A New Dawn

This week in Media and Society we discussed both old and new media.

I fell that communication is a key part of the human identity. We have been performing this act since the beginning of the age of man, weather it was spoken word, pictures, or written. It is what defines us, or culture and society.

Traditional forms of media (radio, television, magazines, newspapers and books) was one way. Meaning that the procedure controlled the message. The audience did not help shape the message but just listen and absorb it. This made it easy for governments to create propaganda that had people shape the exact opinion they wanted. It help start wars and keep certain groups oppressed by spreading lies.

Today we live in a new dawn of media. We are connected to the information highway 24/7 not only by our computers but by our smart phones, tablets, and mp3 devices. New Media sends out an unlimited amount of messages by an unlimited amount of authors. The audience can choose to be active by commenting or just ignore it entirely. People use social networking to promote their ideas as well as products or services. They get to know their fans by using Twitter, Facebook and yes still MySpace.

I know I use Lady GaGa a lot as an example, but she is just so easy. On the road she posts pictures from her iPhone to better connect with her fans. They admire her and have over 1k in comments while sharing the photos on their own pages. On Facebook alone she has over 52 million followers. Just think of all the people she is reaching every day, hour, minute.

Cultivation Analysis

This week in Media and Society one of the concepts covers was Cultivation Analysis. According to Stanley J. Baran cultivation analysis is when "television cultivates or constructs a reality of the world that, although possibly inaccurate, becomes accepted simply because we are as a culture believe it to be true."It is amusing that people would actually live their life through television. But those people are out there like octomom Nadya Suleman who undergone various plastic surgical treatments to emanate Angelina Jolie. She is only famous for having a lot of kids and now doing anything she can to be in the spotlight including being in the adult industry.

According to George Gerber if you watch more than four hours of television today you see the world as a mean terrible place, but not immediately. What you see on television or do in a video game you will act out. But is this really the case? Diablo 3 is Blizzard's best selling game of this year (but you can't forget World of Warcraft with 10.7 million subscribers) with 6.5 million sold so far. In 2000 Diablo 2 sold over 4 million copies. Every few months a violent video game comes out but what sort of effect do you really think they have on society?

According to the FBI in 2010 about 1.2 million "violent crimes occurred nationwide, a decrease of 6.0 percent from the 2009 estimate." In the 2010 Preliminary Annual crime report violent crime went down 4% from the following year.

I think parts of this concept from the 60s is stil valid. People aren't slaves to television or video games but make it apart of their everyday lives. They discuss plots or actions with friends, buy merchandise and dress up as the characters for Halloween.

References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw9DsOA1Y-w
Introduction to Mass Communication
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Best_selling_Blizzard_games
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=audienceresec