Media Audiences and the Growth of Media Influence - Essay Example

?Running Head: Media Audience Media Audience [Institute’s Media Audience Technology is one of the aspects in the twenty first century that has not only changed the ideas, notion and perceptions of the human beings but also the way people live their lives. It has become one of the most significant and considerable facets of human lives. Moreover, the technological changes and the advancement in technologies in the last few years have proved to be much more in comparison to the previous hundred years. Furthermore, the exponential boost in the advancement and innovation is technology is in a continuously growing process. Therefore, no one can neglect the truth that the humans are now living and belonging to the society that has exquisitely become reliant on science and technology (Arthur, 2009). In fact, according to one of the authors “Technology is one part of the complex of relationships that people form with each other and the world around them; it simply cannot be understood outside of that concept” (Reed, 2007, pp. 327). Due to such an immeasurable development and progression of technology, it has gained and dominates over all pieces of human lives, weather it is business, health care, education, entertainment, travelling or personal relationships. Whilst looking at the world of business and commerce, one can figure it out that ecommerce has altered and transformed the business community and how one thinks about while doing business. From small business enterprises to giant multinational corporations, every businessperson is making the most of the technology in the today’s fast-paced world of online market (Warschauer, 2004). The growth of media influence can come under vision with the fact that with the initial expansion of media populace of the world made use of telegraph, then radio came into existence and with the expansion of such media newspapers and magazines came under sight and nowadays internet has taken over all other sources of media. This revolution elucidates the piece of information that how information and communication had become exclusively dependent upon the technology. Indeed, the media updates with the most recent and updated information, facts and news that make the individual profoundly rely on media for their everyday routine work activities. Therefore, mass media has become a powerful and prominent figure for the entire populace of the world (Haour, 2004). Audiences come under immense effects on a short-term, median-term and long-term basis by the technology and media due to its influential powers. The short-term effects of technology and media not only expose the people with the awareness and providing knowledge about an entity, but also modify and revise the obsolete and outmoded or inaccurate information, and increase their recall abilities about a meticulous announcement or advertisement. When the attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and opinions about social norms changes or alters within a person, that individual comes under the intermediate or median-term effect of technology and media. However, the long-term effect of technology and media relates and integrates all the impact of short-term and median-term in conjunction with focused streamlining the alleged norms and preservation of behavioral change (Napoli, 2011). The ideas about the audience dependency on technology have come under a range of studies and researches in the precious decades. The consequences of media exposure provides with the fact that the effect of media and technology on audience are diverse and wide-ranging. In addition, it has also been an understanding that audiences also leave an impact on the media with the intensity and incidence of their usage. Media and technology have come under advancements with a prime objective to promote social change in developing and under-developed nations. Therefore, with respect to this objective research studies have identified and concluded that knowledge gap and media exposure over time are the factors that affects and shapes the perceptions of the people, and thus are the effecting factors of technology and media (Kovalchick & Dawson, 2004). Numerous sources of information also reveal the fact that educating, shaping public relations and supporting or advocating a scrupulous approach or viewpoint are few of the functions that comes under association with the media and technology. As everything in the world has both sides, likewise technology has also both sides that are the dark side and the positive characteristics. According to few sources, technology is beneficial for the individuals as it authorize and empowers the masses to be artistic, dynamic and productive and do whatever they tend to do. Moreover, media is one of the powerful and strong forms of advanced technology that has persuaded millions and billions of inhabitants of the world with its advertisements. As an outcome of it, the decision making power to great extent has come under media influence (Dennis, 2009). As time has passed and the world has entered into the epoch of twenty first century, the populace of the planet earth has come across major breakthroughs and transformations. The world has become a universal platform where the means of communication and approaching on a worldwide basis has become a necessity. People are running short of time and desire to have every piece of information and social networking on few clicks. However, the revolutions that the world is experiencing include the news, information and the business of news. Technological innovations and progressions in association with the alterations in the business of broadcasting have left an indelible imprint on how consumers get entertained by the information and news (Volti, 2005). Even though technology and its advancements have brought a transformation in various aspects of human life, yet it has come under consideration that technology and its relationship to human beings have an influential and authoritative tension and pressure. Public opinion, views, and society on whole has come under immense influence, control and impact with the media and technological advancements. Besides, media has the power to direct and shape the perceptions and viewpoints in diverse and dissimilar manners. Additionally, technology has not only changed the ideas about the audience that is dependent on technology but the media has also blurred and indistinct the lines between media consumers and producers (Spurgeon, 2007). Consumers have always come under imagination and consideration to be one of the most vital, imperative and crucial for the media industries, due to the reason that these media industries very much rely on the models that helps and facilitates them in shaping their boundaries and interface with public. The unprecedented rate of audience contribution and involvement is now challenging the influence of mass media that is blurring the sleek line between media consumers and producers. Individual consumers on a worldwide basis at the present time has the opportunity and choice to put their opinions due to the technological advancement in the form of internet-based social media tools that incorporate blogs, online videos, social networking sites and several other options. On the other side, the traditional media that take account of television, radio and print media is constantly updating the people with its information and news broadcasts (Spurgeon, 2007). With this blurriness between the media consumers and producers, a term prosumer has come under materialization that has multiple meanings. According to one of the authors, prosumer is an amalgamation and blend of consumer and producer that reflects or illustrates millions and billions of proactive participants or audiences in the revolution of internet or web-based media environment. Moreover, these consumers or participants have now engaged and occupied themselves in the process of real and tangible production of services or goods. This has even lead the organizations understand the power of consumers and producers who have now become a significant source of success (Wasserman, 2010). Empirical studies also come up to the findings that the new media technological advancements have brought startling and surprising impact on to the lives of the populace of the entire world. Indeed, technological advancement has played a vital role in remodeling and reforming the human behaviors. The creation of blurring lines have facilitated the social interactions and enable the people to have access to information that people could not even think go getting hold to in the previous times according to their lifestyles, needs and wants. Face book, Twitter and several other social networking sites are just few of the prominent examples that elucidates and clarifies the new media blurring the lines between media consumers and producers. Technological advancement are the primary resources that are blurring the roles of the consumers that is accompanied by the organizations that are also moving towards greater interaction with wider use of social media (Chapman & Nuttall, 2011). From various studies and literature on the history of audiences, it has come under demonstration that the notion of audiences has been participatory, dependent and correlative. However, with the passage of time mass media on electronic basis that embrace motion pictures, radio and television came under development. This development was more dynamic for the audience and their role as a participator and contributor diminished in some or the other forms (Butsch, 2008). According to some of the opinions, the historic role of “the consumer has been nothing more than a giant maw at the end of the mass media's long conveyer belt” (Bruns, pp. 11, 2008). As time passed, mass media technologies increasingly developed and came under advancement by means of contemporary developments, which gave a unidirectional approach to the relationships between media and audiences. This advancement was even beneficial because throughout the time when traditional mass media was escalating, the relationships between the audiences and media took hold (Newman, 2004). In addition, the age of internet brought a major role for the consumers in the media environment where not a single consumer is inactive or passive. Nevertheless, with the augmented use of internet media landscape, potential audiences have now come under access with no trouble by the media audiences. These accesses to the potential audiences have been missing to large extent in the previous times. The outcome of this transformation on a continuing and constant basis has come under observation by several experts. According to these experts, the revolution in the media environment provides the audiences to be more participatory and contribute more in the public disclosure. Besides, creative activity for the audiences has come under much more extensively distribution and dispersed (Newman, 2004). The access to audiences has come under emphasis and has been a highlighting concern on sporadic and occasional basis by the media policy makers. However, with the increasing and rising eminence of user generated contents in alliance to the long distribution of audience attentions produced the need for the policy makers not only recognize and realize but also take potential actions and steps between the access to media and audiences (Anderson, 2006). Nonetheless, the internet in the present day permits and allows the bigger faction of the world population to have access to the most important and primitive medium of communication. In this way, the access to media inconsistency and disproportion has come under spectacular and remarkable development and progress (Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch, 2008). Even though the media environment in the current times provides the audiences to have, a more free and unrestricted access to the media in comparison to the preceding years, yet the point should come under key prominence that media system should never come under assessment with reference to its performance. In fact, the extent to which the media reaches its current potential should be the highlighting points of review and evaluation (Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch, 2008). Studies also indicate that scores of observers have challenged that the traditional journalistic organizations have come under exposure and imposition by the new media environment. The alternative sources of information and reporting models that have come under exposed damage is creating more counterbalance and offset. While on the other side of the picture, the advocates indicate and signify towards the developments that the mass media environment has brought (Benkler, 2006). The blurring of media consumers and producers from the new media gave rise to the need of deep investigation and inquiring the dynamics of the demands of the consumers. At the same time, the policy makers also need to bring into consideration not only the ways and means that can come under utilization for nurturing and promoting the production but also the development and growth of the consumption is equally important. Furthermore, why and how consumers or audience attention shifts from the traditional journalism towards the other various forms of user generated content also creates the need for the policy makers to understand and realize (Gillmor, 2006). While delving into the matter, the policy makers ought to keep their vision broad for the new learning from such inquiries. This can even lead the policy makers to re-arouse the demand for the traditional journalism in the form of identifying effectual and valuable distribution models that can not only make it more attractive in the media environment in today’s era, but also create a better reflection of the present-day media practice and custom (Gillmor, 2006). A mounting interest has always come under review by the researchers since the latter years of the decade 1990 with respect to creating a connection between new media technologies and public in general. New media technologies have principally and strongly modified and altered the models of media consumption. These new technologies facilitate and make possible for the consumers and audiences to record, interpret and re-circulate the media contents. Indeed, the new media contents and technologies that provide shared platforms for the distribution and the shared networks are also enabling and reforming the expectations of the consumers with respect to their experiences. The new media technologies have holistically transformed the outlook of the audiences and nowadays consumers are valued on not merely because of their consumption patterns but also on what they produce (Durham & Kellner, 2006). According to one of recent survey results (Singer et al, 2011), an abrupt and precipitous growth has come under notice in the use of shopping websites that have more than doubled the online shopping consumers in the recent years. In addition, it has also come under deep surveillance that numerous of the visitors visiting the shopping website have also shown their interest in reading consumer reviews and making additional comments to them. This has resulted in emergence and transformation of the shopping website into a social networking place, rather than just a traditional purchasing place. As an outcome, a rapidly increasing participatory media platform as a mean of media audiences has come under establishment that is persuading much more than the content providers (Singer et al, 2011). Studies also indicate that consumers now have an assortment of new choices for how, what and when to receive the information with the new media technology, particularly the internet and web-based media. In fact, the trend has not much more accelerated with the availability of mobile web where the consumers can get access to the information at any point of instance regardless of where they are (Singer et al, 2011). Organizations and companies through making the consumers participate in online networks in some way or the other are using them for their own profit and gain. By encouraging the target audience work for the companies through advertising in the form of games or movies, the companies are blurring the line of media consumers and producers. Additionally, the organizations in order to attain and reach their goals and targets, they embed advertisements in the games or send marketing information, pass on advertising texts to the target audience and a big participatory group on an unintentional or unplanned basis (Gillmor, 2006). Extensive research also suggests that by persuading and promoting the target audience to work on an interactive podium, business have heavily relied upon the blurred borders between media consumers and producers. They make the audiences connect and hook up on an online platform by providing them with an attractive interactive environment. This environment provides the consumers to share their experiences, interest and messages or opinions within their circle of friends or a group of people sharing common goals or habits. These interactions amongst the group of people create the potentials for exponential growth (Gillmor, 2006). Reviews and investigations have also materialized the verity that the internet and web-based media technology is not solely the consequence of the shifts between media producers and consumers but also the industries of advertising, films and television, news and games have been a larger portion in the change pattern. However, quite a few companies still exists that frequently believes that this shift of power towards the consumers is a strong source of vulnerability and feels threatened. These companies also deem that this is a way of generating potential revenues for their success. Due to this feeling, these companies often restrict or control the participation of the consumers (Napoli, 2011). However, on the other side of the spectrum, companies and marketing specialists want to blur the lines between media consumers and producers by choice due to the reason that they perceive that this is a prevailing and dominant cause for the success and popularity. In other words, according to these companies, when consumers view a commercial, they become aware of that commercial and this leads to spread of the news or commercials. Consequently, the probability of audience posting comments and reviews gradually increases, and thus, resulting in more recognition (Singer et al, 2011). It can come to well conclusion that technology and mass media have become one of the most prevailing and dominant tools that manipulate the general population of the globe. Besides, technology not only changes the way of thinking but also shapes and molds the outlooks, direction and attitudes of the people. Additionally, studies also conclude that social relations have come under deep and intense effect from technology and media. With the blurring of media producers and consumers, the need to maximize the access to the audience and at the same time the need to conserve and maintain the journalistic institutions must be the priorities for the policy makers. Ultimately, it can come under obvious and apparent articulation that media users and media institutions or producers are coming under revolution with the congregating media environment. However, media policy makers are confronting a challenge and that is to ensure the effect of the changes must not lead towards negativity and must remain optimistic. The audiences have come under several new labels with the new media technologies as it blurred the line between the media consumers and producers. This is because with the wide usage of the internet and other social networking websites, the media technology has created an environment in which an individual concurrently act as producers, consumers, and commentators, who share opinions, thoughts and perceptions with other people. In the end, if one would say that the new technology is restructuring or relocating the power from producers to consumers cannot be counterfeit. References Anderson, C. (2009). Free: The future of a radical price. Вершина. Arthur, W. B. (2009). The nature of technology: what it is and how it evolves. Simon and Schuster. Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press. Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second life, and Beyond: from production to produsage. Peter Lang. Butsch, R. (2008). The citizen audience: Crowds, publics, and individuals. Taylor & Francis. Chapman, J. L. & Nuttall, N. (2011). Journalism Today: A Themed History. 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