Picture yourself
on a chilly winter evening curled up in your favorite chair. You are reading an amazing book on an
eReader, but the battery is low and in the back of your mind you know you will
need to plug it in soon. The IPOD doc is
playing your favorite music in the background, and the television has a
brilliant fire roaring to set the mood lighting. The ambiance is incredible, and in your mind
there is no better way to spend a relaxing evening at home, until the power
goes out from the raging storm outside.
It is frustrating, to say the least.
You must get flashlights, candles, and any other means of light, as well
as blankets and make sure that your home is warm. Not to mention, you try to remember what
entertainment actually was like before electricity existed. In today’s society, media comes through so
many avenues, and it coexists between the different media outlets. But before electricity, media outlets were
few and far between.
Media is actually
a plural version of the word medium, or a way to convey some form of
communication (Dictionary, 2012). Media
can date back through history, when cave men wrote on stone to convey messages
to others. However the original mass
media was a bit more recent. This term
did not originate until the printing press came into being, and mass amounts of
people were able to receive written words at the same time. Most people associate this first instance of
mass media happening when Johannes Guttenberg was the first person to print a book
on a printing press in 1455 (Gutenberg Bible, 2008). The Guttenberg Bible was printed in about 200
copies, which was a massive amount for its time.
Printing presses
became more popular over the years, and other than Bibles newspapers were a way
or mass amounts of people to hear the news from their town, or even from around
the country. This was an incredible
invention. However throughout the 1700
and 1800’s when electricity was being invented and put into more machines, the
printing press became automated and more newspapers and Bibles were able to be
printed than ever before (Bellis, 2012).
Electricity also lead to more inventions, such as the radio, the
television and the computer, which lead to communication on a massive scale
(Museum T.V., 2012). Once these other
inventions came into play, the news and entertainment industries could expand
from locally letting people know about what was going on in small towns, to
nationally and world wide letting people in on current knowledge. In the early 1900’s, people still listened to
news individually through newspapers, or through television, or even
radio. Most people were not able to
afford all three, especially coming out of hard economic times and a several
large wars. However in the late 1900’s
this would change with one very clever, and essential invention.
The Internet was
developed over quite a few years in the 1900’s, and was originally used to get
intelligence information for the government.
However when it was brought to the limelight in the late 1900’s and
given to regular citizens as the World Wide Web, this gave computers an edge in
the mass media market (Media group, n.d.).
Television was still number one as far as news and entertainment during
the first few years of its onset, but the Internet grew quickly and became the
main source for a media outlet.
In the 21st
century, with still more inventions to come, these different media outlets will
converge, and become one with each other in a way that no one could have ever
predicted. This super media seems to be
everywhere all the time and does not allow any privacy or unbiased opinion any
longer when it comes to reporting stories.
Looking into how these media outlets came together and the craze to
provide information to this super media can show us exactly why the media
reports the way it does today.
In the 21st
century with the invention of social media, such as Facebook and Myspace, and
with the invention of eReaders so that books and newspapers are now on one
piece of equipment instead of being manually held, things became more
convenient for the everyday consumer.
Cellular telephones and tablets can be used to stream television news,
movies, music, phone calls, books, newspaper, immediate coverage of current
events, games, and much more. With one
device, you can have the world at your fingertips, literally. You can know what is happening on the other
side of the world with a family member through social networking, or on the
other side of the world in news with a newspaper on your eReader. These inventions make the printing press and
television seem antiquated and devices that will be only for the history books,
yet they were not used that long ago, and it makes one forget that the newer
technologies such as cellular phones and computers are relatively new (Poor
Vago’s almanac, 2012).
Now that news and entertainment
can be found all in one place, it does not necessarily mean that there are less
media outlets than before. On the
contrary, there are more news programs, web sites, blogs, viral videos, eBooks
and more to keep more and more citizens abreast of current news every day,
hour, minute and second that something happens, than ever before. Because there is more competition for
viewers, each media outlet must bring something new and different to the
scene. They must be the fastest to bring
news or current event coverage to the forefront, even if the stories are not
vetted properly. Or they must sensationalize
a story by putting their own twist on the issues. Not to mention with the World Wide Web,
anyone can upload a story or a video and call himself or herself a journalist
or a reporter.
The pendulum of
media bias has swung around with the way the media has progressed as well. In the 1950’s through the 1970’s, when the
media was conservative and small, it was run by conservative journalists and
television reporters who reported news and fact. However during the anti-war movement of the
1960’s and 1970’s television and newspaper coverage of anti-war protesters,
hippies and the peace and love movement were generally only negative. They only showed drug overdoses and free sex,
instead of the good things that hippies actually stood for. Today, when media is more liberal and media
has more outlets than ever before, it is run by a more liberal minded
group. Most media outlets today with
only a minor few exceptions, put a negative spin on government control, conservatism,
and fitting in (Special report, n.d.).
Being free and doing things your own way is what media outlets are
fighting for and what they stand for on a daily basis.
In today’s
society, the media has so much influence over how we see the world. This era of instant news and the World Wide Web
makes the old ways of finding out information obsolete. High definition makes it so that everyone on
Television or the Internet is scrutinized and dissected so closely that they
have to be perfect. If a crime is
committed, a trial by ones peers is virtual impossible any longer, because the
media makes up their mind if a person is guilty or innocent before a trail is
even held. Even if there is no crime
committed, the media can make up their mind that someone has done something
wrong, and ruin their reputation. All
this happens if someone is not popular by mainstream media standards. This is not what the media was intended to
do, and it is not good for society as a whole.
However this is how the media has to be run to compete for viewers,
because there is so much competition out there.
We have inundated
ourselves with media, so much so that we cannot go one day without being
connected to the outside world. Most of
us in this day and age would not know how to go camping without an electrical
device such as a cellular phone or a laptop computer. Yes these media devices have brought us
convenience in quite a few ways, but what happens when the electricity goes
out? Will we know what to do? We all need to take a moment to remember when
our media comes from and remember what life was like before all of this
technology and electricity came into our lives.
Pick up a book. Turn off the
television and the cellular phone. Take
a walk. If we do this once in a while,
it will make us appreciate mass media that much more.
References
Media
group. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://247mediagroup.com/history-of-mass-media-and-what-it’s-become.html
Poor Vago's
almanack. (2012). Retrieved from http://fuknus.chrisdamitio.com/the-damitio/assignments/a-brief-history-of-the-mass-media/
Bellis, M. (2012). Inventors. Retrieved
from http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/electricity_timeline.htm
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