Month: March 2012

In Jay Rosen’s blog post entitled “The People Formerly Known as the Audience”, there are many interesting points brought up. One that I find particularly interesting is the role in which people play with the media. Whereas, media content used to be one sided and a majority of people were just on the receiving end, it is not like that today. However, as Rosen stated in his blog post there are not too many speakers and the speakers will listen to each other. Information is shared by all the users of the media, which is what makes it such a good experience. The people using the media give information about things others may have not known about and you can pick and choose which information you want to be informed about. If you allow people to express themselves they will do it and in doing so they find others who share the same feelings that they do and different organizations can be developed because of it .

With the development of different organizations or groups media is dispersed in ways that were not available to others before. There is a vast number of people who use social networking sites so just posting information on these sites allows for widespread information to be spread at rapid speeds. This is not something that old media people should be intimitated by it is something that should be embraced because we can do so much with media now and at such a fast pace.

Shirky discusses how it was a mistake to think that as children grew up and got jobs, they would be so tired that they would slump on the couch after work and watch television. I agree with his view that computers and phones are participatory compared to the television which is  consumption.

Before developments in new media, many people have spent many hours watching the television, which unless it is being watched as a faamily can beome sometimes lonely. I can see how Shirky says it may be sometimes depressing adn lead to unhappiness because it leads to more wants and desires from people. People on the television are idolized in that they have fancy cars, housing and clothing. It is natural for people wanting television to want to possess those same materialisitc possessions and not being able to have all of those things can be depressing.

Due to advances in new media we still want some of those materialistic possessions but our focus shifts to different things. People spend more time communicating with each other through their computers or cellular devices. Peopuse their friends are not as lonely or depressed because their friends are only a phone call away.