Progress and Civilisation - Book Report/Review Example

Progress and Civilization Recent research has focused on how children produce and create media content throughinternet, social media and digital games. However, while some researchers have asserted that the media use by children and young adults is very creative and active, some other scholars claim that it is not. This study focused on young adults of age between 18 and 30, all of whom were from Finland. Surveys, interviews, and media diaries from a study on the ways in which young adults read a variety of materials were used to inform this study.

For the purposes of the study, creative of making texts, graphics, video content and then publishing it for other peers to access these materials online. This, the authors argue that it contrasts the traditional media production where the roles of the producers and the audiences were separated. In this new perspective, the audience becomes the producers as well as the consumers of the media productions. This creates content through voluntary and temporary affiliations by users who have common intellectual enterprises and personal interests (Vainikka & Herkman, 2013).

The study south to get information about how the participants who represented the larger group of the same age group in the same geographical location, used the new forms of media such as the internet to become producers of this kind of content. Many ways to collect the data were used. These included asking both open ended and closed question, interviews and analysis of qualitative data such as media diaries focused group interviews and focused individual interviews.The nature of the internet itself and the other platforms supported by the internet (such as social media) makes it possible for everyone and anyone to be a producer of content and this blurs the lines separating the producers from the audience (Vainikka & Herkman, 2013).

This leads to a collective intelligence where information and ideas are developed and used collectively. Instead of immersive reading in such online platforms, the readers use discussions and idea pooling, albeit in an informal fashion. However, this theoretical understanding of what participatory production of content (collective intelligence) is, is not always achieved because there are other factors that determine how an individual user of the modern digital media can manage to be a producer of information.

For instance, while the modern medial itself support the environment conducive for collective intelligence, the individual users may have to have special skills, support from the particular group in which they want to contribute and confidence to do so (Vainikka & Herkman, 2013). Because of these factors which have been ignored in previous studies, most individual users of the online digital platforms are only passive users while only a few are producers of the content.The ideas discussed in the article articulate the concept of technology determinisms in a number of ways.

Even though the authors of this article identify that the level of participatory content production is not achieved ideally as some previous studies have claimed, it is still clear that the new media technology such as internet, computers and even social media has changed the way people produce and use information. This is what the concept of technological determinism articulates.Reference listVainikka, E., & Herkman, J. (2013). Generation of content-producers? The reading and media production practices of young adults.

Journal of Audience & reception Studies, 10, 2 , pp. 118-138.