today has a link on it to further social media accounts for their organization as well as apps for the universally popular Apple Iphone, as well as other smart phones. By keeping up with these technological trends media empires are evolving to suit the demanding needs of 24/7 information.



Before the huge technological boom which saw the internet become the major way to communicate people mostly got their news through newspapers, where the information was only one way and put a huge reliance on the truth telling of the press. Today new media and to be more specific, social media, has emerged and allowed the development of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism ‘refers to a range of web-based practices whereby ‘ordinary’ users engage in journalistic practices’ (Goode 2009) and whether it is through a personal Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or profile on a news sight everybody has the capability to contribute to news and become a citizen journalist. This is in my opinion the most significant difference between old and new media.


references



Nederveen Pieterse, J 2004, ‘Globalization: consensus and controversies’, Globalization and culture: global mélange, Rowan & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., pp. 7–21.

 Powell Jason L, Steel Rebecca, 2011, ‘Revisiting Appadurai: Globalizing Scapes in a Global World – the Pervasiveness of Economic and Cultural Power’, International Journal of Innovative Interdisciplinary Research, 1, 74-80

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1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed this post about new and old media, your definitions of globalisation and mediascapes at the very start, in the first paragraph made it a little bit hard to get into and a complicated opening.
    Your exploration of citizen journalism was very interesting and something that is so very relelvant to new media.
    Old media could have been explored a bit more in this post in order to really outline thekey differences between the two. Is there really such thing as old media and new media or is it just one big type of media that is expanding and becoming more advanced. I personally believe that old and new media and much the same thing. The more modern forms of media such as the online news sites, like you pointed out, are simply older forms of media modernising. They are not changing their content or what they offer to their audience, they are simply broadening their outlets.
    In all a good post for the basic understanding of old and new media.

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