Week 1 – Media and Everyday Life [Repost]
[Repost]
Week 1 – Media and Everyday Life
In David Gauntlett’s article “Media Studies 2.0”, he expresses his thoughts on this fairly new concept of “Web 2.0”. He argues that as society shifts towards Web 2.0, the way we look at media and how we study it, changes as well – he refers to this as Media Studies 2.0. Gauntlet structures his ideas by outlining the distinguishing features of web 1.0 from web 2.0, as well as how it adds to the development of a media-oriented society. Although he doesn’t fully disregard web 1.0, he stresses that its successor is far more superior and is the foundation, for an internet revolution.
First of all, Gauntlett establishes the differences by stating that web 1.0 leans more towards media production from powerful companies, rather than from online communities. With this emergence of peer to peer (p2p) networks, overriding the client-server relationship, society is more integrated with one another than ever before. Blogs from the everyday person are being read more, instead of articles from qualified journalists. We create as well as watch personal videos from people all over the world, seeing it as alternative to watching television. Participation among individuals is encouraged, for everyone is given a chance to speak their mind. An example of this would be Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created through a collection of knowledge, uploaded by millions of individuals. Although the information might not always be right, it shows how we have evolved into a culture that has taken passive readers and turned them into active writers. We are encouraged to regulate the information, acting as a community as a whole, to separate facts from opinions. Another example is Flickr, an online photo sharing community. Unlike Facebook, Flickr asks its users to share their photos for the public to see, instead of restricting it to a group of friends. Instead of perceiving the world solely through the eyes of the media, one can view the experiences of individuals through the use of tags. This is just a couple of the many examples of how we have considerably altered media studies to suit needs of present-day society.
References:
Gauntlett, David. “Media Studies 2.0″
http://www.theory.org.uk/mediastudies2.htm
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