Internet as a Mass Medium - Case Study Example

Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 History of media 2 Chronological development of media 3 Development of internet 4 Impact of internet on media industry 5 Present state of media 7 Factors responsible for development of internet in media 11 Development of internet and its impact on the capacity of abstract thought 12 Conclusion 13 Reference 14 Introduction In the present day, no one can think of a day without the presence of media. Media has become an integral part of everyone’s life. Media can be defined as communication channels through which news, education, entertainment, promotional messages or any other kind of data gets transferred. Media also takes into account both broadcasting and narrow casting mediums like newspapers, journals, TV, radio, telephones and internet (business dictionary, n.d.). History of media Regis Debray, a French radical theorist has proposed three historical ages of transmission technology. They are: The logosphere, which consist of the age of writing, technology, faith and also kingdom. The second age is graphosphere, which indicates the age of print, political ideology, laws and nations. The third and the most recent age is the videosphere, which is the age of multimedia forecasting, individual, options and models. These three ages describe the role that the media has played in the society and its influence on culture (Griscom, n.d. “History”). Development of media can be traced back to the old age when different means were used to convey messages to each other. One of such example is that of the Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascauux. It depicts the message in a visual form which can be compared to those of present days TV or magazine. As per Carlyle (1830), development of printing press was the first step towards the modern era of media. McLuhan has introduced the term “Media” along with other terms like “The Global Village” and the “Age of Information” which gained high popularity. In 1965 his famous book “Understanding Media: The Extension of Man” was published. Soon he was called the most important thinker after Newton, Darwin, Pavlov and few more. With the further development in technology, media has made constant evolution and has improved itself to fit best into the society. McLuhan has called media as an extension of man. (Griscom, n.d. “McLuhan’s message”). Chronological development of media The chronological development of media can be traced as follows: Newspaper and magazine- 1880 Movies 1910 Television- 1945 Cable Television- 1980’s Internet and Digital Communication- 2000’s Development of internet The chart given above indicates that with passage of time, some vital changes took place in the media industry. These changes are more influenced by the changes that are taking place in the field of technology and also in the society. One of such revolutionary change was brought by the development of the internet. Internet introduced speed in media. The present era of media is known as digital media due to influence of internet in each and every aspect. In the year 1964, Rand Corporation, created a communication network which had several nodes and each node was capable of originating, passing and receiving message. In 1967 Britain's National Physical Laboratory succeeded in developing the first test network. This was just the beginning of a new era. With passage of time, more and more such networks came into existence. Many agencies came forward and actively participated in developing their own network. By the end of the 20th century, six basic internet domains developed. These domains got segregated by separate abbreviations for representing their address such as “gov”, which was for government; “mil”, which was for military; “edu”, which was for education; “com”, which was for commercial; “org”, which was for organisation and “net” was used for the remaining fields. Development of World Wide Web (www) was a mile stone. Soon more and more people started accessing net for gathering different kinds of information. It turned out to be a major platform for people for communicating and sharing their thoughts and views with each other. This was further facilitated by the development of different software which made internet more user-friendly. With the introduction of broad-band connection, people started finding it more convenient to transfer sound and video using the internet. Broadband provided higher internet speed and that too at a comparatively lower cost. As a result every home virtually turned into a broadcasting studio and every individual became a publisher. With the growing influence of internet, society has witnessed many changes. The development of “virtual community” is the most noticeable change among all the other changes. A lot about these communities were discussed in “On the Edge of the Virtual City” (Godwin, 2003, p. 34). Impact of internet on media industry The term media has developed from message, thus communication is an important component of the media industry. Internet made immense impact on the communication sector. It introduced better devices for data storage and in delivering data. Thus a vital change was introduced in mass media sector. Mass communication via internet uses the same traditional mass communication model of source-message-receiver model (Cebular, 2000). Internet made huge impact on print media also. With the growth in the number of internet savvy people, many newspapers and magazines went on-line. The young generation is hardly left with time to go through newspapers. They don’t get time to watch news on televisions, rather they prefer internet for gathering information. Taking such facts into consideration, more and more news papers and magazines are getting digitalised. Many news channels has made collaboration with a different video sharing website; one such example is the BBC-You Tube deal, which provided a better platform for BBC to reach viewers across all parts of the world, whereas it resulted into high advertisement revenue for You Tube. This has been proved as a win-win deal for both the companies. It is been expected that many such collaborative deals will come up and will add synergy to the media industry. (Source: Grabowicz et al., 2009, “Print and Broadcast News and the Internet”) For many forms of media like television and radio, internet has grown as the biggest competitor. People prefer internet for accessing songs, movies, on-line games and many more. Thus, the young generation has hardly got the time for radio or television. Companies have identified this fact and they now prefer more of internet advertising for their business. All this led to revenue loss for other types of media. They try hard to attract youngsters but till date are unable to do so. For many people, internet is a complete form of media. Any form of media like newspaper, magazine, music, movies, news, or any other mode of communication can be accessed through the internet. All other forms of media have merged with internet to make themselves more accessible and to enter into this ever-growing market. Present state of media With the passage of time, media has undergone many changes. As per the “Future of Media Summit 2008”, there are seven factors that drive media. These factors are as follows: Increasing media consumption It indicates that with the social and cultural changes going in the society, people are becoming more dependent on media for gathering information that helps them for making vital decision in there day to day life. Figure 1: (Source: Master News Media, 2008) Fragmentation This refers to the different divisions in the media industry. It has been noticed that the different media sectors undergo fragmentation to cater to the different needs of the people belonging to the different sector of the society. For example the television sector is introducing different channels to fulfill the requirements of different category of viewers. They have introduced business news channel for those who are in corporate group while cartoon channels are for children. Similar classification is found in other form of media sectors like magazine, news paper, radio etc. But the major problem of such division is that time spent by viewer for each category is reducing. This indicates the growing competition between different subsections of the same sector. Participation Media industry seems highly attractive for the new entrants in this field. The reason is the growing market share and increasing profitability. This increasing number of new entrants has resulted into high competition. To survive and to be the market leader, these existing media player are introducing innovative technology and new features. The new mantra in media industry is collaboration. Through such collaboration, different media players come together to provide support and new platforms so that they can serve their consumers in the best possible way. Such collaboration has enhanced synergy. Personalisation With the passage of time, media industry is getting personalised. This is because the media is now controlled mainly by its users. The media industry tries to identify what the users want to view, and when, that is which time zone is more convenient for the users. The information conveyed by the media is more influenced by the behaviour, location, culture and factors related to the user. New revenue model The present era is that of subscription and ad-support business that have undergone a dramatic change. With the development of internet, it has been found that on-line players have greater reach. The revenue from on-line platform is showing constant upward movement. Different media companies will pay more attention towards on-line ads which will increase the revenue of the internet players. Increasing bandwidth From dial up connection to broad-band, a great revolution has been noticed in different sector of media industry. This has increased the number of viewer in developing countries. Media industry has identified this fact and they are collaborating more with internet for expanding their market and to penetrate further deeper (Master News Media. 2008). Generational change The last factor that affects the media industry is the continuous change going on in the demographical profile of users of traditional media like television, newspapers and radio. As per the Future Media Summits 2008, maximum number of viewers belong to the age group 65+, whereas the users in the age group of 18-24 years and 25-34 years spend minimum time on these traditional media. Keeping this variation into consideration, media industry arranges different products which match the requirement of people belonging to different age groups and different cultures and such age segmentation will go on increasing with further changes taking place in demographic profile of media users. All these seven factors clearly represent the important role internet plays in the media industry. Media industry has come across a long phase of time. Being highly attractive, it has always attracted new entrants. These new entrants try hard to enter into different unexplored markets. But it is the internet which has brought new ray of hope and has given a chance to age-old media remold its existence and come out with some thing new and unexplored. Factors responsible for development of internet in media There are many factors that support mergers between media and internet. These factors can be summarised as follow: At present, people are getting more dependent on internet for searching information. This has introduced a change in their behaviour. Secondly, geography is not a boundary for internet. Anyone from any corner of world can have easy access to internet. Thirdly, people can find out any type of information and at any time just through a click of their finger tips. So the user enjoys 24*7 hours accessibility of sports, market news, music, or what so ever. Development of web has added higher edge to internet. Companies have started using the web as an important tool for carrying out their marketing. They prefer web to offer different kind of offers to their customers, depending on their past purchasing nature, their geographical and demographical status, and their financial state. Finally, the biggest achievement of computer is its technology. People often call it a magic box. It has introduced better quality picture, sound and graphics. All this has provided an opportunity for development of a new form of media which not only has better features but has also introduced high speed to the users (Giussani, 1997). Development of internet and its impact on the capacity of abstract thought A new age Luddite by the name of Sven Birkerts reports that he is feeling uncomfortable regarding this rapid cultural change that has resulted due to development in the internet and digital media. He feels that in this era of internet, people are losing the essence of media in its true state. Hence, he calls digitalisation of media a “Devil”. Digital media has also been called a “Luddite” that is indicative of the “counterrevolutionary” trends (Griscom, n.d.). According to Nie and Erbring, “It was found that the more time people spend using the Internet, the more they lose contact with their social environment” (Roach & Paturi, 2005, p. 3). They conducted a study and found that persons who spend more that 10 hours on interne, 27% out of them spends less time in talking with their friends and family over phone, 15% spend less time in face to face interaction with their friends and family and 13% people spend less time in those events that takes place outside their home. So from the study it was found that too much use of internet makes person unsocial and isolated from society. Such persons go on loosing their capability to handle problems that arises in practical situation (Roach & Paturi, 2005, p. 2-3). Conclusion So taking all these factors into consideration it can be concluded that in spite of the danger that is related with uncontrolled growth in internet, it has provided a great opportunity for development in the educational and the health care sector that are considered as the most vital sectors of the society. With the assistance of internet, media succeeded in reaching new heights and achieving accessibility to those markets which were not possible through traditional forms. So internet and media will continue to grow side by side. Reference Cebular, G. Research Report Internet as a Mass Medium. 2000. Ohio University. August 20, 2009 Giussani, B. A newe media tells different stories. 1997. First Monday. August 20, 2009 . Grabowicz, P., Stevens, J, Rue, J. & Monti, J. Print and Broadcast News and the Internet. January 30, 2009. The Transformation to Digital Journalism. Knight Digital Media Center. August 20, 2009 . Griscom, Media, No date. Anarchy and Hierarchy, August 20, 2009, Master News Media. July 17, 2008. Future Of Media Participation: Seven Driving Forces Shaping Media. Future Media Report 2008. August 20, 2009 Mike Godwin, M. Cyber rights: defending free speech in the digital age. 2003. Revised ed. MIT Press. Roach, R & Paturi. What people do on the internet and how it affects their lives. November 20, 2005. CSE 91. August 23, 2009 . Read More