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The Future of Media: Concepts and Trends for Communication Professionals

May 20, 2019 

Communication is more diverse than ever, whether it’s personal discussion with friends, family and colleagues or a large brand’s messages to a consumer base. The mainstream introduction of the internet in the early 1990s brought new and exciting communication methods, including digital media channels that allow users to share messages more quickly and across greater distances.

These advances in technology paved the way for digital media to have a major influence on how businesses and brands create relationships with their customers. They have also impacted traditional communication professions. The result is new job titles and a new landscape for what communication looks like.

The future of media is continuing to turn to digital advances for entertainment, news, and business, which translates to major opportunities for businesses. According to the Pew Research Center, the digital media industry continues to grow, with about 86% of American adults consuming some of their news online. As the audience for online media grows, so do the number of platforms. For businesses, maintaining an online presence that allows them to effectively communicate with their audience is critical.

As specialists who have earned a  communication degree  look to the future, there are key areas of growth that are likely to shape the  communication careers  of the future. Social media managers, digital media managers, content strategists, and communication specialists often focus on executing communication strategies through digital means including social media messages, blog posts, landing pages, video, and more.

Future Media Concepts  Driving the Job Market

Digital media dominates how Americans receive and share information. As such, key influences are taking shape that are likely to impact the future of the field. Innovation is the new norm when it comes to media, and that trend isn’t likely to change as we look to future media concepts. Social media, digital advertising, and increased access to the internet through various devices have all shaped trends in media.

The future of digital media will evolve as new tools emerge, consumers make new demands, and the quality and accessibility of the technologies improve. The rise of mobile video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and the more refined use of data analytics will all influence the future of digital media.

Mobile Video Marketing

The future of media is continuously evolving, and the methodologies that advertisers use to reach consumers need to change alongside it. According to a survey by The Trade Desk, 74% of U.S. households in the 18-34 age group have cut the cable TV cord, are planning to, or have never subscribed. With adults in this age group shifting to streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu, and Sling, advertisers must develop new strategies to reach them. Each year, more consumers are choosing online video platforms over traditional television, and many are using their mobile devices to do so. This indicates that the future of media, particularly video, requires a mobile-first strategy. This goes beyond advertising on popular streaming channels and requires businesses to evaluate  how  they appear in the marketplace. With videos now accessed across platforms, having mobile-friendly, accessible video content is key.

Data Analytics and Public Relations

Public relations has embraced the big data realm and incorporated insights gleaned from such data to improve PR tactics. Analytics from online advertising measure more than the success of a specific advertising campaign. They can also detect shifts in the campaign. Data collected can help marketers refine the ad’s message, determine which channels to use, and gain insight into who exactly is listening.

Through data analysis, professionals in PR are creating more effective outreach campaigns. The large amounts of data available today enable communication experts to predict news cycles and interest; discover which outlets cover their industry most; and uncover potential relationships with media channels, other organizations, and influencers. While some of the metrics associated with public relations may seem intangible, data is giving shape to the future of media concepts in PR through its ability to make sense of all the (intangible) noise.

Continued Investment in VR and AR

Through specific software and hardware, VR recreates environments, while AR enhances physical images. These two industries, which have grown up side-by-side, have gained new emphasis in recent years, and each is growing quickly.

According to market research provider Research and Markets, the global VR and AR market is projected to grow to $1.3 trillion by 2030 (from $37 billion in 2019).  Many experts envision these technologies will allow customers to have immersive experiences with products before they buy them, helping convert ad dollars to actual customer purchases. These technologies can also help print media integrate with digital, and use real-time data to deliver powerful, personalized experiences to customers.

Future of Digital Media Trends

The use of digital media in personal and professional communication has been accelerating at breakneck speed in recent years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has kept that momentum going. Lockdowns, concerns of infection, and restrictions on in-person commerce have all pushed people to more online use. For example, data from market research firm GlobalWebIndex (GWI) found that 43% of consumers in August 2020 were using social media for longer periods because of the pandemic. Additionally, a RAND American Life Panel Survey reported that about 25% of respondents said they’ve been shopping online more since the start of the pandemic.

With the pandemic as the foundation, a host of digital media trends is likely permanently altering the digital landscape in ways communication professionals need to understand. Some of those future of digital media trends include the following.

The Rise of Social Movements

Social media is increasingly among the most important tools for social activists and everyday citizens to spread the word about important issues and persuade others to join their cause. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, dominated social media for much of the summer of 2020. These activists and consumers, particularly younger ones, often expect the businesses they patronize to be part of the conversation. Organizations that decide to speak out on important topics must understand how to communicate in ways that burnish rather than tarnish their brands and reputations.

Social Media Scrutiny

Momentum has been building for holding Facebook, Twitter, and other social media organizations accountable for some of the content that is disseminated through their platforms. In 2020, that momentum reached critical mass. The boiling point involved misinformation and extreme rhetoric around the coronavirus and presidential election.

Political leaders have put a spotlight on social media companies through congressional hearings and proposed legislation. In addition, some consumers and even employees have expressed their dissatisfaction with how these social media giants have responded so far. Going forward, these companies will likely need to implement stricter internal regulations on content or deal with government regulations.

The Power of Influencers

Social media influencers often have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of followers. Perhaps not surprisingly, a recent study by marketing agency Amra & Elma found that pandemic-related spikes in social media usage led to an increase in influencer engagement. According to its findings, at the start of the pandemic, influencers experienced a 67% jump in likes and a 51% jump in comments.

What’s also notable is that despite the upticks in their engagement rates, influencers’ pricing for their posts increased by just 3.1%. “A slight increase in pricing means that brands are now likely to receive significantly more reach for the same budget as they would have pre-pandemic,” the survey reports. The report also revealed that engagement surges, coupled with modest upticks in the cost for influencer-sponsored posts, means that brands can take advantage of a lower cost per impression.

Preparing for the  Future of Digital Media

As students and current industry professionals consider the future of media, it’s clear that new technology innovations will provide new business and career opportunities.

Mobile video marketing can provide big rewards for businesses. The study of data will provide key insights and make business more competitive. The continued exploration of emerging technologies such as VR and AR will change how we as humans interact with the digital landscape.

As you consider your own future in media, discover how an online communication degree can prepare you for the exciting innovations to come in the field. Such a degree typically provides an understanding of emerging and social media platforms, data analytics, visual communication, content creation, and beyond.

The trends discussed here, along with others, mark a shift in how we consume media and how companies interact with consumers. If you’re excited by the prospect of leveraging new, cutting-edge technology to reach a young, tech-savvy audience, consider an  online degree in communication , such as a  Bachelor of Arts in Communication  from Maryville University. You’ll emerge prepared for the modern world of marketing and ready to make an impact. Apply today and begin your digital media journey.

Recommended Reading

How Technology Has Changed Communication

What Is Copywriting in Marketing?

Digital Communication Essentials for Boosting Organizational and Personal Brands

American Psychological Association, “Controlling the Spread of Misinformation”

Amra & Elma, “Effect of the Pandemic on Influencer Marketing Study”

The CMO Survey, 26th Edition: February 2021

CNN, “Facebook, Twitter and Google CEOs Grilled by Congress on Misinformation”

Entrepreneur , “Five Video Marketing Trends You Should Follow in 2019”

Forbes , “How Technology is Changing Communication in the Workplace”

GlobalWebIndex, “How the Outbreak Has Changed the Way We Use Social Media”

Pew Research Center, Digital News Fact Sheet

Pew Research Center, “More Than Eight-in-Ten Americans Get News From Digital Devices”

Power Digital Marketing, “What is Data-Driven PR and Why Should You Be Using It?”

RAND Corporation, “How is Covid-19 Changing Americans’ Online Shopping Habits?”

Research and Markets, AR and VR Market Research Report

The Trade Desk, “New Survey Suggests 64% of US Households May Lack Long-Term Interest in Cable TV Subscriptions”

Wired , “Facebook Employees Take the Rare Step to Call Out Mark Zuckerberg”

ZDNet, “2021 Predictions: The Future Digital Media Technology Amidst the Pandemic”

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Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?

My first job in media was as an assistant at The American Prospect , a small political magazine in Washington, D.C., that offered a promising foothold in journalism. I helped with the print order, mailed checks to writers—after receiving lots of e-mails asking, politely, Where is my money?—and ran the intern program. This last responsibility allowed me a small joy: every couple of weeks, a respected journalist would come into the office for a brown-bag lunch in our conference room, giving our most recent group of twentysomethings a chance to ask for practical advice about “making it.” One man told us to embrace a kind of youthful workaholism, before we became encumbered by kids and families. An investigative reporter implored us to file our taxes and to keep our personal lives in order—never give the rich and powerful a way to undercut your journalism. But perhaps the most memorable piece of advice was from a late-career writer who didn’t mince words. You want to make it in journalism, he said? Marry rich. We laughed. He didn’t.

I’ve thought a lot about that advice in the past year. A report that tracked layoffs in the industry in 2023 recorded twenty-six hundred and eighty-one in broadcast, print, and digital news media. NBC News, Vox Media, Vice News, Business Insider, Spotify, theSkimm, FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic, and Condé Nast—the publisher of The New Yorker —all made significant layoffs. BuzzFeed News closed, as did Gawker. The Washington Post , which lost about a hundred million dollars last year, offered buyouts to two hundred and forty employees. In just the first month of 2024, Condé Nast laid off a significant number of Pitchfork’s staff and folded the outlet into GQ ; the Los Angeles Times laid off at least a hundred and fifteen workers (their union called it “the big one”); Time cut fifteen per cent of its union-represented editorial staff; the Wall Street Journal slashed positions at its D.C. bureau; and Sports Illustrated , which had been weathering a scandal for publishing A.I.-generated stories, laid off much of its staff as well. One journalist recently cancelled a networking phone call with me, writing, “I’ve decided to officially take my career in a different direction.” There wasn’t much I could say to counter that conclusion; it was perfectly logical.

“Publishers, brace yourselves—it’s going to be a wild ride,” Matthew Goldstein, a media consultant, wrote in a January newsletter. “I see a potential extinction-level event in the future.” Some of the forces cited by Goldstein were already well known: consumers are burned out by the news, and social-media sites have moved away from promoting news articles. But Goldstein also pointed to Google’s rollout of A.I.-integrated search, which answers user queries within the Google interface, rather than referring them to outside Web sites, as a major factor in this coming extinction. According to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis , Google generates close to forty per cent of traffic across digital media. Brands with strong home-page traffic will likely be less affected, Goldstein wrote—places like Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal , the New York Times , the Daily Mail , CNN, the Washington Post , and Fox News. But Web sites that aren’t as frequently typed into browsers need to “contemplate drastic measures, possibly halving their brand portfolios.”

What will emerge in the wake of mass extinction, Brian Morrissey, another media analyst, recently wrote in his newsletter, “The Rebooting,” is “a different industry, leaner and diminished, often serving as a front operation to other businesses,” such as events, e-commerce, and sponsored content. In fact, he told me, what we are witnessing is nothing less than the end of the mass-media era. “This is a delayed reaction to the commercial Internet itself,” he said. “I don’t know if anything could have been done differently.”

During the first three decades of digital publishing, the news media constantly reshaped itself to keep up. Blogging and aggregation, neither of which involved much expense in terms of original reporting, quickly became the strategy for chasing news on the Internet. Playing the search-engine-optimization game—racing to get an article within the first page of Google results—insured that your Web site got page views. And page views were what mattered: they were a new way of selling advertising. Gawker, which launched in 2002, famously had an office leaderboard that showed which writer had the best-trafficked story; bonuses were tied to views. But the Internet’s exponential growth only depreciated the value of clicks. By 2008, Gawker was getting half the revenue per page of what it earned in 2004. The model was, the financial journalist Felix Salmon wrote , in 2010, “looking increasingly like a race to the bottom, where publishers desperately try every trick in the book to boost their pageviews and ad impressions, just to compensate for the fact that their revenues per page are very small. The results—sensationalism, salaciousness, and slideshows—only serve to further erode the value of the sites in the eyes of advertisers.”

Digital media continued to chase traffic, though. BuzzFeed was one of the sites that defined the industry, tailoring content to go viral on various social-media giants, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In 2011, the site launched BuzzFeed News, a play for greater prestige that, in some sense, worked: a decade later, the site won a Pulitzer Prize. But BuzzFeed News stories, like most BuzzFeed content, were available for free. When the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s firm gave BuzzFeed a fifty-million-dollar cash infusion, in 2014, he told the company to worry about growth, not revenue. But ceding distribution to outside tech firms hastened much of the industry’s downfall. “Even as Buzzfeed reached more and more people on platforms like YouTube and Snapchat, traffic seemed to be losing value at the same rate,” Ben Smith, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, wrote in his 2023 book, “ Traffic .” “When it came to traffic, there was too much of it out there, and Facebook and Google were too good at selling theirs directly to advertisers.”

Last April, Jonah Peretti, one of BuzzFeed’s co-founders, shuttered BuzzFeed News, and published a memo about the way forward for his company and others like it, including HuffPost, which he still owns. “The vast majority of people will increasingly want social media platforms to provide an escape where they can find entertainment, joy, and fun,” Peretti wrote. “This will drive a return to the editorially curated news homepage like HuffPost, Drudge, and CNN.com.” Direct traffic to sites with strong audiences and reputations would be the future.

And yet, a few weeks later, Jimmy Finkelstein, the former owner of The Hill , launched a new ad-supported site, The Messenger. The idea was to create an alternative to the mainstream national media, which Finkelstein, who is seventy-four, viewed as increasingly partisan. “I remember an era where you’d sit by the TV, when I was a kid with my family, and we’d all watch ‘60 Minutes’ together,” he told the Times . “Those days are over, and the fact is, I want to help bring those days back.” The site hired hundreds of journalists, and promised to cover sports, politics, and entertainment. Executives said that they expected a hundred million monthly visitors and to generate a hundred million dollars in a year, mostly through advertising. The endeavor lasted less than a year; Finkelstein abruptly dissolved The Messenger in January, pulled down the Web site, and left his employees without severance or health care. The ordeal demonstrated the media’s poverty of ideas for how to survive without robust advertising; the past two years have seen steady drops in ad revenue across the industry, even as tech companies somewhat recovered. “No one who knew anything would think you can make money off traffic and hit the dumbass numbers he put out there,” Jim VandeHei, the co-founder of Axios and Politico, told the news site Puck in the aftermath. “I was pissed the moment I heard about this dumb idea. It was business malpractice and human cruelty at an epic scale.”

Donald Trump’s Presidency was a boon to some news outlets, particularly the Times and the Washington Post , which were engaged in an arms race to get the most explosive scoops. The Times gained five million digital subscribers during Trump’s four years in office, and the Post gained two million. As the President railed against the media and levels of trust in the industry plummeted—polls show that about two-thirds of the country now has little to no trust in the media—these numbers were signs of hope. But the “Trump bump” proved to be a momentary reprieve from a sustained and inevitable decline. In 2021, the first year of Joe Biden’s Presidency, the Post , which is owned by Jeff Bezos, lost about three hundred thousand subscribers. The Los Angeles Times , which is owned by the billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, reported an increase in digital subscribers in the summer of 2023, but it was about half a million short of Soon-Shiong’s stated goal of a million digital subscribers; the paper laid off seventy-four staffers that summer, a prelude to this January’s deeper cuts.

Arguably, many of the factors that have hampered national outlets have been devastating local newsrooms for decades. The Times launched its Web site in 1996, promising “to extend the newspaper’s reach and create new editorial and business opportunities in electronic media.” As part of that effort, a “thoughtful, unbiased filter”—with “a powerful but user-friendly search function”—would amplify its classified offerings nationwide. By then, Craigslist had begun its takeover of newspapers’ classifieds revenue; by the mid-two-thousands, newspapers were losing money on an Internet where information was increasingly free and ads had moved elsewhere. The Times lost five hundred and forty-three million dollars in 2006. A couple of years later, the company borrowed some two hundred and twenty-five million dollars against its recently completed Times Square building. Only after launching a paywall, in 2011, did it find a path back to prosperity. But papers serving smaller markets never rebounded: between 2005 and 2024, roughly three thousand newspapers in the U.S. have closed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspapers lost more than forty thousand staffers during the same period. Two hundred and four counties in the U.S. now have no local news—high-poverty areas are most affected—and, by the end of this year, it’s expected that the U.S. will have lost a third of its newspapers. Meanwhile, Craigslist’s founder, Craig Newmark, now funds a journalism school that recently announced its intention to go tuition-free, a move reminiscent of the explosives manufacturer Alfred Nobel’s impulse to fund a peace prize.

The decline of local news was, many theorized, part of the reason that Trump, with his misinformation-strewn campaign, could gain purchase to begin with. (Some evidence suggests that, as consumers rely on national outlets, their political polarization increases.) But places like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times now face similar crises: How does a newspaper make money in 2024? People looking to answer that question invariably turn toward the New York Times . At the end of last year, as scores of journalists were getting their pink slips, the paper announced that it had passed ten million total subscribers.

In addition to consistently publishing very good journalism, the Times has a robust cooking app, a series of popular games, and the product-review site Wirecutter. It is not so much a newspaper as a digital life-style brand. Both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have made efforts to expand their non-news offerings—the Post beefed up its health section and the L.A. Times leaned into food coverage and around-the-town entertainment guides. But, even as outlets have tried to complement news coverage with other offerings, they’ve faced a fresh dilemma: news subscriptions—the great hope of media—are now directly competing with entertainment ones. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism released a report in 2023 that found respondents often weighed their renewal of news subscriptions against digital streaming services. “We have Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, currently HBO Max and Spotify, Kocowa, and BritBox,” one survey respondent said. “I used to have The Washington Post but it got too expensive to have all the subscriptions.” Another said news was “as important as anything, but if I were to cut one, I would first think of cutting my news subscription before any other.”

Cable television’s problems are similarly acute, but with some variation: the cable bundle is dying thanks to the online-streaming business. In a world with fewer cable boxes, CNN will likely need to figure out how to turn its well-trafficked Web site into a compelling news hub. Mark Thompson, CNN’s new C.E.O. and editor-in-chief, wrote a lengthy memo to staff, in January, outlining the company’s turn toward digital products and subscriptions. He was light on specifics, if not the vibe. “We need to recapture some of the swagger and innovation of the early CNN,” he wrote. “It’s time for a new revolution.” At the same time, he told the Wall Street Journal , “I’m not even sure that subscription is the right pathway for CNN. But I do think we need to start experimenting and exploring in the broader sense direct-to-consumer relationships and potentially direct-to-consumer paying relationships.” Not quite a subscription model, but not not a subscription model?

The Washington Post’s new publisher and C.E.O., Will Lewis, was more clearly bearish on subscriptions when he recently sat down with Semafor . “That subscription-based model is now waning and then will enter a more significant period of decline,” he said. “There’s very positive evidence of how news can be accessed and paid for in more innovative ways. There are day passes that are successful, there’s week passes, there are models like the Guardian where you can make donations. So there’s a whole new generation of paying user concepts. I’m pretty excited about it. I think it’s newsroom 3.0.”

But the fact that the Times seems to have perfected a life-style-cum-news formulation also means that it’s tougher for other outlets to gain an edge with readers. There are some clever niches. Politico, Axios, and Punchbowl, for instance, cater to the needs of insider audiences, with expensive subscription components aimed at businesses willing to foot the bill for their employees. Reporting the news well is, by itself, no longer a profitable business proposition, which is too bad given that it’s an election year and one of the major-party candidates faces federal charges for interfering with an election. “The New York Times is in some ways the great hope but, in some ways, it’s the villain,” Morrissey, the media analyst, said. “There’s a few success cases in subscriptions, but, the reality is, very few publications can get more than five per cent of people to subscribe to them.”

Among the rank and file, there’s not a clear sense of what the next era of media might actually look like, besides having fewer journalists. “This shit is all dying,” the writer Jack Crosbie posted on his Substack in January. “There is like one place you can work right now with any kind of job security and it is The New York Times and that’s only because they have a shitload of recipes on a nicely coded little cooking app that you can subscribe to and also because your parents are hooked on Wordle.”

The layoffs at the L.A. Times seemed to throw the problem into sharp relief. “We are not in turmoil,” Soon-Shiong, the paper’s owner, said after laying off more than a hundred employees. “We have a real plan.” The newspaper’s union issued a pointed response, calling the cuts “the fruit of years of middling strategy,” and decried the paper’s lack of clear direction: “Our owner has publicly said he has a plan for moving forward but has not shared it with any of us.” A former Los Angeles Times executive I spoke with echoed that view: “Patrick never joined or conducted a structured business review with the executive team nor did he ever share an annual or quarterly operating or strategic plan with us.” (An L.A. Times spokesperson wrote in a statement that Soon-Shiong has “regularly” met with the senior executive team, and that it is the team that is “tasked with the strategic and operating plans for the business.”)

At Condé Nast, ninety-four unionized employees are on a layoff list, technically still employed as the union tries to barter to save jobs and increase severance packages; in January, roughly four hundred of its unionized workers walked off the job for a day. A few years earlier, the company had hired Agnes Chu, a former executive at Disney, to help expand its video offerings and shepherd its intellectual property into projects for streaming services. But the company struggled to find a sustainable business strategy, particularly as consumers gravitated toward short-form videos on TikTok, which aren’t particularly monetizable. Chu left the company last October. According to an e-mail that Condé Nast’s C.E.O., Roger Lynch, wrote in November, the company is now focussing on subscriptions and e-commerce as part of a plan to double consumer revenue.

Such a strategy reflects a fundamental shift in media: that it’s mostly consumers, not ads, who will need to pay for the services that outlets provide. Even supplemental revenue streams, such as concerts, literary festivals, and political talks, require a niche, devoted audience that is eager to engage with its favorite brands offscreen. Pitchfork had such an audience, which was part of what made Condé Nast’s decision so surprising to some. (Semafor reported that the move was part of a cost-cutting strategy, and that the company believes that Pitchfork “simply didn’t make enough money.”) “Every media company gutting their special interest brands will either watch helplessly or scramble to catch up in like 18 months,” Ryan Broderick, who writes a newsletter about the Internet, tweeted in the wake of the Pitchfork news. “Everything we know about Gen Z media consumption points to it being more niche.”

One school of thought holds that outlets should focus largely on improving the user experience of their existing subscribers. Making a site’s home page more personalized is one example. The former L.A. Times executive likened it to what Netflix does for its customers; outlets could help people sift through reams of stories, and find the ones they’ll be most interested in. Of course, that kind of increased algorithmic discretion would raise journalistic alarm bells, particularly at newspapers, where the editorial judgment of what makes the front page is core to newsroom culture. The Times has recently pushed for shorter articles, which is meant to “ meet our readers where they are ”—as is, presumably, its rolling blog-like coverage of major events. These formats also dumb the product down a bit. Then again, it wasn’t so long ago that journalists doing ad reads on podcasts was uncharted territory. Norms change, particularly when business is bad. “Netflix spends a billion dollars in R. & D.,” the former executive told me, largely on data scientists, engineers, and designers who help users discover content they’ll love. Newsrooms might also need to approach the problem in a more methodical, tech-driven manner.

Which brings us back to the spectre of A.I. Large language models have trawled through the vast archives of sites and trained themselves not just on reported information but on the original work of critics and the pithy takes of bloggers. Aggregation can already be easily automated. A.I. might soon be able to write a decent movie review or a piece of compelling fiction, and cheaply animate companion graphics for a TV news segment; it can do a passing job of many of these tasks already. But A.I. won’t be able to report out a scoop. Reporting still has singular value if outlets can figure out the right way to wring it out.

In the meantime, media outlets are looking to make A.I. companies pay them for their journalism. Late last year, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, arguing that the newspaper was owed “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” for “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” Before suing OpenAI, the Times was in talks with the company to license the paper’s content. Outlets like the Associated Press and Axel Springer—the parent company of Politico and Business Insider—have already struck such deals. The Axel Springer deal was reportedly worth “ tens of millions ” of euros, but The Information has reported that OpenAI had been offering some companies as little as a million dollars a year to license content.

Journalism requires a peculiar mix of skepticism and earnestness; as journalists, after all, we consider ourselves integral to the functioning of civic society, even if much of society doesn’t particularly like us. This breeds a funny mix of pugilism and sanctimony that can be, frankly, a little unlikable. Speaking recently on the “Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!)” podcast, Tina Brown, a former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair , compared members of the U.K. press with their American counterparts. “They see it as a job,” she said, of her fellow-Brits. “They don’t see it as a sacred calling, and I think there’s something to be said for that.”

The business models that will sustain journalism in the future won’t be perfect. They’ll leave people out who need good-quality news the most. They will probably cater to older, wealthier men who (for now) make up the demographic most likely to pay for news. There will be idiocy and the enablement of rich idiots. But there will also be new generations of journalists willing to leap into an unsteady industry because they think explaining the world around them is worthwhile, if not particularly remunerative. The sanctimony that Brown sniffs at certainly exists, but a little bit of the holy spirit is probably necessary to report on contemporary America. Even if past experience has taught journalists that change is often a destructive force, the crisis is here, and it needs solutions if we’re going to keep recommending, in good conscience, that promising young talent join the media’s ranks.

Many journalists working today have only ever been part of a culture of decline. Four months into my first job at The American Prospect , it had a fund-raising crisis and nearly closed. GQ sent a writer to chronicle the scene at one of our staff meetings, where the editor-in-chief talked about our post-termination health-care benefits. “There are appreciative, if not thrilled, murmurs of ‘awesome,’ from the group of mostly 20-somethings,” GQ reported. Twelve years later, it still feels like we’re all trying to outrun the cuts. A change of pace would be nice. Until then, scraps of hope will have to do: the journalist who’d taken her career “in a different direction” rescheduled our call. ♦

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1.3 The Evolution of Media

Learning objectives.

• Identify four roles the media performs in our society.
• Recognize events that affected the adoption of mass media.
• Explain how different technological transitions have shaped media industries.

In 2010, Americans could turn on their television and find 24-hour news channels as well as music videos, nature documentaries, and reality shows about everything from hoarders to fashion models. That’s not to mention movies available on demand from cable providers or television and video available online for streaming or downloading. Half of U.S. households receive a daily newspaper, and the average person holds 1.9 magazine subscriptions (State of the Media, 2004) (Bilton, 2007). A University of California, San Diego study claimed that U.S. households consumed a total of approximately 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008—the digital equivalent of a 7-foot high stack of books covering the entire United States—a 350 percent increase since 1980 (Ramsey, 2009). Americans are exposed to media in taxicabs and buses, in classrooms and doctors’ offices, on highways, and in airplanes. We can begin to orient ourselves in the information cloud through parsing what roles the media fills in society, examining its history in society, and looking at the way technological innovations have helped bring us to where we are today.

What Does Media Do for Us?

Media fulfills several basic roles in our society. One obvious role is entertainment. Media can act as a springboard for our imaginations, a source of fantasy, and an outlet for escapism. In the 19th century, Victorian readers disillusioned by the grimness of the Industrial Revolution found themselves drawn into fantastic worlds of fairies and other fictitious beings. In the first decade of the 21st century, American television viewers could peek in on a conflicted Texas high school football team in Friday Night Lights ; the violence-plagued drug trade in Baltimore in The Wire ; a 1960s-Manhattan ad agency in Mad Men ; or the last surviving band of humans in a distant, miserable future in Battlestar Galactica . Through bringing us stories of all kinds, media has the power to take us away from ourselves.

Media can also provide information and education. Information can come in many forms, and it may sometimes be difficult to separate from entertainment. Today, newspapers and news-oriented television and radio programs make available stories from across the globe, allowing readers or viewers in London to access voices and videos from Baghdad, Tokyo, or Buenos Aires. Books and magazines provide a more in-depth look at a wide range of subjects. The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has articles on topics from presidential nicknames to child prodigies to tongue twisters in various languages. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has posted free lecture notes, exams, and audio and video recordings of classes on its OpenCourseWare website, allowing anyone with an Internet connection access to world-class professors.

Another useful aspect of media is its ability to act as a public forum for the discussion of important issues. In newspapers or other periodicals, letters to the editor allow readers to respond to journalists or to voice their opinions on the issues of the day. These letters were an important part of U.S. newspapers even when the nation was a British colony, and they have served as a means of public discourse ever since. The Internet is a fundamentally democratic medium that allows everyone who can get online the ability to express their opinions through, for example, blogging or podcasting—though whether anyone will hear is another question.

Similarly, media can be used to monitor government, business, and other institutions. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposed the miserable conditions in the turn-of-the-century meatpacking industry; and in the early 1970s, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered evidence of the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. But purveyors of mass media may be beholden to particular agendas because of political slant, advertising funds, or ideological bias, thus constraining their ability to act as a watchdog. The following are some of these agendas:

• Entertaining and providing an outlet for the imagination
• Educating and informing
• Serving as a public forum for the discussion of important issues
• Acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions

It’s important to remember, though, that not all media are created equal. While some forms of mass communication are better suited to entertainment, others make more sense as a venue for spreading information. In terms of print media, books are durable and able to contain lots of information, but are relatively slow and expensive to produce; in contrast, newspapers are comparatively cheaper and quicker to create, making them a better medium for the quick turnover of daily news. Television provides vastly more visual information than radio and is more dynamic than a static printed page; it can also be used to broadcast live events to a nationwide audience, as in the annual State of the Union address given by the U.S. president. However, it is also a one-way medium—that is, it allows for very little direct person-to-person communication. In contrast, the Internet encourages public discussion of issues and allows nearly everyone who wants a voice to have one. However, the Internet is also largely unmoderated. Users may have to wade through thousands of inane comments or misinformed amateur opinions to find quality information.

The 1960s media theorist Marshall McLuhan took these ideas one step further, famously coining the phrase “ the medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964).” By this, McLuhan meant that every medium delivers information in a different way and that content is fundamentally shaped by the medium of transmission. For example, although television news has the advantage of offering video and live coverage, making a story come alive more vividly, it is also a faster-paced medium. That means more stories get covered in less depth. A story told on television will probably be flashier, less in-depth, and with less context than the same story covered in a monthly magazine; therefore, people who get the majority of their news from television may have a particular view of the world shaped not by the content of what they watch but its medium . Or, as computer scientist Alan Kay put it, “Each medium has a special way of representing ideas that emphasize particular ways of thinking and de-emphasize others (Kay, 1994).” Kay was writing in 1994, when the Internet was just transitioning from an academic research network to an open public system. A decade and a half later, with the Internet firmly ensconced in our daily lives, McLuhan’s intellectual descendants are the media analysts who claim that the Internet is making us better at associative thinking, or more democratic, or shallower. But McLuhan’s claims don’t leave much space for individual autonomy or resistance. In an essay about television’s effects on contemporary fiction, writer David Foster Wallace scoffed at the “reactionaries who regard TV as some malignancy visited on an innocent populace, sapping IQs and compromising SAT scores while we all sit there on ever fatter bottoms with little mesmerized spirals revolving in our eyes…. Treating television as evil is just as reductive and silly as treating it like a toaster with pictures (Wallace, 1997).” Nonetheless, media messages and technologies affect us in countless ways, some of which probably won’t be sorted out until long in the future.

A Brief History of Mass Media and Culture

Until Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press, books were painstakingly handwritten and no two copies were exactly the same. The printing press made the mass production of print media possible. Not only was it much cheaper to produce written material, but new transportation technologies also made it easier for texts to reach a wide audience. It’s hard to overstate the importance of Gutenberg’s invention, which helped usher in massive cultural movements like the European Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. In 1810, another German printer, Friedrich Koenig, pushed media production even further when he essentially hooked the steam engine up to a printing press, enabling the industrialization of printed media. In 1800, a hand-operated printing press could produce about 480 pages per hour; Koenig’s machine more than doubled this rate. (By the 1930s, many printing presses could publish 3,000 pages an hour.)

This increased efficiency went hand in hand with the rise of the daily newspaper. The newspaper was the perfect medium for the increasingly urbanized Americans of the 19th century, who could no longer get their local news merely through gossip and word of mouth. These Americans were living in unfamiliar territory, and newspapers and other media helped them negotiate the rapidly changing world. The Industrial Revolution meant that some people had more leisure time and more money, and media helped them figure out how to spend both. Media theorist Benedict Anderson has argued that newspapers also helped forge a sense of national identity by treating readers across the country as part of one unified community (Anderson, 1991).

In the 1830s, the major daily newspapers faced a new threat from the rise of penny papers, which were low-priced broadsheets that served as a cheaper, more sensational daily news source. They favored news of murder and adventure over the dry political news of the day. While newspapers catered to a wealthier, more educated audience, the penny press attempted to reach a wide swath of readers through cheap prices and entertaining (often scandalous) stories. The penny press can be seen as the forerunner to today’s gossip-hungry tabloids.

The penny press appealed to readers’ desires for lurid tales of murder and scandal.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

In the early decades of the 20th century, the first major nonprint form of mass media—radio—exploded in popularity. Radios, which were less expensive than telephones and widely available by the 1920s, had the unprecedented ability of allowing huge numbers of people to listen to the same event at the same time. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge’s preelection speech reached more than 20 million people. Radio was a boon for advertisers, who now had access to a large and captive audience. An early advertising consultant claimed that the early days of radio were “a glorious opportunity for the advertising man to spread his sales propaganda” because of “a countless audience, sympathetic, pleasure seeking, enthusiastic, curious, interested, approachable in the privacy of their homes (Briggs & Burke, 2005).” The reach of radio also meant that the medium was able to downplay regional differences and encourage a unified sense of the American lifestyle—a lifestyle that was increasingly driven and defined by consumer purchases. “Americans in the 1920s were the first to wear ready-made, exact-size clothing…to play electric phonographs, to use electric vacuum cleaners, to listen to commercial radio broadcasts, and to drink fresh orange juice year round (Mintz, 2007).” This boom in consumerism put its stamp on the 1920s and also helped contribute to the Great Depression of the 1930s (Library of Congress). The consumerist impulse drove production to unprecedented levels, but when the Depression began and consumer demand dropped dramatically, the surplus of production helped further deepen the economic crisis, as more goods were being produced than could be sold.

The post–World War II era in the United States was marked by prosperity, and by the introduction of a seductive new form of mass communication: television. In 1946, about 17,000 televisions existed in the United States; within 7 years, two-thirds of American households owned at least one set. As the United States’ gross national product (GNP) doubled in the 1950s, and again in the 1960s, the American home became firmly ensconced as a consumer unit; along with a television, the typical U.S. household owned a car and a house in the suburbs, all of which contributed to the nation’s thriving consumer-based economy (Briggs & Burke, 2005). Broadcast television was the dominant form of mass media, and the three major networks controlled more than 90 percent of the news programs, live events, and sitcoms viewed by Americans. Some social critics argued that television was fostering a homogenous, conformist culture by reinforcing ideas about what “normal” American life looked like. But television also contributed to the counterculture of the 1960s. The Vietnam War was the nation’s first televised military conflict, and nightly images of war footage and war protesters helped intensify the nation’s internal conflicts.

Broadcast technology, including radio and television, had such a hold on the American imagination that newspapers and other print media found themselves having to adapt to the new media landscape. Print media was more durable and easily archived, and it allowed users more flexibility in terms of time—once a person had purchased a magazine, he or she could read it whenever and wherever. Broadcast media, in contrast, usually aired programs on a fixed schedule, which allowed it to both provide a sense of immediacy and fleetingness. Until the advent of digital video recorders in the late 1990s, it was impossible to pause and rewind a live television broadcast.

The media world faced drastic changes once again in the 1980s and 1990s with the spread of cable television. During the early decades of television, viewers had a limited number of channels to choose from—one reason for the charges of homogeneity. In 1975, the three major networks accounted for 93 percent of all television viewing. By 2004, however, this share had dropped to 28.4 percent of total viewing, thanks to the spread of cable television. Cable providers allowed viewers a wide menu of choices, including channels specifically tailored to people who wanted to watch only golf, classic films, sermons, or videos of sharks. Still, until the mid-1990s, television was dominated by the three large networks. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, an attempt to foster competition by deregulating the industry, actually resulted in many mergers and buyouts that left most of the control of the broadcast spectrum in the hands of a few large corporations. In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loosened regulation even further, allowing a single company to own 45 percent of a single market (up from 25 percent in 1982).

Technological Transitions Shape Media Industries

New media technologies both spring from and cause social changes. For this reason, it can be difficult to neatly sort the evolution of media into clear causes and effects. Did radio fuel the consumerist boom of the 1920s, or did the radio become wildly popular because it appealed to a society that was already exploring consumerist tendencies? Probably a little bit of both. Technological innovations such as the steam engine, electricity, wireless communication, and the Internet have all had lasting and significant effects on American culture. As media historians Asa Briggs and Peter Burke note, every crucial invention came with “a change in historical perspectives.” Electricity altered the way people thought about time because work and play were no longer dependent on the daily rhythms of sunrise and sunset; wireless communication collapsed distance; the Internet revolutionized the way we store and retrieve information.

The transatlantic telegraph cable made nearly instantaneous communication between the United States and Europe possible for the first time in 1858.

Amber Case – 1858 trans-Atlantic telegraph cable route – CC BY-NC 2.0.

The contemporary media age can trace its origins back to the electrical telegraph, patented in the United States by Samuel Morse in 1837. Thanks to the telegraph, communication was no longer linked to the physical transportation of messages; it didn’t matter whether a message needed to travel 5 or 500 miles. Suddenly, information from distant places was nearly as accessible as local news, as telegraph lines began to stretch across the globe, making their own kind of World Wide Web. In this way, the telegraph acted as the precursor to much of the technology that followed, including the telephone, radio, television, and Internet. When the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, allowing nearly instantaneous communication from the United States to Europe, the London Times described it as “the greatest discovery since that of Columbus, a vast enlargement…given to the sphere of human activity.”

Not long afterward, wireless communication (which eventually led to the development of radio, television, and other broadcast media) emerged as an extension of telegraph technology. Although many 19th-century inventors, including Nikola Tesla, were involved in early wireless experiments, it was Italian-born Guglielmo Marconi who is recognized as the developer of the first practical wireless radio system. Many people were fascinated by this new invention. Early radio was used for military communication, but soon the technology entered the home. The burgeoning interest in radio inspired hundreds of applications for broadcasting licenses from newspapers and other news outlets, retail stores, schools, and even cities. In the 1920s, large media networks—including the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)—were launched, and they soon began to dominate the airwaves. In 1926, they owned 6.4 percent of U.S. broadcasting stations; by 1931, that number had risen to 30 percent.

Gone With the Wind defeated The Wizard of Oz to become the first color film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1939.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain; Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

In addition to the breakthroughs in audio broadcasting, inventors in the 1800s made significant advances in visual media. The 19th-century development of photographic technologies would lead to the later innovations of cinema and television. As with wireless technology, several inventors independently created a form of photography at the same time, among them the French inventors Joseph Niépce and Louis Daguerre and the British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot. In the United States, George Eastman developed the Kodak camera in 1888, anticipating that Americans would welcome an inexpensive, easy-to-use camera into their homes as they had with the radio and telephone. Moving pictures were first seen around the turn of the century, with the first U.S. projection-hall opening in Pittsburgh in 1905. By the 1920s, Hollywood had already created its first stars, most notably Charlie Chaplin; by the end of the 1930s, Americans were watching color films with full sound, including Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz .

Television—which consists of an image being converted to electrical impulses, transmitted through wires or radio waves, and then reconverted into images—existed before World War II, but gained mainstream popularity in the 1950s. In 1947, there were 178,000 television sets made in the United States; 5 years later, 15 million were made. Radio, cinema, and live theater declined because the new medium allowed viewers to be entertained with sound and moving pictures in their homes. In the United States, competing commercial stations (including the radio powerhouses of CBS and NBC) meant that commercial-driven programming dominated. In Great Britain, the government managed broadcasting through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Funding was driven by licensing fees instead of advertisements. In contrast to the U.S. system, the BBC strictly regulated the length and character of commercials that could be aired. However, U.S. television (and its increasingly powerful networks) still dominated. By the beginning of 1955, there were around 36 million television sets in the United States, but only 4.8 million in all of Europe. Important national events, broadcast live for the first time, were an impetus for consumers to buy sets so they could witness the spectacle; both England and Japan saw a boom in sales before important royal weddings in the 1950s.

In the 1960s, the concept of a useful portable computer was still a dream; huge mainframes were required to run a basic operating system.

In 1969, management consultant Peter Drucker predicted that the next major technological innovation would be an electronic appliance that would revolutionize the way people lived just as thoroughly as Thomas Edison’s light bulb had. This appliance would sell for less than a television set and be “capable of being plugged in wherever there is electricity and giving immediate access to all the information needed for school work from first grade through college.” Although Drucker may have underestimated the cost of this hypothetical machine, he was prescient about the effect these machines—personal computers—and the Internet would have on education, social relationships, and the culture at large. The inventions of random access memory (RAM) chips and microprocessors in the 1970s were important steps to the Internet age. As Briggs and Burke note, these advances meant that “hundreds of thousands of components could be carried on a microprocessor.” The reduction of many different kinds of content to digitally stored information meant that “print, film, recording, radio and television and all forms of telecommunications [were] now being thought of increasingly as part of one complex.” This process, also known as convergence, is a force that’s affecting media today.

Key Takeaways

Media fulfills several roles in society, including the following:

• entertaining and providing an outlet for the imagination,
• educating and informing,
• serving as a public forum for the discussion of important issues, and
• acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions.
• Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press enabled the mass production of media, which was then industrialized by Friedrich Koenig in the early 1800s. These innovations led to the daily newspaper, which united the urbanized, industrialized populations of the 19th century.
• In the 20th century, radio allowed advertisers to reach a mass audience and helped spur the consumerism of the 1920s—and the Great Depression of the 1930s. After World War II, television boomed in the United States and abroad, though its concentration in the hands of three major networks led to accusations of homogenization. The spread of cable and subsequent deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s led to more channels, but not necessarily to more diverse ownership.
• Transitions from one technology to another have greatly affected the media industry, although it is difficult to say whether technology caused a cultural shift or resulted from it. The ability to make technology small and affordable enough to fit into the home is an important aspect of the popularization of new technologies.

Choose two different types of mass communication—radio shows, television broadcasts, Internet sites, newspaper advertisements, and so on—from two different kinds of media. Make a list of what role(s) each one fills, keeping in mind that much of what we see, hear, or read in the mass media has more than one aspect. Then, answer the following questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• To which of the four roles media plays in society do your selections correspond? Why did the creators of these particular messages present them in these particular ways and in these particular mediums?
• What events have shaped the adoption of the two kinds of media you selected?
• How have technological transitions shaped the industries involved in the two kinds of media you have selected?

Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism , (London: Verso, 1991).

Bilton, Jim. “The Loyalty Challenge: How Magazine Subscriptions Work,” In Circulation , January/February 2007.

Briggs and Burke, Social History of the Media .

Briggs, Asa and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005).

Kay, Alan. “The Infobahn Is Not the Answer,” Wired , May 1994.

Library of Congress, “Radio: A Consumer Product and a Producer of Consumption,” Coolidge-Consumerism Collection, http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/ammem/amrlhtml/inradio.html .

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man , (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

Mintz, Steven “The Jazz Age: The American 1920s: The Formation of Modern American Mass Culture,” Digital History , 2007, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?hhid=454 .

Ramsey, Doug. “UC San Diego Experts Calculate How Much Information Americans Consume” UC San Diego News Center, December 9, 2009, http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/12-09Information.asp .

State of the Media, project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media 2004 , http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2004/ .

Wallace, David Foster “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (New York: Little Brown, 1997).

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Chapter 16 The Future of Mass Media

The tablet computer: a new digital age.

Does the tablet computer represent the future of media? Tech-savvy consumers certainly seem to think so—on the day Apple’s much-hyped iPad hit the market in April 2010, the company sold more than 300,000 devices. Described as “Goldilocks” gadgets—not too big, not too small—tablet computers are creating what former Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls a “third segment” of computing between handheld phones and laptop computers. Bobbie Johnson and Charles Arthur, “Apple iPad: The Wait Is Over—But Is It the Future of Technology or Oversized Phone?” Guardian (London), January 27, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/27/apple-ipad-tablet-computer-kindle . The iPad, which sports a 9.7-inch color LED touch screen, enables consumers to surf the web, play games, email, and use many of the same applications available on the company’s vastly popular smartphone, the iPhone. Its primary function upon release however, was to corner the e-book market, putting it in competition with Amazon.com ’s black-and-white Kindle e-reader. Signing deals with five major publishers—HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette—Apple created a program called iBooks that enables customers to download e-books directly onto the iPad via the digital media application iTunes. The print media industry—which was unable to capitalize on the benefits of new media during the Internet age of free print and video content on the web, and saw its profits disintegrate as a result—is hopeful that tablet computers such as the iPad will provide some form of digital salvation. John Makinson, chairman of the Penguin Group, said the iPad would help “attract millions of new readers to the world’s best books.” Bobbie Johnson and Charles Arthur, “Apple iPad: The Wait Is Over—But Is It the Future of Technology or Oversized Phone?” Guardian (London), January 27, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/27/apple-ipad-tablet-computer-kindle . More importantly for the future of traditional media, the iPad may provide a way for publishers to generate a profit from these new readers. Electronic publishers who sell their products through iBooks receive a 70 percent share of any revenues, and are able to set their prices higher than Amazon’s, a relief for publishers worried that e-books might undercut their sales.

The success of Apple’s iPhone, which is expected to generate an estimated $1.4 billion in 2010 from its App Store alone, may provide some indication of how well the iPad is likely to perform in the near future. Trip Hawkins, a founder of interactive entertainment software company Electronic Arts, commented, “The iPhone was a harbinger. When you have a device that is this convenient and fun for consumers to use, you can get a lot more people interested in paying for and engaging with the content. Big media companies should be all over this like a cheap suit.” Brad Stone and Stephanie Clifford, “With Apple Tablet, Print Media Hope for a Payday,” New York Times , January 25, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/technology/26apple.html . And they are. Several major newspapers and magazine companies have signed up with Apple’s latest device, and their content is available via iPad applications. Some, such as The New York Times and USA Today , are initially offering their apps for free with a paid app coming down the line, while others, such as The Wall Street Journal and Time , are available for a download fee. Thomas J. Wallace, editorial director of Condé Nast, said, “2010 is going to be the year of the tablet, and we feel we are in a very good position for it.” Brad Stone and Stephanie Clifford, “With Apple Tablet, Print Media Hope for a Payday,” New York Times , January 25, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/technology/26apple.html . The publishing company launched its first app for GQ , a men’s magazine, at a cost of $2.99 in April 2010. To avoid losing paying customers, media companies are adjusting part of their digital strategy so that consumers are no longer able to access the same content for free on the web.

Despite initial concerns that the iPad might prove to be an unnecessary gadget, performing functions that can be performed on other devices, its sales have so far surpassed all expectations. As of 2010, the original iPad sales had topped more than 15,000,000 units in the first 9 months, outpacing sales of Mac laptops. The cheaper price and variety of functions made it a hit with consumers. With magazine and newspaper publishers able to provide a more interactive experience on the iPad through video, graphics, and creative design layouts, analysts are predicting the iPad will revolutionize the publishing industry the way the iPod and the iPhone shook up the digital music and smartphone industries, respectively. Whether the iPad will remain at the forefront of the digital revolution in the years to come remains to be seen, but it has the potential to eventually become an all-in-one television, newspaper, and bookshelf.

16.1 Changes in Media Over the Last Century

Learning objectives.

• Describe the types of new media.
• Identify how the Internet has affected media delivery.
• Explain why new media are often more successful than traditional forms of media.

Life has changed dramatically over the past century, and a major reason for this is the progression of media technology. Compare a day in the life of a modern student—let’s call her Katie—with a day in the life of someone from Katie’s great-grandparents’ generation. When Katie wakes up, she immediately checks her smartphone for text messages and finds out that her friend will not be able to give her a ride to class. Katie flips on the television while she eats breakfast to check the news and learns it is supposed to rain that day. Before she leaves her apartment, Katie goes online to make sure she remembered the train times correctly. She grabs an umbrella and heads to the train station, listening to a music application on her smartphone on the way. After a busy day of classes, Katie heads home, occupying herself on the train ride by watching YouTube clips on her phone. That evening, she finishes her homework, emails the file to her instructor, and settles down to watch the television show she digitally recorded the night before. While watching the show, Katie logs on to Facebook and chats with a few of her friends online to make plans for the weekend and then reads a book on her e-reader.

Katie’s life today is vastly different from the life she would have led just a few generations ago. At the beginning of the 20th century, neither television nor the Internet existed. There were no commercial radio stations, no roadside billboards, no feature films, and certainly no smartphones. People were dependent on newspapers and magazines for their knowledge of the outside world. An early-20th-century woman the same age as Katie—let’s call her Elizabeth—wakes up to read the daily paper. Yellow journalism is rife, and the papers are full of lurid stories and sensational headlines about government corruption and the unfair treatment of factory workers. Full-color printing became available in the 1890s, and Elizabeth enjoys reading the Sunday comics. She also subscribes to Good Housekeeping magazine. Occasionally, Elizabeth and her husband enjoy visiting the local nickelodeon theater, where they watch short silent films accompanied by accordion music. They cannot afford to purchase a phonograph, but Elizabeth and her family often gather around a piano in the evening to sing songs to popular sheet music. Before she goes to sleep, Elizabeth reads a few pages of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . Separated by nearly a century of technology, Elizabeth’s and Katie’s lives are vastly different.

Traditional media Media that encompass all the means of communication that existed before the introduction of the Internet and new media technology, including printed materials (books, magazines, and newspapers), broadcast communications (television and radio), film, and music. encompasses all the means of communication that existed before the Internet and new media technology, including printed materials (books, magazines, and newspapers), broadcast communications (television and radio), film, and music. New media Media that encompass all the forms of communication in the digital world, including electronic video games and the Internet. , on the other hand, includes electronic video games and entertainment, and the Internet and social media. Although different forms of mass media rise and fall in popularity, it is worth noting that despite significant cultural and technological changes, none of the media discussed throughout this text has fallen out of use completely.

Electronic Games and Entertainment

First popularized in the 1970s with Atari’s simple table-tennis simulator Pong , video games have come a long way over the past four decades. Early home game consoles could play only one game, a limitation solved by the development of interchangeable game cartridges. The rise of the personal computer in the 1980s enabled developers to create games with more complex story lines and to allow players to interact with each other via the computer. In the mid-1980s, online role-playing games developed, allowing multiple users to play at the same time. A dramatic increase in Internet use helped to popularize online games during the 1990s and 2000s, both on personal computers and via Internet-enabled home console systems such as the Microsoft Xbox and the Sony PlayStation. The Internet has added a social aspect to video gaming that has bridged the generation gap and opened up a whole new audience for video game companies. Senior citizens commonly gather in retirement communities to play Nintendo’s Wii bowling and tennis games using a motion-sensitive controller, while young professionals and college students get together to play in virtual bands on games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band . No longer associated with an isolated subculture, contemporary video games are bringing friends and families together via increasingly advanced gaming technology.

The Internet and Social Media

It is almost impossible to overstate the influence the Internet has had on media over the past two decades. Initially conceived as an attack-proof military network in the 1960s, the Internet has since become an integral part of daily life. With the development of the World Wide Web in the 1980s and the introduction of commercial browsers in the 1990s, users gained the ability to transmit pictures, sound, and video over the Internet. Companies quickly began to capitalize on the new technology, launching web browsers, offering free web-based email accounts, and providing web directories and search engines. Internet usage grew rapidly, from 50 percent of American adults in 2000 to 75 percent of American adults in 2008. Pew Research Center, Internet User Profiles Reloaded , January 5, 2010, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1454/demographic-profiles-internet-broadband-cell-phone-wireless-users . Now that most of the industrialized world is online, the way we receive our news, do business, conduct research, contact friends and relatives, apply for jobs, and even watch television has changed completely. To provide just one example, many jobs can now be performed entirely from home without the need to travel to a central office. Meetings can be conducted via videoconference, written communication can take place via email, and employees can access company data via a server or file transfer protocol (FTP) site. You very likely have had the opportunity to take an online college class.

In addition to increasing the speed with which we can access information and the volume of information at our fingertips, the Internet has added a whole new democratic dimension to communication. Becoming the author of a printed book may take many years of frustrated effort, but becoming a publisher of online material requires little more than the click of a button. Thanks to social media such as blogs, social networking sites, wikis, and video-sharing websites, anyone can contribute ideas on the web. Social media has many advantages, including the instantaneous distribution of news, a variety of different perspectives on a single event, and the ability to communicate with people all over the globe. Although some industry analysts have long predicted that the Internet will render print media obsolete, mass-media executives believe newspapers will evolve with the times. Just as the radio industry had to rethink its commercial strategy during the rise of television, newspaper professionals will need to rethink their methods of content delivery during the age of the Internet.

New Media versus Traditional Media

New technologies have developed so quickly that executives in traditional media companies often cannot retain control over their content. For example, as we saw, when music-sharing website Napster began enabling users to exchange free music files over the Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing cost the music industry a fortune in lost CD sales. Rather than capitalize on the new technology, music industry executives sued Napster, ultimately shutting it down, but never quite managing to stamp out online music piracy. Even with legal digital music sales through online vendors such as Apple’s iTunes Store, the music industry is still trying to determine how to make a large enough profit to stay in business.

The publishing industry has also suffered from the effects of new technology (although newspaper readership has been in decline since the introduction of television and radio). When newspapers began developing online versions in response to competition from cable television, they found themselves up against a new form of journalism: amateur blogging. Initially dismissed as unreliable and biased, blogs such as Daily Kos and The Huffington Post have gained credibility and large readerships over the past decade, forcing traditional journalists to blog and tweet in order to keep pace (which allows less time to check that sources are reliable or add in-depth analysis to a story). Traditional newspapers are also losing out to news aggregators such as Google News, which profit from providing links to journalists’ stories at major newspapers without offering financial compensation to either the journalists or the news organizations. Many newspapers have adapted to the Internet out of necessity, fighting falling circulation figures and slumping advertising sales by offering websites, blogs, and podcasts and producing news stories in video form. Those that had the foresight to adapt to the new technology are breathing a sigh of relief; a 2010 Pew Research Center report found that more Americans receive their news via the Internet than from newspapers or radio sources, and that the Internet is the third most popular news source behind national and local television news (see Section 6.3 "Current Popular Trends in the Music Industry" ). Pew Research Center, “The New News Landscape: Rise of the Internet,” March 1, 2010, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1508/internet-cell-phone-users-news-social-experience?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress .

Pay-for-Content: Will It Work?

Critics of the pay-for-content model point to the failure of Newsday , a Long Island, New York, daily that was one of the first non-business publications to use the pay-for-content model. In October 2009, Newsday began charging readers $5 a week ($260 a year) for unlimited access to its online content. Three months later, an analysis of the move indicated that it had been a total failure. Just 35 people had signed up to pay for access to the site. Having spent $4 million redesigning and relaunching the Newsday website in preparation for the new model, the owners grossed just $9,000 from their initial readership.

However, the lack of paying consumers may be partly accounted for by the number of exceptions granted by the company. Subscribers to the print version of the paper can access the site for free, as can those with Optimum Cable. According to Newsday representatives, 75 percent of Long Island residents have either a newspaper subscription or Optimum Cable. “Given the number of households in our market that have access to Newsday ’s website as a result of other subscriptions, it is no surprise that a relatively modest number have chosen the pay option,” said a Cablevision spokeswoman. John Koblin, “After 3 Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday ’s Web Site,” New York Observer , January 26, 2010, http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site . Even though most Long Island residents have access to the site, traffic has dropped considerably. A Nielsen Online survey revealed that traffic fell from 2.2 million visits in October 2009 to 1.5 million visits in December 2009. Publishing executives will be watching closely to see whether The New York Times meets a similar fate with its pay-for-content model.

New media have three major advantages over traditional media. First, it is immediate, enabling consumers to find out the latest news, weather report, or stock prices at the touch of a button. Digital music can be downloaded instantly, movies can be ordered via cable or satellite on-demand services, and books can be read on e-readers. In an increasingly fast-paced world, there is little need to wait for anything. The second advantage is cost. Most online content is free, from blogs and social networking sites to news and entertainment sources. Whether readers are willing to pay for content once they are used to receiving it for free is something that the The New York Times set to find out in 2011, when it introduces a metered fee model for its online paper. Finally, new media is able to reach the most remote parts of the globe. For example, if a student is looking for information about day-to-day life in Iran, there is a high probability that a personal web page about living in that country exists somewhere on the Internet. Around three-fourths of Americans, half of Europeans, and just over one-fourth of the world’s population overall have Internet access. Internet World Stats, “Internet Usage Statistics,” http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm . This widespread reach makes the Internet an ideal target for advertisers, who can communicate with their desired niche audiences via tracking devices such as profile information on social networking sites.

Key Takeaways

• Traditional media include printed materials (books, magazines, and newspapers), broadcast communications (television and radio), film, and music. New media include all forms of communication in the digital world, including electronic video games, the Internet, and social media. The Internet has added a social aspect to video gaming that has bridged the generation gap and opened up a whole new audience for video game companies, including senior citizens and families. The prevalence of the Internet in modern daily life affects us in nearly every way, from how we receive our news, to the way we do business, conduct research, contact friends and relatives, apply for jobs, and even how we watch television.
• New media frequently trump traditional media for three main reasons: They are more immediate, are often free, and can reach a wider number of people.

Review the traditional and emerging forms of media. Then answer the following short-answer questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• Think of three examples of traditional or new media. What are the advantages of each type of medium? What are the disadvantages?
• Which of these types of media has been around the longest? Which is the most modern?
• How has the Internet affected the delivery of other types of media?
• Do you believe that new media are more successful than traditional forms? Why or why not?

16.2 Information Delivery Methods

• Explain why the Internet has become a primary source of news and information.

Figure 16.1

Michael Jackson’s death at age 50 caused a frenzy of media attention. Here, fans and the media have gathered at Jackson’s mansion hoping to catch a glimpse of Jackson’s family.

As we saw in Chapter 14 "Ethics of Mass Media" , when superstar Michael Jackson died of a cardiac arrest in June 2009, the news sent media outlets all over the world into a frenzy, providing journalists, bloggers, authors, and television news anchors with months of material. The pop singer’s death is a good example of how information is disseminated through the various media channels. Unafraid to publish unconfirmed rumors that may have to be retracted later, blogs and gossip websites are often first to produce celebrity news stories. Digital sources also have the advantage of immediacy—rather than waiting for a physical newspaper to be printed and delivered, a time-consuming process that occurs just once a day, bloggers and online reporters can publish a story on the Internet in the time it takes to type it out. Within 40 minutes after the Los Angeles Fire Department arrived at Jackson’s home, a small entertainment website called X17online posted the news that Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest. Twenty minutes later, larger entertainment site TMZ picked up the information and distributed it to hundreds of thousands of people via RSS A content delivery vehicle used to syndicate news and other web content, enabling consumers to automatically receive new digital content from a provider. —a web publishing technology that enables users to automatically receive new digital content from the provider. Multiple Wikipedia members updated Jackson’s biographical entry to include the news of his cardiac arrest before any major news networks or broadcasters had announced the news. By the time the cardiac arrest was reported on CNN’s official Twitter account two hours after the 911 call, Twitter users and TMZ reporters were already posting reports of the star’s death. The story created such a surge in online traffic that microblogging site Twitter temporarily shut down and Google returned an error message for searches of the singer’s name because it assumed it was under attack. An hour after the news of Jackson’s death hit the Internet, mainstream news sources such as The Los Angeles Times , MSNBC, and CNN confirmed the information, and it was immediately disseminated among local and national television and radio stations.

The order in which the news broke among the major media outlets was a source of contention. Many outlets around the world were reluctant to rely on the TMZ report, because the website was primarily known for its frivolous content, aggressive paparazzi tactics, and embarrassing celebrity photographs. Many of the more reputable news sources, including CNN, waited until both the coroner’s office and The Los Angeles Times had confirmed Jackson’s death before announcing it as a fact to viewers, preferring to release an accurate story rather than to gain an edge over other news outlets (even though both TMZ and CNN are owned by Time Warner). “Given the nature of the story we exercised caution,” said CNN spokesman Nigel Pritchard. Scott Collins and Greg Braxton, “TV Misses Out as Gossip Website TMZ Reports Michael Jackson’s Death First,” Los Angeles Times , June 26, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/26/local/me-jackson-media26 . However, Harvey Levin, managing editor of TMZ, denied that his site was less credible than any other news source. “TMZ is a news operation and we are fact based,” he said. “Our goal is always to take stories and factually source them and present them. We’re not a gossip site…. We have things researched, we have things lawyered, we make lots of phone calls…. I mean it’s the same principle.” Neal Karlinsky and Eloise Harper, “Michael Jackson’s Death Puts Us Weekly and TMZ at the Head of the Pack,” ABC News , July 1, 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/MichaelJackson/story?id=7971440&page=1 . Despite Levin’s protests, it appears that, for now at least, old media stalwarts such as the Associated Press and The LA Times have the advantage of reliability over (sometimes) faster sources with less credibility. As Adam Fendelman, founder of entertainment news site HollywoodChicago.com , noted, “The Web and TV phenomenon that TMZ is is very good at fast-breaking and late-breaking news, but there’s an inherent problem with trust in the everyday consumer’s mind” Wailin Wong, “Michael Jackson Death News: Online Activity Heats Up Twitter and Google, Slows Down Some Sites,” Chicago Tribune , June 26, 2009, http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/wghp-story-jackson-media-coverage-090625,0,4191041.story . (see Section 6.4 "Influence of New Technology" for more advantages and disadvantages of new media).

Once news of Michael Jackson’s death had been reported through all the major international media outlets, a tabloid war broke out, with newspapers and magazines determined to get the “story behind the story.” Speculation about the cause of death and the role played by prescription drugs fed salacious media reports in the tabloids and news and gossip magazines long after the initial news story broke. Other newspapers and magazines, including Time and Entertainment Weekly , focused on tribute articles that reviewed Jackson’s long list of accomplishments and reflected on his musical legacy, and the four major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS) aired documentaries covering the pop star’s life. In the days and weeks following Jackson’s death, radio stations abandoned their playlists in favor of back-to-back Michael Jackson hits, contributing to a huge upswing in record sales. Media coverage continued for many months, saturating newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations—when the coroner’s report ruled Jackson’s death a homicide in August 2009, during the funeral service a month later, and again in February 2010 when Jackson’s doctor was charged with involuntary manslaughter for administering a powerful sedative to help the star sleep.

Although the book-publishing industry was at a disadvantage because of the time delay between receiving news of Jackson’s death and the ability to physically place books on shelves, many authors, agents, and publishers were able to capitalize on the star’s tragic story. Numerous biographies were published in the months following Jackson’s death, along with several explosive “tell-all” books by people close to the star that provided intimate details about his private life. To compensate for their lack of immediacy, books have several advantages over other print and web sources, primarily the ability to include greater depth of information on a subject than any other form of media. Fans eager for more information about their idol and his life eagerly purchased Jackson biographies, including his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk , which was re-released in October 2009.

Other, less immediate forms of media were also commercially successful, including a posthumous film titled This Is It , named after the much-anticipated comeback tour that was supposed to start just 3 weeks after Jackson’s death. Composed of rehearsal footage from the concerts, the documentary was shown on more than 3,400 domestic screens during a sold-out 2-week run in October and November 2009. An accompanying two-disc soundtrack album, featuring classic Jackson hits along with new track “This Is It,” topped the Billboard 200 chart upon its release in November 2009, selling 373,000 copies in its first week of release. A spin-off DVD also topped the U.S. sales chart in February 2010, selling more than 1.2 million copies the week of its release. Posthumous sales of Jackson’s earlier material also generated huge amounts of revenue. In the first 4 months after Jackson’s death, Forbes magazine estimated that his estate made $90 million in gross earnings. Music industry consultant Barry Massarsky commented, “Nothing increases the value of an artist’s catalog [more] than death … an untimely death.” Lauren Streib, “Michael Jackson’s Money Machine,” Forbes , October 27, 2009, http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/27/michael-jackson-earnings-since-death-dead-celebs-09-business-entertainment-jackson.html . This cross-media approach is typical of every major news story, although the controversy surrounding Jackson throughout his life, the circumstances of his death, and the sheer magnitude of his contribution to pop history meant that the performer’s demise had a particularly widespread effect.

Changing Delivery Methods

As the Michael Jackson example shows, the number of people receiving news from the Internet is rapidly growing, although television remains the dominant source of information. Currently, most Americans use multiple resources for news. In a 2010 survey, 92 percent of people said they obtained their daily news from a variety of sources, including online news sites, blogs, social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, television, newspapers, and radio. Suzanne Choney, “Internet, TV Main News Sources for Americans,” MSNBC , March 1, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35607411/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ . On a typical day, 6 in 10 American adults get their news online, placing the Internet third behind local television news and national or cable television news. Suzanne Choney, “Internet, TV Main News Sources for Americans,” MSNBC , March 1, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35607411/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ . The use of smartphone technology is contributing to the ease with which people can access online news; more than a third of cell phone owners use their phones to check for weather, news, sports, and traffic information. Suzanne Choney, “Internet, TV Main News Sources for Americans,” MSNBC , March 1, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35607411/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ .

For young people in particular, the rise in social networking use is transforming the news from a one-way passage of information into a social experience. People log on to their Facebook or Twitter accounts, post news stories to their friends’ web pages, comment on stories that interest them, and react to stories they have recently read. During a survey of students at the University of Texas at Austin, senior Meg Scholz told researchers that she scanned news websites and blogs every time she went online to check her email, eliminating the need to pick up a newspaper or watch television news. “It’s not that I have anything against a printed newspaper,” she said. “But for my lifestyle the Internet is more accessible.” Peter Johnson, “Young People Turn to the Web for News,” Media Mix, USA Today , March 22, 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2006-03-22-media-mix_x.htm . Other Internet users appreciate the ability to filter news and information that is relevant to them; 28 percent of those surveyed said they customize their social networking home pages to include news from sources or on topics that interest them. Suzanne Choney, “Internet, TV Main News Sources for Americans,” MSNBC , March 1, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35607411/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ . Researchers at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, the organization that conducted the survey, speculate that this personalization of news is a result of the constant stream of information in modern life. Pew Research Center Director Lee Rainie commented, “People feel more and more pressed about the volume of information flowing into their lives. So, they customize the information flow in order to manage their lives well and in order to get the material that they feel is most relevant to them.” Suzanne Choney, “Internet, TV Main News Sources for Americans,” MSNBC , March 1, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35607411/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ . Although television remains the primary source of news for most Americans, Internet and mobile technology is changing the structure of information delivery methods to audiences, making it more portable, more personalized, and more participatory.

• Information delivery methods to audiences include print (newspapers, books, magazines), broadcast (radio, television), new media (Internet, social media, blogs), and documentary films. When a big news story breaks, digital media sources have the advantage of speed over traditional media sources—but are not yet considered completely accurate or trustworthy. Established newspapers and magazines still have the advantage of credibility. A big news story passes through every media outlet, starting with the Internet and online newspapers, moving to print newspapers, magazines, television, and radio, and finally on to slower, more detailed types of media such as books and documentaries.
• Information delivery methods are changing. Most people still get their news from local and national television stations, but the Internet is the third most popular source of information, and its popularity is increasing. Smartphone technology is making Internet news more portable, while social networking sites provide a participatory aspect, enabling people to comment on or share news stories of interest. The ability to customize social networking home pages to filter news topics and sources is making news more personalized, allowing consumers to read only the information that interests them.

Conduct a survey among your friends, family, and classmates to find out where they get their news on a regular basis. Then respond to the following short-answer questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• What is the most common source of news among the population sample you surveyed?
• Do most people obtain their news from a variety of sources or from a single source?
• Does the main source of news vary according to age group? Create a line graph or bar graph to illustrate your results, and write a brief report of your findings.
• Which group uses the Internet as a source of news and information the most? Why do you think this is?

16.3 Modern Media Delivery: Pros and Cons

• Describe the advantages of modern media delivery methods.
• Describe the disadvantages of modern media delivery methods.

In October 2009, 17-year-old child-care student Ashleigh Hall made friends with a handsome 19-year-old man on Facebook. Ashleigh, from Darlington, England, and her new friend began chatting online and exchanged mobile phone numbers so they could text each other. The excited teenager soon told her friends that she was going on a date with her new boyfriend, Pete, and that his father would be picking her up in his car. Unfortunately, Pete and his “father” were one and the same person—convicted rapist Peter Chapman. The 33-year-old homeless sex offender used his Facebook alter ego (which included photographs of an unknown teenage boy) to lure Ashleigh to a secluded location, where he raped and murdered her. Chapman was arrested by chance shortly after the event, and in court he pleaded guilty to kidnap, rape, and murder.

Ashleigh’s tragic story illustrates some disadvantages of modern media delivery: anonymity and unreliability. Although social networking sites such as Facebook are a convenient way to create new relationships and reconnect with old friends, there is no way of knowing whether users are who they claim to be, leaving people (particularly impressionable youths) vulnerable to online predators. Since much of the content on the Internet is unregulated, this lack of reliability spans the entire online spectrum, from news stories and Wikipedia articles to false advertising claims and unscrupulous con artists on websites such as Craigslist.

However, modern media can also work to mobilize efforts to stop crime. The popular NBC television series Dateline: To Catch a Predator followed police investigators who used Internet chat rooms to identify potential child molestors. Posing as young teens, police officers entered chat rooms and participated in conversations with various users. If an adult user began a sexual dialogue and expressed interest in meeting the teen for sexual purposes, the police set up a sting operation, catching the would-be pedophile in the act. In cases such as these, the rapid transmission of information and the global nature of the Internet made it possible for criminals to be apprehended.

Advantages of Modern Media Delivery

If Ashleigh’s story highlights some of the most negative aspects of modern media, the quick dissemination of news and information are some of the most beneficial aspects of the World Wide Web. As we noted earlier in the chapter, speed can be a huge advantage of online media delivery. When a news story breaks, it can be delivered almost instantaneously through RSS feeds and via many major outlets, enabling people all over the world to learn about a breaking news story mere minutes after it happens.

Once an Internet user has paid for a monthly service provider, most of the content on the web is free, allowing people access to an unlimited wealth of information via news websites, search engines, directories, and home pages for numerous topics ranging from cooking tips to sports trivia. When all this information became readily available at the touch of a button, many journalists and technology experts wrote articles claiming the information overload was bad for people’s health. Fears that the new technology would cause attention deficit disorder, stunt people’s reasoning, and damage their ability to empathize were raised by some highly respected publications, including The Times of London and the The New York Times . However, there is no consistent evidence that the Internet causes psychological problems; in fact, statistics show that people who use social networking sites have better offline social lives, and people who play computer games are better at absorbing and reacting to information than those who do not, and they experience no loss of accuracy or increased impulsiveness. Vaughan Bell, “Don’t Touch That Dial!” Slate , February 15, 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2244198/pagenum/all/ . As Vaughan Bell points out in his article about the history of media scares, “Worries about information overload are as old as information itself, with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and brain.” Vaughan Bell, “Don’t Touch That Dial!” Slate , February 15, 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2244198/pagenum/all/ .

In addition to speed, reach, and cost, online media delivery enables a wider range of voices and perspectives on any subject. Through nontraditional media such as blogs and Twitter, people can put their own personal slant on current events, popular culture, and issues that are important to them without feeling obliged to remain neutral. A study by the Pew Research Center found that nontraditional media sources report on a wider variety of stories than traditional media, enabling individual sites to develop their own personality and voice. The study also discovered that these online sources focus on highly emotional subject matter that can be personalized by the writers and shared in the social forum. Pew Research Center, “New Media, Old Media,” May 23, 2010, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1602/new-media-review-differences-from-traditional-press . By opening up blogs and social media sites to online discussion or debate, bloggers enable readers to generate their own content, turning audiences from passive consumers into active creators. In this way, knowledge becomes a social process rather than a one-way street—the blogger posts an opinion, a reader comments on the blogger’s opinion, the blogger then evaluates the reader’s comment and revises his or her perspective accordingly, and the process repeats itself until an issue has been thoroughly explored. Many bloggers also provide links to other blogs they support or enjoy reading, enabling ideas with merit to filter through various channels on the Internet.

Disadvantages of Modern Media Delivery

Along with a growing number of online predators misrepresenting themselves on social networking sites, the Internet is responsible for a lot of other types of misinformation circulating the web. Unless users are able to distinguish between reliable, unbiased sources and factual information, they may find themselves consuming inaccurate news reports or false encyclopedia entries. Even so-called reliable news sources are subject to occasional errors with their source material. When French composer Maurice Jarre died in 2009 at the age of 84, Irish sociology and economics student Shane Fitzgerald decided to try an experiment with Wikipedia Collaborative, web-based encyclopedia that is freely edited by registered users. . He added fictional quotes to Jarre’s Wikipedia entry and then watched as newspapers worldwide (including reputable sources such as the The Guardian ) copied his quotes word for word and attributed them to the composer. Red-faced journalists were later forced to correct their errors by retracting the quotes. Writing a follow-up report for The Irish Times , Fitzgerald commented, “If I could so easily falsify the news across the globe, even to this small extent, then it is unnerving to think about what other false information may be reported in the press.” J. Mark Lytle, “Wikipedia Hoax Shames Major Publishers,” TechRadar , May 10, 2009, http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/wikipedia-hoax-shames-major-publishers-597729 .

Although most traditional media strive for nonpartisanship, many newer online sources are fervently right wing or left wing. With websites such as the Huffington Post on the left of the political spectrum and the Drudge Report on the right, consumers need to be aware when they are reading news with an ideological slant. Critics fear the trend toward social media sources may lead to the restriction of the movement of ideas. If consumers choose their media circle exclusively consistent with their own political biases, they will be limited to a narrow political viewpoint.

Along with practical disadvantages, the Internet also has several economic disadvantages. An increasing gap between people who can afford personal computers and access to the web and people who cannot, known as the digital divide, separates the haves and the have-nots. Although about 75 percent of U.S. households are connected to the Internet, there are gaps in access in terms of age, income, and education. For example, a recent study found that 93 percent of people age 18–29 have Internet access, compared with 70 percent of people 50–64 and just 38 percent of people over 65. Pew Research Center, “Demographics of Internet Users,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, January 6, 2010, http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Trend-Data/Whos-Online.aspx . Similar disparities occur with income and education (see Figure 16.2 ).

These disparities mean that people with lower incomes and educational levels are at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing online job listings, information, news, and computer-related skills that might help them in the workplace. The digital divide is even more prominent between developed and developing countries. In nations such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, the government permits little or no access to the Internet. In other countries, such as Mexico, Brazil, and Columbia, poor telecommunications infrastructure forces users to wait extremely inconvenient lengths of time to get online. And in many developing countries that have poor public utilities and intermittent electrical service, the Internet is almost unheard of. Despite its large population, the entire continent of Africa accounts for less than 5 percent of Internet usage worldwide. Internet World Stats, “Internet Usage Statistics,” http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm .

Figure 16.2

The digital divide places people with lower incomes and lower educational levels at a disadvantage when it comes to Internet access.

Traditional media also face economic disadvantages when it comes to profiting from the Internet. Having freely given away much of their online content, newspapers are struggling to transition to an entirely ad-based business model. Although publishers initially envisioned a digital future supported entirely by advertising, two years of plummeting ad revenue (the Newspaper Association of America reported that online advertising revenues fell 11.8 percent in 2009) has caused some papers to consider introducing online fees. Although modern media delivery is quick and efficient, companies are still trying to establish a successful economic model to keep them afloat in the long term.

• Modern media delivery has numerous advantages, including the speed at which content is delivered, the widespread reach of the Internet, and the low cost—most online content is free. The sheer amount of information available online has caused many critics to claim the information overload is bad for people’s health; however, studies have not substantiated this theory. Online media delivery enables a wide range of voices and perspectives to be heard via blogs and social networking sites. These sites are also changing the way knowledge is consumed: from a one-way system (for example, through passively reading newspaper articles) to a dynamic process that involves an entire online community.
• Modern media delivery also has several disadvantages. Not all web pages are reliable sources of information; many are subject to user error (for example, on sites such as Wikipedia) or bias (for example, on partisan political blogs). The Internet also has economic disadvantages; it widens the digital divide between those who have access to the technology and those who do not (usually older people, people of lower economic means or educational status, or people in developing countries with poor infrastructure), and causes problems for traditional media, which are finding it difficult to profit from digital technology.

Choose two online newspaper articles or blogs on the same subject, one from a liberal website such as the Huffington Post and one from a conservative website such as the Drudge Report . Read through both articles and underline examples of political bias or prejudice. Then answer the following short-answer questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• How does each article use selective facts to support its argument?
• What information is missing from each article?
• How might reading just one of these articles unfairly sway someone looking for nonpartisan information on the topic you have chosen?
• What are the advantages of modern media delivery methods? How might you have found both articles if the Internet did not exist?

16.4 Current Trends in Electronic Media

• Determine popular trends in social networking.
• Describe the concept of membership-only websites that cater to specific audiences.
• Explain the use and appeal of electronic applications.

What do your former high school classmates do for a living? What does your favorite celebrity think about the current administration? What do other professionals in your field think about industry trends? Which restaurant do your coworkers frequent? Five years ago, these questions would most likely have been met with blank stares, but thanks to the exponential growth of electronic media—social networking in particular—it is now possible to keep track of past and present contacts via the Internet, sometimes in exhaustive detail. As social media use continues to grow in popularity, marketers, advertisers, and businesses are looking for ways to use the new technology to increase revenue and improve customer service. Meanwhile, social networking sites are expanding into commerce, connecting businesses and consumers via third-party sites so that people can bring a network of friends to partner websites. Facebook Connect Technology that enables users of social networking site Facebook to connect their account with any partner website using an authentication method. , for example, enables a consumer to visit a partner site such as Forever 21, find a pair of jeans on sale, and broadcast the information to everyone on her Facebook network. If a few Facebook friends do the same thing, the information can create an effective viral marketing campaign for the partner site. A more secure version of the ill-fated Beacon (see Chapter 11 "The Internet and Social Media" ), Facebook Connect extends the Facebook platform out of the social network’s walls, creating one giant network on the web.

The current trend toward immediacy (instant Twitter updates, instant Google searches, instant driving directions from Google Maps) is compounded by the development of smartphone applications, which allow users to access or post information wherever they happen to be located. For example, a person shopping for a particular product can instantly compare the price of that product across an entire range of stores using the Android ShopSavvy app, while someone new to an area can immediately locate a gas station, park, or supermarket using iPhone’s AroundMe app. Industry insiders have coined the term nowism The instant gratification that can be achieved by real-time content on the web. to describe the instant gratification that can be achieved by real-time content on the web. Sparked by social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the real-time trend looks set to continue, with companies from all types of industries jumping on the immediacy bandwagon.

Social Networking Continues to Grow

The growth of social media over the past few years has been exponential; according to Nielsen, Twitter alone grew 1,382 percent in February 2009, registering 7,000,000 unique visitors in the United States for the month. By February 2010, Twitter had 75,000,000 registered users and between 10,000,000 and 15,000,000 active tweeters. Sharon Gaudin, “Twitter Users Send 50 Million Tweets a Day,” Computerworld , February 23, 2010, http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9161118/Twitter_users_send_50_million_tweets_a_day . Meanwhile, Facebook has more than 400 million active users worldwide, according to its website, with each user averaging 130 Facebook friends. In February 2010, Facebook was declared the web’s most popular site, with users spending an average of more than 7 hours a month on the site; more than the amount of time spent on Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Amazon.com , Wikipedia, and MSN combined. Ben Parr, “Facebook Is the Web’s Ultimate Timesink,” Mashable (blog), February 16, 2010, http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/facebook-nielsen-stats/ .

Figure 16.3

The average U.S. user spends more than 7 hours a month on social networking site Facebook.

Initially conceived in 2004 as a website for students to keep in touch over the Internet and get to know each other better, Facebook has since developed into the world’s largest social networking site. In addition to connecting friends and acquaintances and enabling users to share photos, links, and multimedia, the site (along with other social networking sites such as MySpace) has branched out into social gaming, a rapidly growing industry that allows users to download free games through the site and play online with friends and family members. Appealing to a wide demographic—including people who rarely play video games—social games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars are free to play, but generate revenue for developers by offering additional bonuses or virtual goods for paying players. A recent survey found that most of the revenue generated by the social gaming audience comes from a small percentage of players (around 10 percent) who are willing to actually spend money on social networking games. Out of that 10 percent, just 2 percent of people, described as the “whales” of the social gaming industry, spend more than $25 a month on social games. Inside Network founder Justin Smith, who coauthored the survey, said, “It is clear that people either spend a lot of money or spend nothing.” Dean Takahashi, “Social Game ‘Whales’ are Big Spenders on Facebook, Survey Says” VentureBeat , June 22, 2010, http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/22/social-game-whales-are-big-spenders-on-facebook-survey-says/ . The games, which primarily appeal to the female over-40 demographic, are designed so that Facebook users can spend a few minutes playing several times a day. In the United States, 55 percent of social network game players are women, and the average age is 48. Caleb Johnson, “Average Social Networking Gamer in the U.S.? Your Mom,” Switched , February 17, 2010, http://www.switched.com/2010/02/17/average-social-networking-gamer-in-the-u-s-your-mom/ .

Other continuing trends in social networking include microblogging on sites such as Twitter, which is rapidly becoming the fastest source of news on the Internet. The site acts as a personal newswire, passing on information about shared world events as they affect people in real time. For example, when an earthquake shook Los Angeles in 2008, people began tweeting personal accounts from their homes 9 minutes before the Associated Press picked up the story. In 2009, citizens of Iran bypassed government censorship by tweeting news of the election results across the world. Organizations such as the Associated Press communicated with Twitter users to receive information about the resulting protests and demonstrations. Rebecca Santana, “Twittering the election crisis in Iran,” USA Today , June 16, 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/world/2009-06-15-iran-twitter_N.htm .

Business owners are also beginning to realize the power of Twitter; online shoe merchant Zappos.com provides more than 500 of its employees with Twitter accounts to humanize the people behind the sales and help them connect with their customers. Feedback from Twitter users provides companies with valuable information about how they can improve their products and services. Celebrities have also attached themselves to Twitter as a means of publicizing forthcoming projects and keeping in touch with fans. Actor Ashton Kutcher is particularly media savvy; beating news outlet CNN to become the first Twitter user with more than 1,000,000 followers in 2009, the star used his popularity to raise awareness for medical charity Malaria No More, donating 10,000 mosquito nets to the organization following his success as Twitter’s first “millionaire.” Kutcher’s social media consultancy, Katalyst Films, maximizes the use of social networking technology by working with entertainment content, advertising, and online conversation in an effort to generate money from the web. “Entertainment, really, is a dying industry,” Kutcher said in a 2009 interview. “We’re a balanced social-media studio, with revenue streams from multiple sources—film, TV, and now digital. For the brand stuff, we’re not replacing ad agencies but working with everyone to provide content and the monetization strategies to succeed on the Web.” Ellen McGirt, “Mr. Social: Ashton Kutcher Plans to be the Next New-Media Mogul,” Fast Company , December 1, 2009, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/141/want-a-piece-of-this.html .

In addition to brand marketing and cross-promotions infiltrating social networking sites, digital experts predict social media will become more exclusive, with people filtering out clutter from unwanted sources. David Armano, senior vice president of Edelman Digital, said, “Not everyone can fit on someone’s newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, it’s likely that user behavior such as ‘hiding’ the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed may become more common.” David Armano, “Six Social Media Trends for 2010,” The Conversation (blog), Harvard Business Review , November 2, 2009, http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/11/six_social_media_trends.html .

Exclusivity on the Web

Armano’s prediction for social networking sites may filter across other areas of the web. Membership-only sites that cater to a specific audience are becoming increasingly popular. Based on e-commerce models such as Gilt and Rue La La, which sell luxury brand clothing at below-retail prices by invitation only, websites such as Thrillist offer exclusive clothing deals in addition to providing information on food, drink, entertainment, nightlife, and gadgets by subscription newsletter. Aimed at young, affluent male professionals, Thrillist reaches more than 2,200,000 subscriptions across the United States and the United Kingdom, and has reached over $10,000,000 in revenue in 2010. Cofounder and CEO Ben Lerer believes that Thrillist represents the future of media. “It’s what modern media looks like,” he said. “Content plus commerce.” Ty McMahan, “Is Thrillist the Future of Media?” Speakeasy (blog), Wall Street Journal , May 13, 2010, http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/05/13/is-thrillist-the-future-of-media/ . In 2010, Thrillist acquired members-only online retailer JackThreads.com , enabling the company to offer its user base exclusive access to JackThreads’ private shopping community as a benefit to subscribing.

Another highly targeted web trend is the emergence of micro magazines A digital subscription magazine with a specific target audience, delivered via email or RSS feed. —digital publications aimed at a specific audience that attract advertisers wanting to reach a particular group of people. For example, the magazine Fearless is an online magazine entirely dedicated to stories of overcoming fear. Marketing expert Seth Godin believes that whereas publications such as Newsweek and Time are “slow and general, the world is fast and specific,” which creates a need for online subscription magazines that can provide targeted material to interested individuals. Seth Godin, “Micro Magazines and a Future of Media,” Seth Godin’s Blog , May 6, 2010, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/micro-magazines-and-a-future-of-media.html . “The big difference is that instead of paying for an office building and paper and overhead, the money for an ad in a micro-magazine can go directly to the people who write and promote it and the ad itself will be seen by exactly the right audience,” Godin writes. Seth Godin, “Micro Magazines and a Future of Media,” Seth Godin’s Blog , May 6, 2010, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/micro-magazines-and-a-future-of-media.html . The possibilities for micro magazines are endless, with focus topics covering every travel destination, interest group, and profession. Operating in a similar way to traditional subscription magazine models, micro magazines are distributed via email or RSS and are supported by a forum or blog. This interactive aspect provides readers with a sense of community—rather than passive consumers of general-interest news, they are part of a network of readers who can communicate with others who have a shared interest.

Figure 16.4

The website Thrillist provides subscribers with a chic urban guide.

An Excess of Apps

In April 2009, Apple celebrated the 1 billionth download from its App Store. Launched in July 2008, the online venue for third-party iPhone and iPod Touch applications initially offered consumers 500 apps, ranging from shortcuts to websites such as Facebook and eBay to games and useful online services. Although competing smartphones such as the Treo and BlackBerry offered similar application facilities, Apple’s App Store quickly became the most successful platform for mobile software, averaging around $1,000,000 a day in iPhone application sales during the first month of its existence. Dianne See Morrison, “Apple’s App Store Sales Top $30 Million in First Month; Can Free Apps Make Developers Money?” Washington Post , August 11, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081100440.html . Under a revenue-sharing agreement, the company keeps 30 percent of any income generated and gives the other 70 percent to third-party app developers. By April 2011, the App Store offered around 350,000 applications, aiding iPhone and iPad users with numerous daily activities, ranging from identifying an unknown song, to finding a nearby gas station, to matching the color of a photograph taken by the iPhone with a database of paint colors. Unlike many commercials that exaggerate a products’ abilities, Apple’s tagline “There’s an app for that” is usually on the mark.

One recent trend in smartphone applications is the use of location-sharing services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Google Latitude. Utilizing the GPS function in modern smartphones, these apps enable users to “check in” to a venue so that friends can locate each other easily. The apps also encourage users to explore new places in their area by following other users’ suggestions on places to go. Users have the option of automatically updating their Facebook and Twitter accounts when they check in, and are able to earn points or badges according to how many times they check into a location, adding a competitive element to the service. Users with the most check-ins at a location become the “mayor” of that place, and some businesses offer rewards to users who achieve this status.

Although many apps stand alone, some are tied to other forms of media. For example, popular musical-comedy television show Glee has its own application that enables users to sing their favorite musical numbers from the show, upload their efforts to Facebook or MySpace, and invite friends to sing with them. The application also provides a voice-enhancing feature to correct users’ pitch and harmonize their voices while they sing. Other cross-media applications include game versions of television quiz shows Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? , apps for individual celebrities such as country singer Reba McEntire, and apps for television news channels, including CNN and MSNBC. Making life easier for users while providing them with endless entertainment options, apps have become a huge part of everyday life for many people; by June 2010, Apple’s App Store had generated total revenue of $1.4 billion. Philip Elmer-DeWitt, “App Store: 1% of Apple’s Gross Profit,” Fortune , CNN Money, June 23, 2010, http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/23/app-store-1-of-apples-gross-profit/ .

• Social networking sites continue to grow in popularity; Facebook is the largest social networking site on the web with more than 400 million users worldwide. Social gaming is a popular trend on networking sites, and many users are not typical video game players; instead, they fit the female over-40 demographic. Developers generate revenue from social networking sites by charging gamers real money for bonuses or virtual goods. Microblogging is another popular social networking trend. Key events around the world are often reported on microblog Twitter first by users who experience the events firsthand. Business owners use Twitter to connect with their customers more effectively. Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher are media savvy and use Twitter to promote worthy causes. Digital experts predict social networking will become more exclusive in the future, with people filtering out clutter from unwanted sources.
• The Internet is moving in a more exclusive direction through membership-only sites such as Thrillist, which cater to specific audiences via subscription newsletters. Micro magazines such as Fearless , which target very specific audiences and are distributed via email or RSS feed, are also becoming more popular.
• Applications for smartphones and tablet computers such as the iPad are hugely popular, offering consumers numerous shortcuts to their favorite websites in addition to games and services. Two current trends are location-sharing applications, facilitated by the GPS functionality on modern smartphones, and cross-media applications such as those that tie in with particular television shows, celebrities, or music radio stations.

Poll a group of friends or colleagues about the amount of time they spend on social networking sites, and write a one- to two-page report on the answers to the following questions.

• How often do most people spend on each site at one time?
• For what purpose do they primarily use social networking sites? Does this differ from the popular trends in social networking that you read about in this section?
• How many people play social networking games, and are they willing to spend money on them?
• How many people use smartphone apps to connect to social networking sites? What is the appeal of such electronic applications?
• Describe the concept of membership-only websites. Does anyone you interviewed subscribe to a membership-only website?

16.5 Privacy Laws and the Impact of Digital Surveillance

• Describe the impact of the USA PATRIOT Act on privacy.
• Explain the consequences of social networking in terms of privacy and employment.
• Describe current attempts to restore privacy at home and in the workplace.

When a young waitress named Ashley was having a tough time at work, she decided to vent about her job on Facebook. The 22-year-old was working an overtime shift at a North Carolina pizza parlor and a demanding customer who had stayed late left a meager tip. Feeling frustrated, Ashley posted a short status update on her Facebook profile, calling the anonymous customer an unflattering name. Unfortunately for Ashley, her coworkers saw her post on the social networking site. Two days after her angry post, Ashley’s manager called her in to show her a copy of her comments and promptly fired her. Jodi Lai, “Waitress Gets Fired After Facebook Rant About Bad Tipper,” National Post (Don Mills, Toronto), May 17, 2010, http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/05/17/waitress-gets-fired-after-facebook-rant-about-bad-tipper/ . Ashley’s story is one of many examples of employers terminating their employees because of inappropriate comments or photographs on social networking sites; a study by Internet security firm Proofpoint found that 8 percent of companies have dismissed an employee for his or her behavior on social networking sites. Adam Ostrow, “Facebook Fired: 8% of US Companies Have Sacked Social Media Miscreants,” Mashable (blog), August 10, 2009, http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/social-media-misuse/ . These cases highlight a blurring of personal and professional life in the Internet age, leaving many people uncomfortable with the notion that their employer can monitor what they say or do in their free time and use it as a reason for dismissal.

Since the passing of the USA PATRIOT Act Statute passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that allowed federal officials greater authority in tracking and intercepting communications. , which as we have seen extended the government’s surveillance powers over communication devices, privacy has become a fiercely controversial issue in the United States, with supporters arguing the legal measures are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, and opponents claiming that the act infringes on civil liberties. Privacy issues raised by the USA PATRIOT Act, combined with the growing problem of identity theft and increased monitoring in the workplace, make privacy a greater concern now than ever before.

The USA PATROIT Act: Weakening Privacy Laws or Protecting Citizens?

Figure 16.5

President George W. Bush signs the USA PATRIOT Act.

As we saw in Chapter 14 "Ethics of Mass Media" , the USA PATRIOT Act has generated a huge amount of debate and controversy since its approval by President George W. Bush in October 2001. Signed into law with little debate or congressional review just 43 days after the September 11 attacks, the act’s provisions enable the government, with permission from a special court, to obtain roving wiretaps over multiple communication devices, seize suspects’ records without their knowledge, monitor an individual’s web surfing and library records, and conduct surveillance on a person deemed to be suspicious but without known ties to a terrorist group. Approving the House of Representatives’ decision to renew 16 of the act’s provisions in 2005, President Bush said, “The [USA] PATRIOT Act is essential to fighting the war on terror and preventing our enemies from striking America again. In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment.” CNN , “Patriot Act’s Fate Remains Uncertain,” December 15, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/14/patriot.act/ .

However, not everyone agrees with the former president’s opinion. While proponents of the act cite the need to disrupt or prevent terrorist attacks, New York City Council member Bill Perkins, who sponsored a 2004 resolution condemning the law, says, “The [USA] PATRIOT Act is really unpatriotic, it undermines our civil rights and civil liberties. We never give up our rights, that’s what makes us Americans.” Michelle Garcia, “N.Y. City Council Passes Anti-Patriot Act Measure,” Washington Post , February 5, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13970-2004Feb4.html . Opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act sparked a wave of protest across the United States. More than 330 communities in 41 states passed resolutions condemning the act. Timothy Egan, “State of the Union: Opposing the Patriot Act,” BBC News , September 13, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/3651542.stm . Librarians in Detroit reported that Muslim children had stopped checking out books on Islam out of fear they were being monitored, while librarians in New Jersey and California shredded records and computer sign-up sheets in an attempt to thwart the legislation. While citizens can protect against invasions of privacy on the Internet by limiting personal information and being careful about the information they share, the invasion of privacy through other lines of communication is more difficult to prevent. Despite fierce objections to the act, President Barack Obama signed an unamended 1-year extension of several key provisions of the PATRIOT Act (including the use of roving wire taps) in 2010. In the near future, politicians will have to decide whether citizen protection is worth the loss of liberties in the United States.

Social Networking: The Blurring of Personal and Professional

The privacy issue has strayed well beyond government legislation; it affects anyone who is currently employed or even just looking for a job. When employers consider whether or not to hire an individual, they no longer need to rely on just a résumé to obtain pertinent information. A simple Google search often reveals that a potential employee has a social networking site on the Internet, and unless privacy settings have been put in place, the employer can access everything the candidate has posted online. A 2010 survey by CareerBuilder.com revealed that 53 percent of companies check out candidates’ profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook before deciding to employ them, and a further 12 percent of companies intend to review social networking sites of potential employees in the future. Carrie-Ann Skinner, “Job Seekers, Watch Your Walls – Employers Check Facebook,” PC World , January 17, 2010, http://www.pcworld.com/article/186989/job_seekers_watch_your_walls_employers_check_facebook.html . Factors that affect an employer’s decision whether or not to hire candidates based on their social networking page include the use of drugs or drinking, the posting of discriminatory comments, or the posting of photographs deemed to be inappropriate or provocative. The survey also revealed that some candidates posted information on their social networking page that proved they had lied on their résumé. Carrie-Ann Skinner, “Job Seekers, Watch Your Walls – Employers Check Facebook,” PC World , January 17, 2010, http://www.pcworld.com/article/186989/job_seekers_watch_your_walls_employers_check_facebook.html .

As we have seen, once employees are hired, they still need to be careful about what they post on social networking sites, particularly in relation to their jobs. Cheryl James, a hospital worker from Michigan, was fired in 2010 after she posted a message on Facebook describing a patient as a “cop killer” and hoping that he would “rot in hell.” Ronnie Dahl, “Oakwood Hospital Employee Fired for Facebook Posting,” MyFOXDetroit.com , July 30, 2010, http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/oakwood-hospital-employee-fired-for-facebook-posting-20100730-wpms . A few years earlier, Virgin Atlantic Airlines terminated 13 crew members for describing passengers as “chavs” (a derogatory British term similar to “white trash”). A Virgin spokesman commented, “There is a time and a place for Facebook. But there is no justification for it to be used as a sounding board for staff of any company to criticize the very passengers who pay their salaries.” Lawrence Conway, “Virgin Atlantic Sacks 13 Staff for Calling its Flyers ‘Chavs’,” Independent (London), November 1, 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/virgin-atlantic-sacks-13-staff-for-calling-its-flyers-chavs-982192.html .

Although employees might reasonably expect to be disciplined for using social networking sites on company time—a 2009 study discovered that 54 percent of U.S. companies have banned workers from using social networks during work hours—the issue of whether companies can influence how their employees behave in their private lives is a little trickier. Sharon Gaudin, “Study: 54% of Companies Ban Facebook, Twitter at Work,” Computerworld , October 6, 2009, http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139020/Study_54_of_companies_ban_Facebook_Twitter_at_work . The outcome of a 2009 federal court case in New Jersey may have some bearing on whether companies have the right to spy on their employees while the employees are on password-protected sites using non–work computers. The case, between restaurant employees Brian Pietrylo and Doreen Marino and managers at Houston’s in Hackensack, New Jersey, centered on a forum set up by Pietrylo on MySpace. The forum, which was password-protected and required an email invitation to join, made fun of the restaurant décor and patrons and included sexual jokes and negative comments about restaurant supervisors. Restaurant hostess Karen St. Jean, who had received an invitation to the forum, showed the supervisors the site and believed they found it amusing; however, the information was passed further up the management chain, and Pietrylo and Marino were fired. The restaurant claimed that the pair’s online posts violated policies set out in the employee handbook, including professionalism and a positive attitude. Marino and Pietrylo filed for unfair dismissal, claiming that the restaurant managers had violated their privacy under New Jersey law. Following a trial in June 2009, a federal jury agreed that the restaurant had violated state and federal laws that protect the privacy of web communications. The jury awarded Pietrylo and Marino a total of $3,400 in back pay and $13,600 in punitive damages. Charles Toutant, “Restaurateurs Invade Waiters’ MySpace,” New Jersey Law Journal , June 19, 2009, http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202431575049 .

Although the outcome of the New Jersey case may have some bearing on the use of social networking sites outside of work, employees should still exercise caution in the office. Companies are increasingly using technological advances to monitor Internet usage, track employees’ whereabouts through GPS-enabled cell phones, and even film employees’ movements via webcam or miniature video cameras. Lewis Maltby, author of workplace rights book Can They Do That? , says, “There are two trends driving the increase in monitoring. One is financial pressure. Everyone is trying to get leaner and meaner, and monitoring is one way to do it. The other reason is that it’s easier than ever. It used to be difficult and expensive to monitor employees, and now, it’s easy and cheap.” Laura Petrecca, “More Employers Use Tech to Track Workers,” USA Today , March 17, 2010, http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-03-17-workplaceprivacy15_CV_N.htm . Whereas employees using their own equipment outside of work hours might have a reasonable expectation of privacy, the situation changes when using company property. Nancy Flynn, founder of training and consulting firm ePolicy Institute, said, “Federal law gives employers the legal right to monitor all computer activity. The computer system is the property of the employer, and the employee has absolutely no reasonable expectations of privacy when using that system.” Laura Petrecca, “More Employers Use Tech to Track Workers,” USA Today , March 17, 2010, http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-03-17-workplaceprivacy15_CV_N.htm . Because this lack of privacy covers everything from instant messages sent to coworkers to emails sent from personal accounts when employees are logged onto the company network, the prudent action for employees to take is to separate their work life from their personal life as much as possible.

Restoration of Privacy

Social networking sites have come under fire in recent years for violating users’ privacy. In 2009, Facebook simplified its settings to keep up with the popularity of microblogging sites such as Twitter. One consequence of this action was that the default setting enabled status updates and photos to be seen across the entire Internet (see Chapter 11 "The Internet and Social Media" for more information about Facebook privacy settings). The social networking site has also come under criticism for a temporary glitch that gave users unintended access to their friends’ private instant messages, and for a new feature in 2010 that enabled the company to share private information with third-party websites. Although Facebook simplified its controls for sharing information by consolidating them on a single page and making it easier for users to opt out of sharing information with third-party applications, public concern prompted 14 privacy groups to file an unfair-trade complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in May 2010. Warwick Ashford, “Facebook Stands Up to Privacy Coalition,” ComputerWeekly , June 21, 2010, http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/06/21/241663/Facebook-stands-up-to-privacy-coalition.htm . Congress is currently investigating whether more government regulation of social networking sites is necessary to protect people’s privacy.

Figure 16.6

Google Street View cars breached privacy by inadvertently collecting private communications data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

Other companies, including Google, are actively attempting to restore users’ privacy. In response to revelations that the company had accidentally captured and archived wireless data with its Google Street View cars (which are equipped with cameras to provide panoramic views along many streets around the world), Google announced in 2010 that it was launching an encrypted search facility. The technology uses SSL A protocol for managing the security of message transmission on the Internet. (secure sockets layer) to protect Internet searches from being intercepted while traveling across the web. Users can activate the secure search facility by typing “https” at the beginning of the URL instead of “http.” Although the technology provides a measure of security—the search will not be archived in the computer’s history or appear in the AutoFill during a subsequent search—it is not entirely private. Google maintains a record of what people search for, and Internet users will still need to rely on the company’s promise not to abuse the data. However, if the encrypted search facility proves successful, it may become a role model for social networking sites, which could offer encryption for more than just log-ins.

• Privacy issues have become increasingly important in recent years with the rise of identity theft, workplace monitoring, and the passing of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. The PATRIOT Act was signed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It gave the federal government extended surveillance rights, including the ability to obtain roving wiretaps over multiple communication devices, seize suspects’ records without their knowledge, monitor an individual’s web-surfing and library records, and conduct surveillance of a person deemed to be suspicious but without known ties to a terrorist group. Supporters of the act claimed the provisions were essential in the efforts to prevent further terrorist attacks; however, opponents claimed that the act breached civil liberties and unfairly infringed on people’s privacy.
• Monitoring employees in the workplace has begun to stray outside of office hours, and employees are now finding their social networking sites being scanned by employers for offensive material. Inappropriate comments or photos on a social networking site may negatively affect a person’s chance of finding a job if employers use sites such as Facebook and Twitter as a means of screening applicants. The issue of whether employers are allowed to discriminate against employees based on their out-of-work activities has not been fully decided; however, in general, anything that takes place on company property or on company time may be scrutinized and used as a reason for dismissal.
• Some websites are attempting to restore privacy settings in light of recent scandals in which personal information was divulged on the Internet. Google has established an encrypted search facility that enables users to browse the web without running the risk of sensitive information being intercepted. The encryption also prevents websites from being stored on the computer’s history and stops them from appearing on the AutoFill function during future searches. However, the encryption is not entirely private because Google still retains a record of search information.

Visit the website located at http://www.eff.org/wp/effs-top-12-ways-protect-your-online-privacy . Read through the 12 tips and use them to evaluate your security on the Internet. How many of the tips do you already follow? What can you do to protect your privacy further? Keep these answers in mind as you respond to the following short-answer questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• How does the USA PATRIOT Act affect your privacy? Do you think your privacy is more secure on the Internet or through other lines of communication? Why?
• Have you experienced one of the consequences of social networking discussed in this section? How might social networking sites affect your current or future employment?
• What suggestions do you have for restoring privacy at home or in the workplace? What policies are already in effect?

16.6 Mass Media, New Technology, and the Public

• Explain the technology diffusion model.
• Identify technological failures over the past decade.
• Describe the relationship between mass media and new technology.

When the iPad went on sale in the United States in April 2010, 36-year-old graphic designer Josh Klenert described the device as “ridiculously expensive [and] way overpriced.” Connie Guglielmo, “Apple IPad’s Debut Weekend Sales May Be Surpassing Estimates,” Businessweek , April 4, 2010, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-04/apple-ipad-s-debut-weekend-sales-may-be-surpassing-estimates.html . The cost of the new technology, however, did not deter Klenert from purchasing an iPad; he preordered the tablet computer as soon as it was available and ventured down to Apple’s SoHo store in New York on opening weekend to be one of the first to buy it. Klenert, and everyone else who stood in line at the Apple store during the initial launch of the iPad, is described by sociologists as an early adopter: a tech-loving pioneer who is among the first to embrace new technology as soon as it arrives on the market. What causes a person to be an early adopter or a late adopter? What are the benefits of each? In this section you will read about the cycle of technology and how it is diffused in a society. The process and factors influencing the diffusion of new technology is often discussed in the context of a diffusion model known as the technology adoption life cycle Model that explains the process and factors influencing the diffusion of new technology. .

Diffusion of Technology: The Technology Adoption Life Cycle

Figure 16.7

Like other cultural shifts, technological advances follow a fairly standard diffusion model.

The technology adoption life cycle was originally observed during the technology diffusion studies of rural sociologists during the 1950s. University researchers George Beal, Joe Bohlen, and Everett Rogers were looking at the adoption rate of hybrid seed among Iowa farmers in an attempt to draw conclusions about how farmers accept new ideas. They discovered that the process of adoption over time fit a normal growth curve pattern—there was a slow gradual rate of adoption, then quite a rapid rate of adoption, followed by a leveling off of the adoption rate. Personal and social characteristics influenced when farmers adopted the use of hybrid seed corn; younger, better-educated farmers tended to adapt to the new technology almost as soon as it became available, whereas older, less-educated farmers waited until most other farms were using hybrid seed before they adopted the process, or they resisted change altogether.

In 1962, Rogers generalized the technology diffusion model in his book Diffusion of Innovations , using the farming research to draw conclusions about the spread of new ideas and technology. Like his fellow farming model researchers, Rogers recognizes five categories of participants: innovators Experimentalists who are interested in new technology and are usually the first to acquire it when it reaches the market. , who tend to be experimentalists and are interested in the technology itself; early adopters Technically sophisticated individuals who usually buy new technology to help solve academic or professional problems. such as Josh Klenert, who are technically sophisticated and are interested in using the technology for solving professional and academic problems; early majority Individuals who acquire new technology when it begins to grow in popularity. , who constitute the first part of the mainstream, bringing the new technology into common use; late majority Individuals who are less comfortable with new technology and are reluctant to change or adapt to it. , who are less comfortable with the technology and may be skeptical about its benefits; and laggards Individuals who are resistant to new technology and may be critical of its use by others. , who are resistant to the new technology and may be critical of its use by others. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations , 4th ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1995).

When new technology is successfully released in the market, it follows the technology adoption life cycle shown in Figure 16.7 . Innovators and early adopters, attracted by something new, want to be the first to possess the innovation, sometimes even before discovering potential uses for it, and are unconcerned with the price. When the iPad hit stores in April 2010, 120,000 units were sold on the first day, primarily as a result of presales. Sam Oliver, “Preorders for Apple iPad Slow After 120K First-Day Rush,” Apple Insider , March 15, 2010, http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/15/preorders_for_apple_ipad_slow_after_120k_first_day_rush.html . Sales dropped on days 2 and 3, suggesting that demand for the device dipped slightly after the initial first-day excitement. Within the first month, Apple had sold 1,000,000 iPads, exceeding industry expectations. Jim Goldman, “Apple Sells 1 Million iPads,” CNBC , May 3, 2010, http://www.cnbc.com/id/36911690/Apple_Sells_1_Million_iPads . However, many mainstream consumers (the early majority) are waiting to find out just how popular the device will become before making a purchase. Research carried out in the United Kingdom suggests that many consumers are uncertain how the iPad will fit into their lives—the survey drew comments such as “Everything it does I can do on my PC or my phone right now” and “It’s just a big iPod Touch…a big iPhone without the phone.” Steve O’Hear, “Report: The iPad Won’t Go Mass Market Anytime Soon,” TechCrunch , May 12, 2010, http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/report-the-ipad-wont-go-mass-market-anytime-soon/ . The report, by research group Simpson Carpenter, concludes that most consumers are “unable to find enough rational argument to justify taking the plunge.” Steve O’Hear, “Report: The iPad Won’t Go Mass Market Anytime Soon,” TechCrunch , May 12, 2010, http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/report-the-ipad-wont-go-mass-market-anytime-soon/ .

However, as with previous technological advances, the early adopters who have jumped on the iPad bandwagon may ultimately validate its potential, helping mainstream users make sense of the device and its uses. Forrester Research notes that much of the equipment acquired by early adopters—laptops, MP3 players, digital cameras, broadband Internet access at home, and mobile phones—is shifting into the mainstream. Analyst Jacqueline Anderson, who works for Forrester, said, “There’s really no group out of the tech loop. America is becoming a digital nation. Technology adoption continues to roll along, picking up more and more mainstream consumers every year.” Jenna Wortham, “The Race to Be an Early Adopter of Technologies Goes Mainstream, a Survey Finds,” New York Times , September 1, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/technology/02survey.html . To cite just one example, in 2008 nearly 10 million American households added HDTV, an increase of 27 percent over the previous year. Jenna Wortham, “The Race to Be an Early Adopter of Technologies Goes Mainstream, a Survey Finds,” New York Times , September 1, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/technology/02survey.html . By the time most technology reaches mainstream consumers, it is more established, more user-friendly, and cheaper than earlier versions or prototypes. In June 2010, Amazon.com slashed the price of its Kindle e-reader from $259 to $189 and in 2012 to $79 in response to competition from Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Jeffry Bartash, “Amazon Drops Kindle Price to $189,” MarketWatch , June 21, 2010, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-drops-kindle-price-to-189-2010-06-21 . Companies frequently reduce the price of technological devices once the initial novelty wears off, as a result of competition from other manufacturers or as a strategy to retain market share.

Although many people ultimately adapt to new technology, some are extremely resistant or unwilling to change at all. When Netscape web browser user John Uribe was repeatedly urged by a message from parent company AOL to switch to one of Netscape’s successors, Firefox or Flock, he ignored the suggestions. Despite being informed that AOL would stop providing support for the web browser service in March 2008, Uribe continued to use it. “It’s kind of irrational,” Mr. Uribe said. “It worked for me, so I stuck with it. Until there is really some reason to totally abandon it, I won’t.” Miguel Helft, “Tech’s Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True,” New York Times , March 12, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/technology/12inertia.html . Uribe is a self-confessed late adopter—he still uses dial-up Internet service and is happy to carry on using his aging Dell computer with its small amount of memory. Members of the late majority make up a large percentage of the U.S. population—a 2010 survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau found that despite the technology’s widespread availability, 40 percent of households across the United States have no high-speed or broadband Internet connection, while 30 percent have no Internet at all. Lance Whitney, “Survey: 40 Percent in U.S. Have No Broadband,” CNET , February 16, 2010, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10454133-94.html . Of 32.1 million households in urban areas, the most common reason for not having high-speed Internet was a lack of interest or a lack of need for the technology. Lance Whitney, “Survey: 40 Percent in U.S. Have No Broadband,” CNET , February 16, 2010, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10454133-94.html .

Figure 16.8

The most common reason that people in both rural and urban areas do not have high-speed Internet is a lack of interest in the technology.

Experts claim that, rather than slowing down the progression of new technological developments, laggards in the technology adoption life cycle may help to control the development of new technology. Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster, said, “Laggards have a bad rap, but they are crucial in pacing the nature of change. Innovation requires the push of early adopters and the pull of laypeople asking whether something really works. If this was a world in which only early adopters got to choose, we’d all be using CB radios and quadraphonic stereo.” Miguel Helft, “Tech’s Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True,” New York Times , March 12, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/technology/12inertia.html . He added that aspects of the laggard and early adopter coexist in most people. For example, many consumers buy the latest digital camera and end up using just a fraction of its functions. Technological laggards may be the reason that not every new technology becomes a mainstream trend (see sidebar).

Not Consumer-Approved: Technological Flops

Have you ever heard of the Apple Newton? How about Microsoft Bob? Or DIVX? For most people, the names probably mean very little because these were all flash-in-the-pan technologies that never caught on with mainstream consumers.

The Apple Newton was an early PDA, officially known as the MessagePad. Introduced by Apple in 1993, the Newton contained many of the features now popularized by modern smartphones, including personal information management and add-on storage slots. Despite clever advertising and relentless word-of-mouth campaigns, the Newton failed to achieve anything like the popularity enjoyed by most Apple products. Hampered by its large size compared to more recent equivalents (such as the PalmPilot) and its cost—basic models cost around $700, with more advanced models costing up to $1,000—the Newton was also ridiculed by talk show comedians and cartoonists because of the supposed inaccuracy of its handwriting-recognition function. By 1998, the Newton was no more. A prime example of an idea that was ahead of its time, the Newton was the forerunner to the smaller, cheaper, and more successful PalmPilot, which in turn paved the way for every successive mobile Internet device.

Even less successful in the late 1990s was DIVX, an attempt by electronics retailer Circuit City to create an alternative to video rental. Customers could rent movies on disposable DIVX discs that they could keep and watch for 2 days. They then had the choice of throwing away or recycling the disc or paying a continuation fee to keep watching it. Viewers who wanted to watch a disc an unlimited amount of times could pay to convert it into a “DIVX silver” disc for an additional fee. Launched in 1998, the DIVX system was promoted as an alternative to traditional rental systems with the promise of no returns and no late fees. However, its introduction coincided with the release of DVD technology, which was gaining traction over the DIVX format. Consumers feared that the choice between DIVX and DVD might turn into another Betamax versus VHS debacle, and by 1999 the technology was all but obsolete. The failure of DIVX cost Circuit City a reported $114,000,000 and left early enthusiasts of the scheme with worthless DIVX equipment (although vendors offered a $100 refund for people who bought a DIVX player). Nick Mokey, “Tech We Regret,” Digital Trends , March 18, 2009, http://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/tech-we-regret/ .

Another catastrophic failure in the world of technology was Microsoft Bob, a mid-1990s attempt to provide a new, nontechnical interface to desktop computing operations. Bob, represented by a logo with a yellow smiley face that filled the o in its name, was supposed to make Windows more palatable to nontechnical users. With a cartoon-like interface that was meant to resemble the inside of a house, Bob helped users navigate their way around the desktop by having them click on objects in each room. Microsoft expected sales of Bob to skyrocket and held a big advertising campaign to celebrate its 1995 launch. Instead, the product failed dismally because of its high initial sale price, demanding hardware requirements, and tendency to patronize users. When Windows 95 was launched the same year, its new Windows Explorer interface required far less dumbing down than previous versions, and Microsoft Bob became irrelevant.

Technological failures such as the Apple Newton, DIVX, and Microsoft Bob prove that sometimes it is better to be a mainstream adopter than to jump on the new-product bandwagon before the technology has been fully tried and tested.

Mass Media Outlets and New Technology

As new technology reaches the shelves and the number of early majority consumers rushing to purchase it increases, mass media outlets are forced to adapt to the new medium. When the iPad’s popularity continued to grow throughout 2010 (selling 3,000,000 units within 3 months of its launch date), traditional newspapers, magazines, and television networks rushed to form partnerships with Apple, launching applications for the tablet so that consumers could directly access their content. Unconstrained by the limited amount of space available in a physical newspaper or magazine, publications such as The New York Times and USA Today are able to include more detailed reporting than they can fit in their traditional paper, as well as interactive features such as crossword puzzles and the use of video and sound. “Our iPad App is designed to take full advantage of the evolving capabilities offered by the Internet,” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times . “We see our role on the iPad as being similar to our traditional print role—to act as a thoughtful, unbiased filter and to provide our customers with information they need and can trust.” Andy Brett, “The New York Times Introduces an iPad App,” TechCrunch , April 1, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/01/new-york-times-ipad/ .

Because of Apple’s decision to ban Flash (the dominant software for online video viewing) from the iPad, some traditional television networks have been converting their video files to HTML5 in order to enable full television episodes to be screened on the device. CBS and Disney were among the first networks to offer free television content on the iPad in 2010 through the iPad’s built-in web browser, while ABC streamed its shows via an iPad application. The iPad has even managed to revive forms of traditional media that had been discontinued; in June 2010, Condé Nast announced the restoration of Gourmet magazine as an iPad application called Gourmet Live. As more media content becomes available on new technology such as the iPad, the iPod, and the various e-readers available on the market, it appeals to a broader range of consumers, becoming a self-perpetuating model.

• The technology adoption life cycle offers a diffusion model of how people accept new ideas and new technology. The model recognizes five categories of participants: innovators, who tend to be experimentalists and are interested in the technology itself; early adopters, who are technically sophisticated and are interested in using the technology for solving professional and academic problems; early majority, who constitute the first part of the mainstream, bringing the new technology into common use; late majority, who are less comfortable with the technology and may be skeptical about its benefits; and laggards, who are resistant to the new technology and may be critical of its use by others.
• When new technology is released in the market, it follows the technology adoption life cycle. Innovators and early adopters want to be the first to own the technology and are unconcerned about the cost, whereas mainstream consumers wait to find out how popular or successful the technology will become before buying it. As the technology filters into the mainstream, it becomes cheaper and more user-friendly. Some people remain resistant to new technology, however, which helps to control its development. Technological flops such as Microsoft Bob and DIVX result from skeptical late adopters or laggards refusing to purchase innovations that appear unlikely to become commercially successful.
• As new technology transitions into the mainstream, traditional media outlets have to adapt to the new technology to reach consumers. Recent examples include the development of traditional media applications for the iPad, such as newspaper, magazine, and television network apps.

Choose a technological innovation from the past 50 years and research its diffusion into the mass market. Then respond to the following short-answer questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• Does it fit the technology diffusion model?
• How quickly did the technology reach the mass market? In what ways did mass media aid the spread of this technology?
• Research similar inventions that never caught on. Why do you think this technology succeeded when so many others failed?

End-of-Chapter Assessment

Review Questions

Questions for Section 16.1 "Changes in Media Over the Last Century"

• What are the main types of traditional media, and what factors influenced their development?
• What are the main types of new media and what factors influenced their development?
• Why are new media often more successful than traditional media?

Questions for Section 16.2 "Information Delivery Methods"

• What were the main types of media used at the beginning of the 20th century?
• What factors led to the rise of a national mass culture?
• How has the Internet affected media delivery?

Questions for Section 16.3 "Modern Media Delivery: Pros and Cons"

• What are the main information delivery methods in modern media?
• Why has the Internet become a primary source of news and information?

Questions for Section 16.4 "Current Trends in Electronic Media"

• What are the main advantages of modern media delivery methods?
• What are the main disadvantages of modern media delivery methods?

Questions for Section 16.5 "Privacy Laws and the Impact of Digital Surveillance"

• What factors influenced the development of the print industry? What factors contributed to its decline?
• How has the Internet affected the print industry?
• What is likely to happen to the print industry in the future? How is print media transitioning into the digital age?

Questions for Section 16.6 "Mass Media, New Technology, and the Public"

• What are the current trends in social networking?
• How is the Internet becoming more exclusive?
• What are the effects of smartphone applications on modern media?

Critical Thinking Questions

• Is there a future for traditional media, or will it be consumed by digital technology?
• Do employers have the right to use social networking sites as a method of selecting future employees? Are employees entitled to voice their opinion on the Internet even if it damages their company’s reputation?
• Did the USA PATRIOT Act make the country a safer place, or did it violate privacy laws and undermine civil liberties?
• One of the disadvantages of modern media delivery is the lack of reliability of information on the Internet. Do you think online journalism (including blogging) will ultimately become a respected source of information, or will people continue to rely on traditional news media?
• Will a pay-for-content model work for online newspapers and magazines, or have consumers become too used to receiving their news for free?

Career Connection

As a result of rapid change in the digital age, careers in media are constantly shifting, and many people who work in the industry face an uncertain future. However, the Internet (and all the various technologies associated with it) has created numerous opportunities in the media field. Take a look at the following website and scroll down to the “Digital” section: http://www.getdegrees.com/articles/career-resources/top-60-jobs-that-will-rock-the-future/

The website lists several media careers that are on the rise, including the following:

• Media search consultant
• Interface designer
• Cloud computing engineer
• Integrated digital media specialist
• Casual game developer
• Mobile application developer

Read through the description of each career, including the links within each description. Choose one career that you are interested in pursuing, research the skills and qualifications it requires, and then write a one-page paper on what you found. Here are some other helpful websites you might like to use in your research:

• Digital Jobs of the Future: Integrated Digital Media Specialist: http://www.s2m.com.au/news/2009/11/26/digital-jobs-of-the-future-integrated-digital-media-specialist/?403
• Cloud Computing Jobs: http://cloudczar.com/
• Top Careers for College Graduates: Casual Game Development: http://www.examiner.com/x-11055-San-Diego-College-Life-Examiner~y2009m5d27-Top-careers-for-college-graduates-Casual -Game-Development
• How to Become a Mobile Application Developer: http://www.ehow.com/how_5638517_become-mobile-application-developer.html
• Mobile App Development: So Many Choices, So Few Guarantees: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/70128.html?wlc=1277823391
• 20 Websites to Help You Master User Interface Design: http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/20-websites-to-help-you-master-user-interface-design/

Traditional Media vs. New Media

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Need to write an old media vs. new media essay? Find here an A+ example! It studies the evolution of traditional to new media, explains how Internet has replaced newspapers, and gives examples.

Introduction

• Old vs. New Media

The Evolution of Traditional to New Media

Lots of people are now talking about new media as opposed to old or traditional media. However, there is still some uncertainty as regards the distinction between new and old media. Flew (2008) notes that the idea of ‘newness’ is rather subjective and relative as television and the Internet have become accessible almost simultaneously in such countries as India or China.

Other researchers suggest a particular distinction between new and old media based on the use of the Internet and digital technology (Salman et al., 2011). Noteworthy, researchers agree that the distinction between the two types of media is less important than the convergence of these types (Collins, 2013).

It is possible to state that the three standpoints are correct to a certain extent and it is possible to combine them. Thus, the distinction between old and new media is a bit blurred but still meaningful even though the two types of media are likely to converge into the third type.

Despite close connection between the two types of media, it is possible to draw the distinction between them. Logan (2010, p. 4) claims that new media “incorporate two-way communication” and are associated with computing (e.g. the Internet, social networks), while old media do not require computing (radio, print newspapers, TV). This standpoint can be easily illustrated.

Thus, newspapers and television are rather one-way sources of information. Viewers do not often participate in the creation of the programs. Admittedly, there are call-ins but the amount of participation is still irrelevant. When it comes to newspapers, they are not created by the readers.

Each piece of news is told by a journalist. Readers can only write letters or call the newspaper and it is the editor who decides whether to add the commentary to the next issue or not. However, it is necessary to note that at the era of newspapers and television there was no need in such two-way channels. People strived for news and they simply wanted to be aware of the latest events in the world.

Remarkably, people of the twenty-first century seek for networking and they want to feel connected. Boyd and Ellison (2008) stress that networking has become very popular as people feel certain empowerment. Thus, online resources are characterized by the immediate feedback (Ryan, 2010). Users post their commentaries and express their opinions on a variety of issues (Newman, 2011).

Moreover, people affect media’s agendas, so-to-speak. Jenkins (2006) mentions the story of a teenager who unintentionally caused the start of anti-American demonstrations and almost caused legal actions against himself. Internet users also feel their own relevance with the help of blogging. Keen (2010) emphasizes negative effects of such empowerment.

The researcher argues that blogging along with various applications available online makes people distracted from some really important things. Keen (2010, p. 55) articulates the idea that ‘democratized’ media only leads to the future where “everyone is an author, while there is no longer any audience”.

The present distinction is based on the degree of collaboration between producers of content and consumers. Van Dijk (2006) introduces a structural component of the distinction between new media and old media stating that the former are structurally different (i.e. two-way) from the latter (i.e. one-way).

It is also possible to differentiate between the old and new media focusing on their ‘popularity’. As far as old media are concerned, they are seen as somewhat outdated and they are declining. For instance, researchers note that there is certain decrease in newspapers circulations in many countries (Cervenka, 2005). Younger generations prefer searching the net to reading print newspapers.

Television is also losing points steadily. At the same time, the Internet and especially social networks are becoming more and more popular. Popularity of the Internet is due to its accessibility and multi-functionalism (O’Reilly, 2005). Internet users are attracted by the variety of options offered.

Thus, users can communicate, express opinions, share files, create certain communities, find information, etc. It is possible to state that this distinction is also relevant. Hence, it is possible to note that the distinction between old and new media is based on two dimensions, popularity and structure.

Remarkably, some researchers claim that there is a distinction based on the form. Chun (2005) notes that new media require computing and digital technology (unlike old media). Nevertheless, such media as online newspapers and digital TV are becoming increasingly popular. Some call these new media, but it is somewhat inaccurate. It is more appropriate to talk about the third type of media or the convergence of the two types.

Thus, Skoler (2009) states that the two types of media can facilitate each other. For instance, the author argues that social media can help develop such old media as newspapers. The researcher notes that people can continue telling stories and reporting about things they see, but it is journalists’ job to process the information and present the most relevant news only (Skoler, 2009).

This convergence of social networks and newspapers can be beneficial for both as the former get the air of confidence and the latter have access to almost unlimited sources of information.

French (2011) also claims that convergence of different types of media is beneficial for the development of the very concept of media. The researcher stresses that the so-called old media are now becoming digitalized. People have online newspapers and digital TV. They also keep using social networks and other applications. This helps people remain up-to-date and connected.

Thus, it is possible to state that the distinction between old and new media is becoming totally blurred as the third type of media occurs. It is possible to call it global, digital, collaborative and old and new media can be a characteristic of the twentieth century.

To sum up, it is possible to note that the distinction between old and new media can be based on several features. The most relevant distinction is based on the structural component and popularity. Thus, new media are characterized by computing and connectedness while old media do not possess these features.

However, it is also necessary to note that even this distinction is becoming somewhat blurred due to the changes taking place in the society of the twenty-first century.

Newspapers and TV are now digitalized and these media start being more collaborative (i.e. customers are getting involved in the process of creation of the products). This collaboration is beneficial for the media as well as the development of the society. People are now ready to collaborate and interact, which is crucial for the globalized world of the twenty-first century.

Reference List

Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2008). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 210-230.

Cervenka, A. (2005). Roles of traditional publications and new media. Innovation Journalism, 2 (4), 121-230.

Chun, W. H. K. (2005). Did somebody say new media? In W.H.K. Chun & T. Keenan (Eds.), New media, old media: A history and theory reader (pp. 1-12). New York: Routledge.

Collins, R. (2013). New bad things . Huffington Post . Web.

Flew, T. (2008). Introduction to new media. In T. Flew (Ed.), New media: An introduction (pp. 1-20). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

French, K. (2011). Emerging convergence. The Hub . Web.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide . New York: New York University Press.

Keen, A. (2010). Why we must resist the temptation of web 2.0. In B. Szoka & A. Marcus (Eds.), The next digital decade: Essays on the future of the internet (pp. 51-56). Washington: Techfreedom.

Logan, R. K. (2010). Understanding new media: Extending Marshall McLuhan . New York: Peter Lang.

Newman, N. (2011). Mainstream media and the distribution of news in the age of social discovery. Reuters Institute . Web.

O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0 . Web.

Ryan, J. (2010). The web! In J. Ryan (Ed.), A history of the internet and the digital future (pp.105-119). London: Reaktion.

Salman, A., Ibrahim, F., Abdullah, M.Y.H., Mustaffa, N., & Mahbob, M.H. (2011). The impact of new media on traditional mainstream mass media. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 16 (3), 1-11.

Skoler, M. (2009). Why the news media became irrelevant: And how social media can help. Nieman Reports . Web.

Van Dijk, J. (2006). The network society: Social aspects of new media . London: Sage.

• Broadcasting and proper use of media
• Propaganda in the Democratic Society
• Convergence of World Economies
• Convergence of Public and Private Security
• Consequences of Migration in the Twenty-First Century
• Propaganda Movement in Mass Media
• Fashion Magazines: Print Media Isn't Dead and Here's Why
• The Comparison Between the Two Different International Editions of Vogue Magazine
• Media in the society
• The Global Media Is All About Money and Profit Making
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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Essay on Mass Media

Students are often asked to write an essay on Mass Media in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Mass Media

Introduction.

Mass media refers to various platforms that communicate and distribute information to a large number of people. These include television, radio, newspapers, and the internet.

Role of Mass Media

Mass media plays a crucial role in society. It educates, entertains, and informs people. It also influences public opinion and trends.

Types of Mass Media

There are traditional forms like print media (newspapers, magazines) and broadcast media (TV, radio). The internet is a modern form, including social media, blogs, and news websites.

In conclusion, mass media is a powerful tool that can shape society. It is vital to use it responsibly for the benefit of all.

250 Words Essay on Mass Media

Introduction to mass media.

Mass media refers to the diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. It encompasses various forms of communication tools such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and digital platforms. The power of mass media lies in its ability to disseminate information, influence public opinion, and shape societal norms.

The Evolution of Mass Media

The journey of mass media began with print media, with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. The advent of electronic media, such as radio and television, in the 20th century, revolutionized the way information was shared. In the digital age, the internet has further transformed mass media, allowing for instantaneous global communication and interactivity.

Impact of Mass Media on Society

Mass media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and culture. It has the power to influence political discourse, societal norms, and individual behavior. However, it can also propagate misinformation, leading to public confusion and mistrust. Hence, the ethical use of mass media is crucial.

The Future of Mass Media

The future of mass media lies in its convergence with digital technology. With the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, mass media is likely to become even more personalized and interactive. However, this also raises concerns about privacy and the potential manipulation of information.

In conclusion, mass media, as a powerful tool of communication, has a profound impact on society. Its evolution and future developments pose both opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed responsibly.

500 Words Essay on Mass Media

Mass media, an essential component of modern society, plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and disseminating information. It includes various platforms such as newspapers, radio, television, and the internet, which collectively serve as a mirror reflecting societal norms, values, and transformations.

The Role of Mass Media

Mass media is not merely an information-dissemination tool; it is a potent force in shaping public opinion and culture. It serves as a platform for debate, influencing political discourse and social issues. It has the power to set the agenda for public discourse, highlighting certain issues while downplaying others, thereby influencing what the public perceives as significant.

Democratization of Information

The advent of the internet and digital platforms has democratized information access, transforming mass media’s role. Previously, media was a one-way communication channel, with the public as passive consumers. However, the internet has made the public active participants, enabling them to generate, share, and react to content. This shift has democratized media, giving voice to previously unheard sections of society.

Mass Media and Social Change

Mass media has the potential to drive social change by bringing social issues to the forefront. It can expose injustices, spark debates, and drive collective action. For instance, the #MeToo movement gained momentum through social media, leading to significant shifts in societal attitudes towards sexual harassment.

The Dark Side of Mass Media

The need for media literacy.

Given mass media’s influence, media literacy is crucial. It involves the ability to critically analyze media content, discerning between credible information and misinformation. Media literacy education can empower individuals, enabling them to make informed decisions and participate effectively in the digital age.

In conclusion, mass media is a double-edged sword with the power to shape society positively or negatively. As we navigate this digital age, it is crucial to harness its potential for societal good, while mitigating its negative impacts. This balancing act requires critical media literacy, stringent regulations, and active participation from all stakeholders. The future of mass media is not just about technological advancements, but also about the ethical and responsible use of these powerful platforms.

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What is the future of media?

Benjamin n.

Checked : Jack L. , Emily M.

Latest Update 26 Jan, 2024

Table of content

The entertainment arena

Data/information media, news-based media, human-made brainpower (artificial intelligence) has entered newsrooms, sound is the new media, premium versus standard content, information, information, and more information, media training.

We're moving from a period of shortage to a time of bounty. We are encountering megatrends that are evolving trade, transportation, and medicinal services, which lead to associated purchasers, on-demand benefits, web-empowered connectivity, and business.

The obvious question is, what is getting people so buoyed about the eventual fate of media? For reasons unknown, the shortage was maybe the one thing due to which media got its relevance, became dependable, and even versatile.

Here is a brief analysis of how   media   has its influence in different sectors and also its future trends. These topics are covered by custom essay writing companies who can write the cheapest essay for you.

Netflix made a move from advertisement-bolstered television to membership without a cable bill. There has been an emergence of lots of players other than Netflix. For instance, HBO, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and so on.

However, if you are looking to find out where the real drastic changes are occurring, observe Switch. It is a streaming video platform (live) that incorporates computer games and content, i.e., user-generated. It is proclaiming another sort of television where crowd and makers blend, and bona fide cooperation is driving development and revenues.

The most remarkable change in media is the quick development of content, i.e., user-generated. Data as websites, Facebook posts, tweets, alongside an enormous volume of web video, has drawn the consideration of data shoppers. There are expertly curated videos like TED Talks and Kahn Institute at the top, and a gigantic assortment of client produced tips, how-tos, and videos of opinions.

While you probably won't consider UGC media, the straightforward certainty is that an ever-increasing number of media — video specifically — is originating from non-proficient sources. What's more, interest is the thing that energizes incomes, so every viewing or reading of UGC is removing dollars from the pocket of old media.

Crowds will keep on moving their review to UGC, and specialty subjects. The development in new systems and SVOD administrations will cut away at sponsor-supported systems. People getting engaged in things like Instagram and Snapchat will make the fate of data sharing from peer-to-peer.

In this sector, things are a little tricky and, to some degree, overwhelming. News is meant to be for public service. The regional/local papers were a calling, not a profit-making place. Television channels were required to host local news and programming of public service for keeping their Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license. What's more, channels of cable news all worked into, some degree, a game of propertied equalization and objectivity.

A few events changed everything. Print — magazines, papers, and even books shifted to web-conveyed productions, and the iPhone empowered. Some would state-dependent, clients to expend short, stackable media and zippy, cell phone-sized video.

News, when held to the cauldron of entertainment and profit, rapidly winds up confronting a hopeless future. All around created news contacts a moderately little crowd and is expensive to deliver. Vulgar, stunning, stubborn, and even phony news is relatively modest to deliver and regularly becomes a web sensation. That implies a bigger crowd and more income.

News, as we've known it, is at serious risk — and except if endorsers step in to supplant promotion income, which is a long way from certain, we may get ourselves incapable of isolating reality from fiction.

Let’s look at some   media trends   for the future:

Artificial intelligence is now being used in numerous editorial newsrooms of worldwide press organizations. This computer-based intelligence productivity gives correspondents time for higher effect work. The robot can be viewed as the columnist's aide of things to come.

The voice will turn into the door to media going ahead. The voice assistant will become more exceptional and progressively useful consistently. The voice-actuated speaker is, as of now, becoming quicker than cell phones at a comparable stage. Whether news utilization is, as of today, restricted on these gadgets, there is a developing pattern demonstrating that content utilization should be adjusted for mobility. Media are beginning to utilize voice assistants for news distribution (for instance, news flashes, sports results, forecasts of weather, etc.), and such a trend is on the rise.

Premium content will be a state of the propagation of news ventures. Media utilization is going through another cycle. Perusers are increasingly more mindful of the significance of confided in data, importance, and importance of the news. If top-notch content infers a value, it might likewise suggest high-quality content like insightful detailing or knowing the facts deeply. Data monetizing will apply for differentiated news coverage encounters. It will be an additional worth that perusers are searching for now, particularly with imaginative technology connected to sound and mobility.

It is stunning what should be possible with data. Data is both an apparatus and resource. Organized information is vital for simulated intelligence, estimation pointers, content syndication, and so on. Data is everything: words, pictures, figures, etc. Global news offices are utilizing information for robot composing, dynamic videos, infographics, and significantly more. For news merchants, alarming customers on the streamlining of words in titles, sub-heads, and subtitles of pictures is fundamental. The more the data is recorded in databases, the higher are the odds that it might be utilized by robots/journalists.

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Advancing the educating and learning of media proficiency to students – and past – is today more significant than any time in recent memory. There is an earnestness to apply critical thinking in media and news messages and to utilize online networking to make content. Loads of students can't recognize realities from fiction on the web, and in a torrential slide of data, it should be instructed if a source is trustworthy or not. Media training is a way of participating in the monetary and civic life of the majority rules system (democracy). We all in the media business have a task to carry out in teaching.

Here’s what predicted for the future of media:

• The web-driven, the 24-hour sequence of media reports makes it difficult to deliver or devour media that needs attention.
• Social interest and sharing will drive properties and effective media systems.
• What's to come isn't straight. Facebook Watch might be the eventual fate of television, or it may not.

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Tumblr — The Further Coming Evolvement of Mass Media

The Further Coming Evolvement of Mass Media

• Categories: Tumblr

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Words: 1291 |

Published: Jan 29, 2019

Words: 1291 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

The Future of Mass Media in Our Society

Works cited.

• Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.
• Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital marketing: Strategy, implementation and practice. Pearson UK.
• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. NYU Press.
• Johnson, S. (2013). Future perfect: The case for progress in a networked age. Riverhead Books.
• Küng, L., Picard, R. G., & Towse, R. (Eds.). (2008). The internet and the mass media. SAGE Publications.
• Livingstone, S., & Helsper, E. J. (2007). Gradations in digital inclusion: Children, young people and the digital divide. New Media & Society, 9(4), 671-696.
• McQuail, D., & Windahl, S. (2015). Communication models: For the study of mass communications. Routledge.
• O'Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Communications & Strategies, 65(1), 17-37.
• Pavlik, J. V. (2013). Media in the digital age. Columbia University Press.
• Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. Penguin Books.

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Essay On Mass Media

500 words essay on mass media.

All kinds of different tools which come in use to help in distributing and circulating information and entertainment to the public come under the term of mass media. In other words, everything including radio, newspapers , cable, television and theatre are parts of mass media. These tools include exchanging opinions and public involvement. Through essay on mass media, we will go through it in detail.

Introduction to Mass Media

In today’s world, mass media embraces internet , cell phones, electronic mail, computers, pagers and satellites. All these new additions function as transmitting information from a single source to multiple receivers.

In other words, they are interactive and work on the person to person formula. Thus, it revolves around the masses i.e. the people. It is true that radio, television, press and cinema are in the spotlight when we talk about mass media.

Nonetheless, the role of pamphlets, books, magazines, posters, billboards, and more also have equal importance if not less. Moreover, the reach of these tools extends to a huge amount of masses living all over the country.

Television, cinema, radio and press are comparatively expensive forms of media which private financial institutions or the Government runs. These tools centre on the idea of mass production and mass distribution.

Therefore, newspapers, television and radio cater to the needs of the mass audience and accommodates their taste. As a result, it will not always be refined or sophisticated. In other words, it displays popular culture.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

The Function of Mass Media

The main function of mass media is to reach out to the masses and provide them with information. In addition to that, it also operates to analyze and observe our surroundings and provide information in the form of news accordingly.

As a result, the masses get constantly updated about not just their own surroundings but also around the world. This way mass media spreads and interprets information. For instance, weather forecasts equip people and farmers to plan ahead.

Similarly, fishermen get updates about the tidal activities from the news. In addition to this, mass media also strives to keep the fabric of our social heritage intact which showcasing our customs, myths and civilization.

Another major product of mass media is advertising. This way people learn about the goods and services in the market. It also spreads social awareness. For instance, anti-smoking campaign, women empowerment, green earth clean earth and more.

Most importantly, with the numerous mediums available in multiple languages, the masses get entertainment in their own language easily. Millions of people get to access a cheap source of relaxation and pass their time. In fact, it also helps to transport momentarily from our ordinary lives to a dream world. Thus, it remains the undisputed leader in reaching out to the masses.

Conclusion of Essay on Mass Media

All in all, while it is an effective tool, we must also keep a check on its consumption. In other words, it has the power to create and destroy. Nonetheless, it is a medium which can bring about a change in the masses. Thus, everyone must utilize and consume it properly.

FAQ on Essay on Mass Media

Question 1: Why is mass media important?

Answer 1: Mass media is essential as it informs, educates and entertains the public. Moreover, it also influences the way we look at the world. In other words, it helps in organizing public opinion.

Question 2: How does mass media affect our lives?

Answer 2: Mass media affects many aspects of human life, which range from the way we vote to our individual views and beliefs. Most importantly, it also helps in debunking false information.

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Top 10: Science in 2016

The 4th revolution: delegated intelligence and its shadows, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, can rainfall and climate change increase the risk of volcanic eruptions, featured author, latest book, first the media, then us: how the internet changed the fundamental nature of the communication and its relationship with the audience.

In just one generation the Internet changed the way we make and experience nearly all of media. Today the very act of consuming media creates an entirely new form of it: the social data layer that tells the story of what we like, what we watch, who and what we pay attention to, and our location when doing so.

The audience, once passive, is now cast in a more central and influential role than ever before. And like anyone suddenly thrust in the spotlight, we’ve been learning a lot, and fast.

This social data layer reveals so much about our behavior that it programs programmers as much as they program us. Writers for the blog website  Gawker  watch real-time web consumption statistics on all of their posts—and they instantly learn how to craft content to best command an audience. The head programmer for Fox Television Network similarly has a readout that gives an in-depth analysis of audience behavior, interest, and sentiment. In the run-up to the final episode of the American television drama  Breaking Bad , the series was drawing up to 100,000 tweets a day, a clear indication that the audience was as interested in what it had to say as what the producers were creating.

All this connected conversation is changing audiences as well. Like Narcissus, we are drawn to ourselves online and to the siren of ever-more social connections. In her book  Alone Together , Sherry Turkle (2011) points out that at this time of maximum social connection, we may be experiencing fewer genuine connections than ever before. The renowned media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1968, 73) saw the potential for this more than 40 years ago when he observed that  augmentation leads to amputation . In other words, in a car we don’t use our feet—we hit the road and our limbs go into limbo. With cell phones and social devices, we are connected to screens and virtually to friends worldwide, but we may forfeit an authentic connection to the world. Essentially, we arrive at Turkle’s “alone together” state.

In the past, one could turn the media off—put it down, go offline. Now that’s becoming the exception, and for many, an uncomfortable one. Suggest to a young person today that she go offline and she’ll ask, “Offline, what’s that?” or “Why am I being punished?” We are almost always connected to an Internet-enabled device, whether in the form of a smartphone, fitness monitor, car, or screen. We are augmented by sensors, signals, and servers that record vast amounts of data about how we lead our everyday lives, the people we know, the media we consume, and the information we seek. The media, in effect, follows us everywhere, and we’re becoming anesthetized to its presence.

It is jarring to realize that the implication of this total media environment was also anticipated more than 40 years ago by McLuhan. When he spoke of the “global village,” his point was not just that we’d be connected to one another. He was concerned that we’d all know each other’s business, that we’d lose a measure of privacy as a result of living in a world of such intimate awareness. McLuhan (1969) called this “retribalizing,” in the sense that modern media would lead us to mimic the behavior of tribal villages. Today, the effects of this phenomenon help define the media environment: we consciously manage ourselves as brands online; we are more concerned than ever with each other’s business; and we are more easily called out or shamed than in the bygone (and more anonymous) mass communication era.

We maintain deeply intimate relationships with our connected devices. Within minutes of waking up, most of us reach for a smartphone. We go on to check them 150 or more times throughout the day, spending all but two waking hours with a mobile device nearby (IDC 2013). As these devices become omnipresent, more and more data about our lives is nearly permanently stored on servers and made searchable by others (including private corporations and government agencies).

This idea that everything we do can be measured, quantified, and stored is a fundamental shift in the human condition. For thousands of years we’ve had the notion of accountability to an all-seeing, all-knowing God. He kept tabs on us, for our own salvation. It’s one of the things that made religion effective. Now, in just a few thousand days, we’ve deployed the actual all-seeing, all-knowing network here on earth—for purposes less lofty than His, and perhaps even more effective.

We are also in the midst of an unprecedented era of media invention. We’ve passed from the first web-based Internet to the always-connected post-PC world. We will soon find ourselves in an age of pervasive computing, where all devices and things in our built world will be connected and responsive, with the ability to collect and emit data. This has been called the  Internet of Things .

In the recent past, the pace of technological change has been rapid—but it is accelerating quickly. One set of numbers tells the story. In 1995, the Internet connected together about 50 million devices. In 2011, the number of connections exceeded 4.3 billion (at the time roughly half of these were people and half were machines). We ran out of Internet addresses that year and are now adopting a new address mechanism called IPv6. This scheme will allow for about 340 billion billion billion billion unique IP addresses. That’s probably the largest number ever seriously used by mankind in the design of anything. (The universe has roughly 40 orders of magnitude more atoms than we have Internet addresses, but man didn’t invent the universe and for the purpose of this chapter it is not a communication medium, so we’ll move on.)

Here is a big number we will contend with, and soon: there will likely be one trillion Internet-connected devices in about 15 years. Nothing on earth will grow faster than this medium or the number of connected devices and the data they emit. Most of these devices will not be people, of course, but the impact of a trillion devices emitting signals and telling stories on our mediated world cannot be overstated.

To visualize the size of all this, imagine the volume of Internet connections in 1995 as the size of the Moon. The Internet of today would be the size of Earth. And the Internet in 15 years the size of giant Jupiter!

Exponential change like this matters because it points out how unreliable it is to predict how media will be used tomorrow. Examining the spotty record of past predictions is humbling and helps open our minds to the future.

In 1878, the year after he invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison had no idea how it would be used; or rather, he had scores of ideas—but he could not come up a priori with the killer application of his hardware. Edison was a shrewd inventor who kept meticulous notes. Here were his top 10 ideas for the use of the phonograph:

• Letter writing, and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.
• Photographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part.
• The teaching of elocution.
• Music—the phonograph will undoubtedly be liberally devoted to music.
• The family record; preserving the sayings, the voices, and the last words of the dying members of the family, as of great men.
• Music boxes, toys, etc.—A doll which may speak, sing, cry or laugh may be promised our children for the Christmas holidays ensuing.
• Clocks, that should announce in speech the hour of the day, call you to lunch, send your lover home at ten, etc.
• The preservation of language by reproduction of our Washingtons, our Lincolns, our Gladstones.
• Educational purposes; such as preserving the instructions of a teacher so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment; or learn spelling lessons.
• The perfection or advancement of the telephone’s art by the phonograph, making that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent records.

He first attempted a business centered on stenographer-free letter writing. That failed, largely because it was a big threat to the incumbent player—stenographers. It would be years (and a few recapitalizations) later that music would emerge as the business of phonographs. And this was a business that survived for well over 100 years before cratering.

When I reflect on my own career, I see this pattern of trying to understand—“Exactly what is this anyway?”—constantly repeat itself. In 1993, I collaborated with Bill Gates (1995) as he wrote  The Road Ahead . The book outlined what Gates believed would be implications of the personal computing revolution and envisioned a future profoundly impacted by the advent of what would become the Internet. At the time, we called this a “global information superhighway.”

I was working with Gates on envisioning the future of television. This was one year before the launch of the Netscape (then Mosaic) browser brought the World Wide Web to the masses. In 1993, we knew that in the coming years there would be broadband and new distribution channels to connected homes. But the idea that this would all be based on an open Internet eluded us completely. We understood what technology was coming down the pike. But we could not predict how it would be used, or that it would look so different from what we had grown accustomed to, which was centralized media companies delivering mass media content from the top down. In 1993 what we (and Al Gore) imagined was an “information superhighway”—Gates and I believed that this would be a means to deliver Hollywood content to the homes of connected people.

We understood that the Internet would be a means to pipe content to connected homes and to share information. But here’s what we missed:

• User-Generated Anything . The idea that the audience, who we treated as mere consumers, would make their own content and fascinate one another with their own ideas, pictures, videos,  feeds , and taste preferences ( Likes ) was fantastical. We knew people would publish content—this had been taking place on online bulletin boards and other services for years. But the idea that the public would be such a big part of the media equation simply did not make sense.
• The Audience As Distributor, Curator, Arbiter . We’d all be able to find content, because someone big like Microsoft would publish it. The idea that what the audience liked or paid attention to would itself be a key factor in distribution was similarly unfathomable. It would take the invention of Google and its PageRank algorithm to make clear that what everyone was paying attention to was one of the most important (and disruptive) tools in all of media. In the early 2000s, the rise of social media and then social networks would make this idea central.
• The Long Tail . In retrospect, it seems obvious: in a world of record shops and video rental stores it cost money to stock physical merchandise. Those economics meant stocking hits was more cost-effective than keeping less popular content on the shelves. But online, where the entire world’s content can be kept on servers, the economics flip: unpopular content is no more expensive to provision that a blockbuster move. As a result, audiences would fracture and find even the most obscure content online more easily than they could at Blockbuster or Borders. This idea was first floated by Clay Shirky in 2003, and then popularized by  Wired ’s Chris Anderson in 2004. That was also the year Amazon was founded, which is arguably the company that has capitalized on this trend most. It has been one of the most pervasive and disruptive impacts of the Internet. For not only has the long tail made anything available, but in disintermediating traditional distribution channels it has concentrated power in the hands of the new media giants of today: Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. (And Microsoft is still struggling to be a relevant actor in this arena.)
• The Open Internet . We missed that the architecture of the Internet would be open and power would be distributed. That any one node could be a server or a directory was not how industry or the media business, both hierarchal, had worked. The Internet was crafted for military and academic purposes, and coded into it was a very specific value set about openness with no central point of control. This openness has been central to the rapid growth of all forms of new media. Both diversity and openness have defined the media environment for the last generation. This was no accident—it was an act of willful design, not technological determinism. Bob Khan at DARPA and the team at BBN that crafted the Internet had in mind a specific and radical design. In fact, they first approached AT&T to help create the precursor of the Internet and the American communication giant refused—they wanted no part in building a massive network that they couldn’t control. They were right: not only was it nearly impossible to control, but it devoured the telephony business. But as today’s net neutrality battles point out, the effort to reassert control on the Internet is very real. For 50 years the Cold War was the major ideological battle between the free world and the totalitarian world. Today, it’s a battle for openness on the Internet. The issues—political and economic at their core—continue to underpin the nature of media on the Internet.

The Internet Gives Television a Second Act

New media always change the media that came before it, though often in unexpected ways. When television was born, pundits predicted it would be the death of the book. (It wasn’t.) The death of television was a widely predicted outcome of Internet distribution, the long tail, new content creators, and user-generated media. This caused fear in Hollywood and a certain delight, even schadenfreude in Silicon Valley. At conferences, technology executives took great pleasure in taunting  old media  with its novel forms and reminding the establishment that “it is only a matter of time.” New media would fracture audiences, and social media would hijack the public’s attention. The Internet was set to unleash an attention-deficit-disorder epidemic, leading viewers away from traditional television programming en masse. Yet television is doing better than ever. What happened?

As it turns out, the most widely discussed topic on social media is television. One third of Twitter users in the United States post about television (Bauder 2012), and more than 10 percent of all tweets are directly related to television programming (Thornton 2013). New forms of content (as well as new distribution methods) have increased the primacy of great programming, not diminished it. Competing platforms from Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and others have meant more competition for both network and cable television networks—and more power for program creators over whose content all the new distributors are fighting.

Despite the volume of content accessible via online platforms—100 minutes of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute—people still spend much of their time watching television, and television programming continues to reach a large majority of the population in developed countries. In the United States, people consume an average of 4 hours and 39 minutes of television every day (Selter 2012). In the United Kingdom, nearly 54.2 million people (or about 95 percent of the population above the age of four) watch television in a given week (Deloitte 2012). Thus, it appears that the “demise of television” is far from imminent (Khurana 2012).

In fact, television is better than it has ever been. Few predicted, even five years ago, that we would find ourselves in the middle of a new golden age in television. There is more content vying for our attention than ever before, and yet a number of rich, complex, and critically-acclaimed series have emerged. Shows like  Heroes , Mad Men ,  Breaking Bad ,  Game of Thrones , and  Homeland  are a testament to the success with which television has adapted to a new and challenging climate.

Networks are now developing niche shows for smaller audiences, and thrive on distribution and redistribution through new platforms. Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and HBO GO have pioneered new forms of viewing and served as the catalyst for innovative business deals. The practice of  binge viewing , in which we watch an entire season (or more) of a program in a short amount of time, is a product of on-demand streaming sites and social media. Before, viewers would have to consume episodes of televisions as they were aired or wait for syndication. Boxed DVD seasons were another way that audiences could consume many episodes at once, but this often meant waiting for networks to trickle out seasons spaced over time. Now, networks are pushing whole seasons to platforms such as Netflix at once. With enough spare time, one can now digest a whole series in an extremely condensed time frame.

This has changed not only our viewing habits, but also the nature of television content. Screenwriters are now able to develop deeper and more complex storylines than they ever had before. Where once lengthy, complex, and involved storylines were the domain of video games, we see this type of storytelling in drama series with some regularity. In addition, television shows are now constructed differently. As audiences become more conscious of the media and media creators, we find that programming is much more self-referential. Jokes on shows like  The Simpsons ,  Family Guy ,  30 Rock , and  The Daily Show  are often jokes about the media.

The consumption of television via on-demand streaming sites is not the only significant change to how we consume television content. There has been a tremendous shift in how we engage with television programming and how we interact with one another around television.

During the early decades of television, television viewing was a scheduled activity that drew groups of people together in both private homes and public spaces. The programming served as the impetus for such gatherings, and television watching was the primary activity of those who were seated in living rooms or stood before television sets in department stores or bars. Television continued to serve as a group medium through the 1960s and 1970s, but technological innovations ultimately transformed viewer behavior. The remote control, the videotape, the DVR, and mobile devices have led people to consume television content in greater quantities, but they do so increasingly in isolation. Once a highly anticipated social event, television programming is now an omnipresent environmental factor.

As television moved from a communal appointment medium to an individual activity initiated on demand, the community aspect of television has moved to the Internet. We have recreated the social function of television, which was once confined to living rooms, online—the conversation about television has expanded to a global level on social networking sites.

The sharp rise in multiscreen consumption is perhaps one of the most significant changes in modern media consumption, and has been a source of both excitement and concern among television network and technology executives alike. This form of media multitasking, in which a viewer engages with two or more screened devices at once, now accounts for 41 percent of time spent in front of television screens (Moses 2012). More than 60 percent of tablet users (Johnson 2012) and nearly 90 percent of smartphone users (Nielsen 2012) report watching television while using their devices.

Currently, television viewers are more likely to engage with content about television programming (such as Tweets or Facebook status updates) on complementary devices than they are to consume supplementary programming (such as simulcast sports footage) on a second screen. What is clear is that even if we are watching television in isolation, we are not watching alone.

Even when we’re alone, we often watch television with friends. Some 60 percent of viewers watch TV while also using a social network. Of this group, 40 percent discuss what they are currently watching on television via social networks (Ericsson 2012). More than half of 16 to 24-year-olds regularly use complementary devices to communicate with others via messaging, e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter about programs being watched on television (Ericsson 2012).

With all of this online communication, of course, comes data. With exacting precision, Twitter can monitor what causes viewers to post about a given program. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, a performance by Jay-Z and Kanye West generated approximately 70,000 tweets per minute (Twitter 2013). Later in the program, the beginning of a performance by Beyoncé generated more than 90,000 tweets per minute. Before she exited the stage, the superstar revealed her pregnancy by unbuttoning her costume. Tweets spiked at 8,868 per second, shattering records set on the social network shortly after such significant events as the resignation of Steve Jobs and the death of Osama Bin Laden (Hernandez 2011).

It is clear that television programming drives social media interaction. But do tweets drive consumers to tune in to a particular program? A report by Nielsen (2013) suggests that there is a two-way causal relationship between tuning in for a broadcast program and the Twitter conversation about that particular program. In nearly half of 221 primetime episodes analyzed in the study, higher levels of tweeting corresponded with additional viewers tuning in to the programming. The report also showed that the volume of tweets sent about a particular program caused significant changes in ratings among nearly 30 percent of the episodes.

The second-screen conversation about television programming is not limited to Twitter. Trendrr (2013), a social networking data analysis platform, recorded five times as much second-screen Facebook activity during one week in May 2013 than on all other social networks combined. Facebook recently released tools that will allow partner networks, including CNN and NBC, to better understand second-screen conversation taking place on the social network as it happens (Gross 2013). Using these tools, it is now possible to break down the number of Facebook posts that mention a certain term during a given time frame.

This real-time data—about who is watching television, where they are watching it from, and what they are saying about it—is of interest not just to television executives and advertisers, but the audience, too. There are several drivers for social television watching behavior, including not wanting to watch alone and the desire to connect with others (Ericsson 2012). Beyond connecting with the audience at large, dual-screen television viewers report using social networks to seek additional information about the program they are watching and to validate their opinions against a public sample.

I’ve witnessed times in my own life where watching TV alone became unacceptable. In order to make my viewing experience tolerable, I needed to lean on the rest of the viewing audience’s sensibility. Moments like these changed my relationship to the medium of television forever.

In January 2009, I watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama on television along with 37.8 million other Americans. As Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office, he strayed from the wording specified in the United States Constitution. I recognized that something had gone wrong—the president and the chief justice flubbed the oath? How could that be? What happened? I immediately turned to Twitter—and watched as everyone else was having the same instantaneous reaction. The audience provided context. I knew what was going on.

Twitter was equally useful to me during Super Bowl XLV when the Black Eyed Peas performed at the halftime show. The pop stars descended from the rafters of Cowboys Stadium and launched into a rendition of their hit song “I Gotta Feeling.” It sounded awful. I turned to my girlfriend in dismay: “There is something wrong with the television. My speakers must have blown! There is no way that a performance during the most-watched television event of all time sounds this horrible.” After tinkering with my sound system to no avail, I thought, “Maybe it’s not me. Could it be? Do they really sound this bad?” A quick check of Twitter allayed my fears of technical difficulties—yes, the Black Eyed Peas sounded terrible. My sound system was fine.

As the level of comfort with and reliance upon multiscreen media consumption grows among audiences, content producers are developing rich second-screen experiences for audiences that enhance the viewing experience.

For example, the Lifetime channel launched a substantial second-screen engagement for the 12th season of reality fashion competition  Project Runway  (Kondolojy 2013). By visiting playrunway.com during live broadcasts of the show, fans could vote in opinion polls and see results displayed instantly on their television screens. In addition to interactive voting, fans could access short-form video, blogs, and photo galleries via mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.

There are indications that second-screen consumption will move beyond the living room and into venues like movie theaters and sports stadiums. In connection with the theatrical rerelease of the 1989 classic  The Little Mermaid , Disney has created an iPad app called “Second Screen Live” that will allow moviegoers to play games, compete with fellow audience members, and sing along with the film’s score from their theater seats (Stedman 2013). In 2014, Major League Baseball will launch an application for wearable computing device Google Glass that will display real-time statistics to fans at baseball stadiums (Thornburgh 2013).

Music: Reworked, Redistributed, and Re-Experienced Courtesy of the Internet

The Internet has also completely transformed the way music is distributed and experienced. In less than a decade physical media (the LP and the CD) gave way to the MP3. Less than a decade after that, cloud-based music services and social sharing have become the norm. These shifts took place despite a music industry that did all it could to resist the digital revolution—until after it had already happened! The shareable, downloadable MP3 surfaced on the early web of the mid-1990s, and the music industry largely failed to recognize its potential. By the early 2000s, the Recording Industry Association of America had filed high-profile lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharing services like Napster and Limewire (as well as private persons caught downloading music via their networks). Total revenue from music sales in the United States plummeted from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in just ten years (Goldman 2010).

The truth was inescapable: its unwillingness to adopt new distribution platforms had badly hurt the music industry’s bottom line. Television (having watched the music debacle) adjusted far better to the realities of the content business in the digital age. But the recording industry was forced to catch up to its audience, which was already getting much of its music online (legally or otherwise). Only in recent years did major labels agree to distribution deals with cloud-streaming services including Spotify, Rdio, iHeartRadio, and MOG. The music industry has experienced a slight increase in revenues in the past year, which can be attributed to both digital music sales and streaming royalties (Faughnder 2013).

Ironically, what the music industry fought so hard to prevent (free music and sharing) in the early days of the web is exactly what they ended up with today. There is more music available online now than ever before, and much of it is available for free.

Applications like Spotify and Pandora give users access to vast catalogs of recorded music, and sites like SoundCloud and YouTube have enabled a new generation of artists to distribute their music with ease. There is also a social layer to many music services. Their sites and applications are designed to allow users to share their favorite songs, albums, and artists with one another. Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube (among others) enable playlist sharing.

The rapid evolution of online music platforms has led to fundamental changes in the way we interact with music. The process of discovering and digesting music has become an almost frictionless process. Being able to tell Pandora what you like and have it invoke a personalized radio station tailored to your tastes is not only more convenient that what came before it, it’s a qualitatively different medium. Gone are the days when learning about a new artist required flipping through the pages of a magazine (not to mention through stacks of albums at the record store).

As a kid I didn’t have much of a popular music collection, which was somewhat traumatic whenever it came to throwing a party or having friends over. The cool kids had collections; the rest didn’t. Telling friends to bring all their LPs over for the night didn’t make a lot of sense growing up in New York City, where they’d have to drag them along in a taxi or public bus. Fast forward to 2011. I was hosting a cocktail party at my home in San Francisco, which became an experiment in observing the effect of different kinds of Internet music services. In the kitchen, I played music via an iPod that contained songs and albums I had purchased over the years. (And my collection still was not as good as my cool friends.) In the living room, I streamed music via the Pandora app on my iPhone. Guests would pick stations, skip songs, or add variety as the night went on. Upstairs, I ran Spotify from my laptop. I had followed, as the service allows you to do, two friends whose taste I really admired—a DJ from New York, and a young woman from the Bay Area who frequently posted pictures of herself at music festivals to Facebook. In playing a few of their playlists, I had created the ultimate party soundtrack. I came across as a supremely hip host, without having to curate the music myself. Ultimately, everyone gravitated upstairs to dance to  my  Spotify soundtrack.

The iPod, Pandora, and Spotify all allowed me to digitally deliver music to my guests. However, each delivery device is fundamentally different. Adding music to an iPod is far from a frictionless process. I had purchased the songs on my iPod over the course of several years, and to discover this music I depended on word of mouth of friends or the once-rudimentary recommendations of the iTunes store. Before the introduction of iCloud in 2011, users had to upload songs from their iTunes library to an iPod or iPhone, a process that took time (and depending on the size of a user’s library, required consideration of storage constraints).

With Pandora came access to a huge volume of music. The Internet radio station boasts a catalog of more than 800,000 tracks from 80,000 artists. And it is a learning system that becomes educated about users’ tastes over time. The Music Genome Project is at the core of Pandora technology. What was once a graduate student research project became an effort to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level.” Using almost 400 attributes to describe and code songs, and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them, Pandora sought to generate stations that could respond to a listener’s taste and other indicators (such as the “thumbs down,” which would prevent a song from being played on a particular station again).

Spotify has a catalog of nearly 20 million songs. While the size of the service’s catalog is one of its major strengths, so too are its social features. The service, which launched in the United States in 2011 after lengthy negotiations with the major record labels, allowed users to publish their listening activity to Facebook and Twitter. The desktop player enabled users to follow one another, and make public playlists to which others could subscribe. In addition, users could  message  each other playlists. The sharing of Spotify playlists between connected users mimicked the swapping of mixtape cassettes in the late eighties and early nineties.

All of these are examples of how what the audience creates is a growing part of the creative process.

In the heyday of the album, the exact flow of one song to another and the overall effect was the supreme expression of overall artistic design and control. It wasn’t only the songs—the album represented 144 square inches of cover art and often many interior pages of liner notes in which to build a strong experience and relationship and story for your fans. It was a major advance over the 45, which provided a much smaller opportunity for a relationship with the band. With the arrival of MP3s, all of this was undone. Because we bought only the songs we were interested in, not only was the artist making less money, but he had lost control of what we were listening to and in what order. It didn’t much matter, because we were busy putting together playlists and mixtapes where we (the audience) were in charge of the listening experience.

The Internet has given us many tools that allow us to personalize the listening experience. More than that, listening to music has increasingly become a personal activity, one that is done in isolation. The simplicity with which music can be consumed online has changed music from an immersive media to a more ambient media, one that is easily taken for granted.

Interestingly, the rise in personal consumption of music (via MP3 and the cloud) has coincided with a sharp rise in festival culture. Now more than ever, audiences seek to be together—whether in Indio, California for Coachella; Black Rock City, Nevada for Burning Man; Chicago, Illinois for Lollapalooza; or Miami, Florida for the Ultra Music Festival—to experience music as a collective group.

At a time where we collectively listen to billions of hours of streamed music each month, nothing compels us in a stronger fashion than the opportunity to come together, outdoors, often outside of cell phone range, to bask in performances by our favorite artist. Festival lineups are stacked with independent artists and superstars alike. Interestingly, a lineup is not unlike a long playlist on iTunes. There is no way to catch every performance at South by Southwest or Electric Daisy Carnival—but there is comfort in knowing that many of your favorite artists are there in one place.

This has also proven out economically. At a time when selling recorded music had become ever-more challenging, the business of live music is experiencing a renaissance. In 2013, both weekend-long installments of the Coachella festivals sold out in less than 20 minutes and raked in $47.3 million in revenue (Shoup 2013). The rise of festivals (now one in every state of the U.S.) is a response to the Internet having made the act of consuming recorded music more ambient and banal than ever before while creating the need for greater social and immersive experiences.

At the core of going to a music festival or listening to  The White Album  with a group of friends is the need to experience music collectively. It is a realization that beyond even the song itself, perhaps the most inspiring and rousing element of music is not just the music itself, but our collective human experience of it.

Today, as the audience is restlessly making its own media, it is also learning fast that with new media come new rules and new exceptions. Media confer power on the formerly passive audience, and with that comes new responsibilities.

This was made startlingly evident in the wake of the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. At five o’clock in the evening on April 18, the FBI released a photo one of the suspects and asked the public for help in identifying him. Hours later, the Facebook page of Sunil Tripathi, a student who bore a resemblance to the suspect and was reported missing, was posted to the social news site Reddit. Word spread that this was the bomber. Within hours the story was amplified by the Internet news site BuzzFeed and tweeted to its 100,000 followers. Only, Tripathi had nothing to do with the crime. His worried family had created a Facebook page to help find their missing son. Over the next few hours Tripathi’s family received hundreds of death threats and anti-Islamic messages until the Facebook page was shut down.

The audience was making media, and spontaneously turning rumors into what appeared to be facts but weren’t, and with such velocity that facts were knocked out of the news cycle for hours that day (Kang 2013).

Four days later, an editor of Reddit posted to the blog a fundamental self-examination about crowd-sourced investigations and a reflection of the power of new media:

This crisis has reminded all of us of the fragility of people’s lives and the importance of our communities, online as well as offline. These communities and lives are now interconnected in an unprecedented way. Especially when the stakes are high we must strive to show good judgement and solidarity. One of the greatest strengths of decentralized, self-organizing groups is the ability to quickly incorporate feedback and adapt. reddit was born in the Boston area (Medford, MA to be precise). After this week, which showed the best and worst of reddit’s potential, we hope that Boston will also be where reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power.

(erik [hueypriest] 2013)

We are now able to surround ourselves with news that conforms to our views. We collect friends whose tastes and opinions are our own tastes and opinions. The diversity of the Internet can ironically make us less diverse. Our new media are immersive, seductive, and addictive. We need only turn to today’s headlines to see how this plays out.

On October 8, 2013, a gunman entered a crowded San Francisco commuter train and drew a .45-caliber pistol. He raised his weapon, put it down to wipe his nose, and then took aim at the passengers.

None of the passengers noticed because they were attending to something far more interesting than present reality. They were subsumed by their smartphones and by the network beyond. These were among the most connected commuters in all of history. On the other side of their little screens, passengers had access to much of the world’s media and many of the planet’s people. They were not especially connected to the moment or to one another. They were somewhere else.

Only when the gunman opened fire did anyone look up. By then, 20-year-old Justin Valdez was mortally wounded. The only witness to this event, which took place on a public train, in front of dozens of people, was a security camera, which captured the scene of connected bliss interrupted. The  San Francisco Chronicle reported the district attorney’s stunned reaction:

“These weren’t concealed movements—the gun is very clear,” said District Attorney George Gascón. “These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They’re just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They’re completely oblivious of their surroundings.”

Gascón said that what happened on the light-rail car speaks to a larger dilemma of the digital age. As glowing screens dominate the public sphere, people seem more and more inclined to become engrossed, whether they are in a car or a train or are strolling through an intersection.

In 1968, Marshall McLuhan observed how completely new media work us over. In  War and Peace in the Global Village  he wrote, “Every new technological innovation is a literal amputation of ourselves in order that it may be amplified and manipulated for social power and action.” (73)

We’ve arrived in full at an always-on, hyper-connected world. A network that connects us together yet can disconnect us from our present reality. An Internet that grants us the ability to create and remix and express ourselves as never before. One that has conferred on us responsibilities and implications we are only beginning to understand. The most powerful tools in media history are not the province of gods, or moguls, but available to practically all mankind.  The media  has become a two-way contact sport that all of us play. And because the media is  us , we share a vital interest and responsibility in the world we create with this, our extraordinary Internet.

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The Music Industry in an Age of Digital Distribution

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• Communication Trends

Author: MARYVILLE UNIVERSITY

Communication, whether it’s personal communication with friends, family, and colleagues, or a large brand communicating to its consumer base, is more diverse than ever before. The mainstream introduction of the internet in the early 1990s brought new and exciting communication methods, including using digital media to share your message more quickly and across greater distances. Social media channels and streaming video services became popular platforms for delivery and discussion of digital content; smartphones enabled brands to reach consumers regardless of their location. These advances in technology have impacted traditional communication professions, paving the way for digital media as a major influence on businesses and brands in creating relationships with their customers. The result is new job titles and a new landscape for what communication looks like.

The future of media is continuing to turn to digital media for entertainment, news, and business, which translates to major opportunities for businesses. According to the Pew Research Center, the digital media industry continues to grow, with about 93% of American adults consuming some of their news online. As the audience for online media grows, so do the number of platforms, and more consumers than ever flock to sources born on the web. For businesses, maintaining an online presence that allows them to effectively communicate with their audience is critical.

As specialists with a communication degree look to the future, there are key areas of growth to watch that are likely to give shape to the  communication careers  of the future. Social media managers, digital media managers, content strategists, and communication specialists offer different focuses on digital communication. The expectations of these positions vary and may include creating social media and content strategies, as well as executing on those strategies through social media messages, blog posts, landing pages, video, and more. In addition, customer interactions, relationship management, and data analysis are important skills within this field.

Future Media Concepts  Driving the Job Market

Digital media dominates how Americans receive and share information. As such, there are key influences taking shape that are likely to impact the future of the field. Innovation is the new norm when it comes to media, and that trend isn’t likely to change as we look to future media concepts. Social media, digital advertising, and increased access to the internet through various devices have all shaped trends in media.

Digital media continues to evolve as new tools emerge, consumers make new demands, and the quality and accessibility of the technologies improve. The rise of mobile video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and the more refined use of data analytics will all influence the future of digital media.

Mobile Video Marketing

According to a report by Multichannel News, by 2025 half of those under the age of 32 who watch television will not subscribe to a traditional cable TV service, preferring streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Already, 6 out of 10 consumers prefer to watch online video platforms over traditional television, and many of those consumers are using their mobile devices to do so. This indicates that the future of media, particularly video, requires a mobile-first strategy. This goes beyond advertising on popular streaming channels and requires businesses to evaluate  how  they appear in the marketplace. With videos now accessed across platforms, having mobile friendly, accessible video content is key.

It’s a move that makes sense — Google analytics indicate that YouTube alone reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds than any broadcast or cable channel, and many consumers use their mobile devices to access video. Mobile internet usage surpassed desktop in 2016 and has continued every year since. This is good news for marketers since Google stats indicate that YouTube mobile users are two times more likely to pay close attention while watching YouTube on their mobile phones compared to television viewers. All that attention equals a huge opportunity for marketers to connect with their customer base — and not just through traditional ads. Video blogs (vlogs), live video, and virtual reality video all play a role here.

Data Analytics and Public Relations

Public relations has gotten in on the big data action and has incorporated insights gleaned from such data to improve PR tactics. Analytics from online advertising measure more than the success of a specific advertising campaign. They can also detect shifts in the campaign. Data collected can help marketers refine the ad’s message, determine which channels to use, and gain insight into who exactly is listening.

Through data analysis, professionals in PR are creating more effective outreach campaigns. The large amounts of data available today allow communication experts to predict news cycles and interest, discover which outlets cover their industry most, and uncover potential relationships with media channels, other organizations, and influencers. While some of the metrics associated with public relations may seem intangible, data is giving shape to the future of media concepts in PR through its ability to make sense of all the noise.

Continued Investment in VR and AR

Through specific software and hardware, VR recreates environments, while AR enhances physical images. These two industries, which have grown up side by side, are seeing new emphasis placed on them in recent years, and each is growing quickly.

The virtual reality industry in the U.S. alone will likely grow to about $19 billion by 2020 (from $2.2 billion in 2017), according to accumulated statistics from Statista. Revenue from AR, a more accessible platform, will likely grow three times as much as VR. Many experts envision these technologies will allow customers to have immersive experiences with their products before they buy them, helping to convert ad dollars to actual customers. These technologies can also help print media integrate with digital, and use real-time data to deliver powerful, personalized experiences to customers.

Preparing for the  Future of Digital Media

As students and current industry professionals consider the future of media, it’s clear that mobile video marketing can provide big rewards, the study of data will provide key insights and make business more competitive, and the continued exploration of emerging technologies like VR and AR could yield huge returns.

As you consider your own future in media, discover how an online communication degree can prepare you for the exciting innovations to come in the world of media. With an increasing need for digitally inclined professionals, an understanding of emerging and social media platforms, data analytics, visual communication and content creation are typical in the study of communication.

These trends mark a shift in how we consume media and how companies interact with consumers. If you’re excited by the prospect of leveraging new, cutting-edge technology to reach a young, tech-savvy audience,  consider an online degree in communication from Maryville University.  You’ll emerge prepared for the modern world of marketing and ready to make an impact. Apply today and begin your digital media journey.

Entrepreneur, “Five Video Marketing Trends You Should Follow in 2019”

Forbes, “How PR Can (And Should) be More Data Driven”

Forbes, “How Technology is Changing Communication in the Workplace”

Multichannel News, “Half of Viewers Under 32 Won’t Pay for TV by 2025”

Pew Research Center, Digital News Fact Sheet

Pew Research Center, “Key Trends in Social and Digital News Media”

Statista, Augmented Reality (AR) Statistics and Facts

Statista, Virtual Reality (VR) Statistics and Facts

Think with Google, “The Latest Video Trends: Where Your Audience is Watching”

Think with Google, “The Latest YouTube Stats on When, Where, and What People Watch”

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USA Today transformed the media world for good. What’s its legacy now?

Gannett’s ‘McPaper’ drew scorn when it debuted 42 years ago. It ended up anticipating the future of news. But as USA Today loses another editor in chief, does it still have a place in national media?

It was snappy and colorful. It was new and different.

And much of the rest of the newspaper industry seemed to hate it.

USA Today left critics aghast when it debuted 42 years ago. Rival editors sneered at its bite-sized news stories and its relentlessly cheerful tone. (Headline on a plane crash story in the first edition: “Miracle: 327 survive, 58 die”) The reporting was often so brief and superficial that even insiders joked that their work would win awards for “best investigative paragraph.” It was quickly dubbed “McPaper,” the news equivalent of junk food.

The joke was on the critics. USA Today turned out to be one of the most influential media creations of the past half century. “McPaper” now looks like the prototype for news on the internet, circa 2024.

The Style section

But what about USA Today itself?

Once so ubiquitous — from its distinctive newspaper boxes and copies landing at hotel room doors nationwide — USA Today has lost much of its visibility while contending with the same economic pressures challenging all media outlets, such as a shrinking readership and an evaporating ad base.

Last week, USA Today’s top editor, Terence Samuel, abruptly resigned after just a year. He was the paper’s fifth editor in chief in 15 years and the first Black journalist to hold the job. Neither he nor parent company Gannett Co. offered an explanation.

In an interview, Samuel — previously the executive editor at NPR and a senior editor at The Washington Post — said he helped expand USA Today’s digital audience during his brief tenure. He said he encouraged his newsroom to “take more chances and be more brave” in the wake of a series of staff cuts before his arrival.

Although he declined to discuss the circumstances of his departure, insiders say the arrival of a new executive in April precipitated his resignation. Gannett handed Monica R. Richardson, a senior vice president, direct supervision of USA Today’s newsroom, thus diminishing Samuel’s authority.

Gannett appointed one of Samuel’s deputies, Caren Bohan, as his interim replacement. Bohan, a former White House reporter for Thomson Reuters who joined USA Today six years ago, said in a statement that she plans to focus on “first-rate coverage of big stories,” such as the Olympics and the presidential election, as well as the “innovative storytelling approaches that have been USA Today’s signature since its beginning.”

A Gannett spokesperson declined to comment.

Samuel, 62, is the third editor of a leading newspaper to leave this year, a reflection of the turbulence besetting the business. The others include Kevin Merida of the Los Angeles Times, who resigned in January, and Sally Buzbee at The Washington Post, who stepped down last month after new publisher Will Lewis offered her a lesser position.

F rom its beginning, USA Today was an expensive gamble on an untested premise: that Americans wanted a national newspaper, one that would be a “second read” to their local paper.

Gannett’s late chairman, Al Neuharth, believed that millions of daily business travelers and vacationers could form the core readership of such a publication. He stood by his brainchild even as it racked up an estimated $400 million in losses during its first five years, a sum equal to about $1.15 billion today.

Neuharth tapped the then-bountiful profits of Gannett’s chain of local newspapers to underwrite his project. He also tapped into the labor of those smaller papers’ journalists to form his new national paper’s early newsroom, paying to house them in tiny apartments — “stay-free minipads,” some joked — near its then-headquarters in Rosslyn, a Virginia neighborhood just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

(Gannett is now headquartered in New York. USA Today pulled up stakes from Rosslyn in 2001 and in February closed its longtime newsroom in McLean, Va. Its remaining Beltway-area employees now work remotely or from its downtown Washington bureau.)

USA Today’s greatest historical achievement may have been its ability to print and distribute a newspaper in large cities and small towns, coast to coast — and to do so with color photos and graphics, an innovation at the time.

Gannett harnessed satellite technology and fashioned an expensive network of printing plants and truck fleets to get the paper out each day. Copies were sold from more than 100,000 distinctively designed street-corner boxes — said to resemble television sets — and purchased in bulk by hotels and airlines, which gave them away to guests and passengers.

Christine Brennan, USA Today’s longtime sports columnist, remembers writing a column in a hotel room in Omaha late one night in 2008. A few hours later, she heard the plop of a newspaper hitting her doorstep. She opened her door to find the latest edition of USA Today, her column published within.

The technology and resources that made it possible, she recalled last week, “felt like a miracle.”

While USA Today retains a print edition, print is now an afterthought, as it is at many legacy newspapers.

Print circulation has plummeted at all newspapers. But USA Today, which once could boast that it was the most-read general interest newspaper in the country, with 2.3 million daily copies, is now just the fifth, with 113,228 at the end of last year.

As print sales dwindled, Gannett cut back on printing facilities and pushed its newsroom deadlines back so that papers could be printed earlier and trucked longer distances from fewer plants. One of USA Today’s early selling points — that it carried late scores in its well-regarded sports section — is now a thing of the printed past.

T he 21st century version of USA Today retains the name of the original paper but not much else.

Gone are many of the quirky stories and the chirpy tone that gave birth to such early headlines as “USA is eating its vegetables” and “Men, Women: We’re still different.”

The digital presentation is straightforward and conventional, as is the writing and news judgment. The lead stories on Friday — Hurricane Beryl, the monthly jobs report, President Biden’s political future — were the same as those leading other mainstream news sites.

The remodeling of the paper into a digital operation has been relatively successful, at least from a readership standpoint. The site attracted 64.1 million unique visitors in May, according to Comscore, ranking it among the leading news organizations.

But “monetizing” those visitors is another issue. The paper has relatively few digital subscribers — just 142,212, according to its year-end report, far behind leading paywalled news sites, such as the New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. That means it’s dependent on advertising, which is often sold at steeply discounted prices on the internet. Gannett doesn’t disclose revenue and profit figures for USA Today, but it’s unlikely that its flagship paper is profitable.

Gannett’s own financial challenges, meanwhile, have dangled like a sword over USA Today for a number of years. The company is the creation of a 2019 buyout of the venerable Gannett Co. (founded 1906) by the parent of GateHouse Media, another newspaper chain.

The deal saddled the combined company with about $1.8 billion in debt, leading to endless rounds of cost-cutting and asset sales. Gannett now has fewer employees as a merged company than it had before the buyout.

One round of cuts announced in late 2022 included a hiring freeze, five days of unpaid leave for most employees, job losses and a pause in the company’s contributions to employees’ 401(k) accounts.

While USA Today has hired a few journalists in the past year, the general uncertainty about its parent company has induced a kind of reflexive paranoia, said a former USA Today journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid workplace repercussions.

The ex-staffer described the “freak out” among employees whenever editors called a staff meeting: Even if the meeting was routine, the assumption was that more bad news was going to be announced, the former employee said.

Despite the unpredictable atmosphere, USA Today has managed to produce some solid journalism under Samuel and his predecessor, Nicole Carroll.

In September, staff writer Kenny Jacoby broke news of allegations of sexual harassment against Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker, a disclosure that led to Tucker’s firing. Staffer Nick Penzenstadler has done enterprising reporting on gun crimes and gun-store sales; in May, he reported on leaked data showing the U.S. sources of guns used in crimes committed by Mexico’s drug cartels.

(The paper endured a mini-scandal in 2022, though, when it acknowledged that 23 articles written by a breaking-news writer, Gabriela Miranda, appeared to have used fabricated sources; the articles were removed and Miranda resigned).

USA Today’s staff has taken some hits amid Gannett’s austerity campaign and various reorganizations. Samuel supervised 241 journalists over the past year — about 20 more than the paper had at its launch in 1982. Carroll, though was in charge of 285 journalists when she left in 2023.

Both editors in chief have managed to keep the print newspaper looking relatively healthy and full of stories, thanks to USA Today’s ties to Gannett’s fleet of nearly 200 daily newspapers. Under an operation branded as the USA Today Network, the flagship paper taps into the reporting of newspapers across the country and vice versa.

This has led to collaboration on a number of major stories; USA Today, for example, drew on reporting by the Gannett-owned News Journal in Delaware for coverage of Hunter Biden, its Florida papers for reporting on former president Donald Trump , and the entire network for the eclipse in April.

In its 42 years, USA Today has never won a Pulitzer Prize, though in recent years its reporters have come close. Under Carroll, the paper contributed to Pulitzer-winning stories principally reported by journalists at Gannett’s regional newspapers in Phoenix, Cincinnati and Louisville.

Asked for his assessment of USA Today’s contribution to journalism, longtime media critic Jack Shafer pointed instead to its design.

“Its goal of being the place for a quick and airy take on the news became the template for many of the early [web] news portals and aggregators,” he said. Even the original USA Today street boxes, now mostly gone, resembled the computer monitors that would eventually supersede the newspaper as the place for quick and concise news and information, he said.

USA Today was an innovator, said Shafer. And its current fate is like that of all innovators:

“What made it special,” he said, “became common as others imitated it.”

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News Analysis

An Assassination Attempt That Seems Likely to Tear America Further Apart

The attack on former President Donald J. Trump comes at a time when the United States is already polarized along ideological and cultural lines and is split, it often seems, into two realities.

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By Peter Baker

Peter Baker has covered the past five presidents.

• Published July 14, 2024 Updated July 15, 2024

Follow the latest news on the Trump assassination attempt.

When President Ronald Reagan was shot by an attention-seeking drifter in 1981, the country united behind its injured leader. The teary-eyed Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., went to the hospital room of the Republican president, held his hands, kissed his head and got on his knees to pray for him.

But the assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump seems more likely to tear America further apart than to bring it together. Within minutes of the shooting, the air was filled with anger, bitterness, suspicion and recrimination. Fingers were pointed, conspiracy theories advanced and a country already bristling with animosity fractured even more.

The fact that the shooting in Butler, Pa., on Saturday night was two days before Republicans were set to gather in Milwaukee for their nominating convention inevitably put the event in a partisan context. While Democrats bemoaned political violence, which they have long faulted Mr. Trump for encouraging, Republicans instantly blamed President Biden and his allies for the attack, which they argued stemmed from incendiary language labeling the former president a proto-fascist who would destroy democracy.

Mr. Trump’s eldest son, his campaign strategist and a running mate finalist all attacked the political left within hours of the shooting even before the gunman was identified or his motive determined. “Well of course they tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this,” wrote Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the former president.

But the Trump campaign seemed to think better of it, and the post was deleted. A memo sent out on Sunday by Mr. LaCivita and Susie Wiles, another senior adviser, instructed Trump team members not to comment on the shooting.

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