Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Blog 1_Wk1_(XTRA) Media in Everyday Life

Mass Media: those media forms designed to reach large audiences perceived to have shared interests, which are relatively centralized mass distribution sources such as a newspaper corporation or a media conglomerate.

Public Sphere: a space (a physical space, social setting, or media arena) in which citizens come together to debate and discuss the pressing issues of their society.

Convergence: the coming together of media forms, such as the still and video camera, the mp3 player, the Internet, the video screen, and the telephone into what are today’s “smartphones.”

Critique: an analysis of a situation, work of art, tool of media, etc. in order to get to the bottom of it and form an opinion on this entity.


One of the main things that digital culture has done to the media paradigm is that it has expanded the media’s reach. With the advent of the Internet two new issues were presented for the media’s consideration. First, the budding new form of media was ripe for the taking, which prompted the media conglomerates to purchase many of these websites. Second, the increasing popularity of this new form of media signified the decreasing popularity of established forms of mass media, such as film, radio, and television, which opens up a hole that needs to be filled by something, like the Internet.


Digital culture has also changed the method by which forms of media are presented. Since the early days of the mass media, visual media had been recorded on film but with the prevalence and affordability of digital video technology film is being gradually phased out of use. Radio has also been recorded on old-style methods of vinyl records but has been replaced by digital methods of recording.

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