ELECTIVE 3: VIRTUAL COMMUNICATON

1 | Communication Traditions and Technology

o 3 traditions (Oral, Written, Electronic/ First
Media Age)
o Second media age
o Characteristics of the new media theory
(Interactive, Personalized, Creative, Always
Evolving)

First Media Age: Electronic Tradition/ Electronic

Age/ Electronic Media
- Media that requires users to make use of
electronics to access content.
- Focus on audio/ visual recordings, radio,
telegraph and television.
- One way communication
- News and information were released through
highly centralized production.
Second Media Age: New Media Tradition
Traditions of technology: Oral, Written/Print, and
Electronic
- Existing media can fit into these categories.
NEW MEDIA
1. ORAL TRADITION Qualities of new media:
- Oral culture or Oral Age
- Consists of culture messages or traditions 1. Many speaking to many
verbally transmitted across generations. - One entity speaking to the mass
- Classified as primary orality – culture that has audience to many people speaking to
no knowledge of technology beyond the many people.
spoken word. - Endless opportunities for users
- Or as second orality - verbal communication 2. Two-way communication
is sustained through other technologies - Capability of users to respond to
(such as telephone or Internet) messages rather than simply receiving
them.
2. WRITTEN/ PRINT TRADITION - Interact and communicate.
- Refers to early forms of written 3. Democratizing
communication such as scribe and - People are empowered by the freedom
hieroglyphics. and sources of endless information that
- Development of alphabet must precede the new media allow.
written tradition. - Able to voice your opinion and build a
- Print tradition – the creation and distribution closer relationship with others.
of printed text, is the identifiable period of 4. Retaining individuality
technological development. - Allow information to focus on individual
topics of interest and niche markets
o Development of Johannes Gutenberg’s across the globe.
printing press, a mechanical device that
applies pressure from an inked surface
to a print medium.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW MEDIA THEORY
- Impact of technology on human relationships
- Understand the emerging process of human
communication influenced by technology.

1. Interactive
- The phenomenon of communication at a
distance through new media – sending
and receiving digitally encoded
messages in almost real time, continually
allowing users to have two-way
communication.

- Allow us to be in control of what the

media say, when they say it, and how we
access it.
- People are looking for the most
convenient and updated source of
information.
- Continually networking, sharing, and
searching information you need and
want.

2. Personalized
- You are able to manage your media’s
appearance.
- Capability to control your media and
customize things to your liking.
- Less exposure to points of view other
than the ones you choose to include in
your new media network.

3. Creative
- Allow users to build and express their
identity.
- To display your style, personality, and
interest

4. Flexible
- Media are available when people want
them, as fast as people can get to them.
- New media have the capability to adapt
to new, different, or changing
requirements.

5. Always Evolving
- Always changing and never the same
- Envisioning and inventing new ways to
reach mass audiences.
 2 | The Nature and Scope of Media - We use media to gain information, to
alleviate loneliness, to divert us from
o First/Traditional/Mass Media vs New problems.
Media (e.g. Social Media) - Examples: bored and wants excitement -
o Understanding Mass Media (provide watch an action film
gratification, set agenda, cultivate
worldviews, exercise ideological B. Mass Media Set Agendas
influence) - Mass media spotlight some issues,
o Understanding Social Media (blur events, and people and downplay others.
production and consumption, alter
conceptions of space, invite - Agenda Setting is selecting and calling
supersaturation, encourage multitasking) to the public’s attention ideas, events,
people, and perspective.
The Nature and Scope of Media
1. Mass Media - Mass media exercise considerable
- Electronic or mechanical channels of control over the events, people, and
delivering one-to-many communication. issues that reach public consciousness.
- Means of transmitting messages to large
audiences - Gatekeeper is a key concept.
- Broadcast messages to a large group of - A person or group that decides which
people who generally are not in direct messages pass through the gates of
contact with the sources of messages. media to reach consumers. People who
- Example: television, newspapers, manage mass media – producers,
magazines, radios, books editors, Webmasters.
- Each reaches a mass audience. - Gatekeepers screen messages, stories,
and perspective to create messages and
2. Social Media to shape our perceptions of what is
- Means of connecting and interacting happening and what is and is not
actively. significant.
- Example: smartphones and droids,
emails, iPads and iPods Example:
- Reporters and program hosts decide
whose perspective on a story to present
and whose to ignore.
Primary difference between mass media and
- Editors of newspapers, books, and
social media is digitalization.
magazines screen the information that
- The three implications of digitalization gets to readers and decide where to
are ease of manipulation, convergence, place stories.
and nearly instant speed
C. Mass Media Cultivate Worldviews
Cultivation Theory claims that television
Understanding How Media Work
promotes a worldview that is inaccurate but
A. Mass Media Provide Gratification that viewers nonetheless assume reflects
real life.
Uses and Gratification Theory
- We choose mass communication to Cultivation is the cumulative process by
gratify ourselves. which television shapes beliefs about social
- We use mass media to fulfill our needs reality.
and desires. - Television fosters particular and often
- This theory assumes that people are unrealistic understandings of the world
active agents who deliberately choose as more violent and dangerous than
media to gratify themselves. statistics on actual violence show it is
 - Thus, watching television promotes B. Social Media alter Conceptions of Space
distorted views of life. - social media change how we create and
- Watching a lot of tv over a long period of participate in communities by redefining
time affects viewer’s overall views of the our sense of space
world. - Cyberspace ushers in new
- The theory claims that more television understandings of space as a set of
people watch, the more distorted their relations that is produced through the
views of the world are likely to be. process of interacting.
- Cyberspace is social space in which
- The theory claims that television dynamic actions and interactions actually
cumulatively cultivates a synthetic constitute the environment.
worldview that heavy viewers are likely to - It comes into being only as a result of
assume represents reality. what we do. It is what we do in
cyberspace that defines space – the
Two means by which cultivation occurs:
space is produced by what we do.
mainstreaming and resonance.
1. Mainstreaming C. Social Media Invite Supersaturation
- Process by which mass communication - We are saturated with information.
stabilizes and homogenizes social - Its not just information that saturates us –
perspectives. it’s the people.
- Viewers may come to accept - Social media gives us greater access.
representations of other people as - 62% of the workers say they are so
factual. overloaded with information that it
hampers the quality of their work.
2. Resonance
- The extent to which media representation D. Social media encourage Multitasking
are congruent with personal experience. - Multitasking is doing multiple tasks at the
- When media representation corresponds same time.
with our personal experiences, we are - Extensive use of computers remaps our
more likely to assume that they neural circuitry.
accurately represent the world in general. - “Continuous partial attention”
- People who attempt to do several things
D. Mass Media Exercise Ideological at once make more mistakes and actually
Influence take longer than people who do one task
- People have a vested interest in at a time.
promoting their own views and values. - Students often take notes while also
texting and checking favorite websites.

Understanding Social Media

- Social media offer us considerably more
options for gratifying ourselves than
mass media do.
FOUR PRINIPLES OF SOCIAL MEDIA
A. Social Media Blur Production and
Consumption
- Social media are increasingly produced
and consumed by the same people, and
most of them are not media executives.
- Young people today figure out how social
media work by “taking their culture apart
and remixing it”
3 | Media Ecology Theory

Media Ecologist
- Study media environments
- They seek to understand how people
interact with media and how those
interactions shape our culture and our
daily experiences.
Understanding Media (Marshall McLuhan)
- Theory suggests that media should be
understood ecologically
- Changes in technology alter the symbolic
environment – the socially constructed,
sensory world of meaning that in turn
shapes our perceptions, experiences,
attitudes, and behavior.
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