Changes Throughout the Web

Personal Interpretation of how the internet and the concept of social media has changed over time.

The idea of mass communication was getting information or ideas to everyone. While the term of mass media being one-way broadcast may not be the norm, it is still an integral part of society, books, newspapers, radio, and TV are all forms of mass communication. While the norm is multi-directional, interpersonal communication and discussion, each conversation still needs information. Mass communication is used as a way to get information to everyone, what people do with that information is not their responsibility.

Radio, TV, books, and newspapers have been part of mass media for a long time, it’s one of the biggest mediums of mass communications. It was originally meant to provide information for everyone, before mass communication, everything was done by word of mouth, It might not be necessary, it may die out, but it’s not anytime soon. Similar to how sites like Youtube might overtake television at some point in the future due to availability, easier to get wifi connection than satellite tv, mass communications might follow a similar direction. I do think that the mass communications we are familiar with will die out, it’s just not now, and if it changes, it’ll just take a different form. Such as books being converted to e-books, newspapers going online and splitting into individual articles spread by topic, and radios being converted to podcasts. TV will not die out, and at most will leave the satellite part of TV obsolete with everything converted to online streaming.

I personally believe that the more ‘open’ part of mass communications, such as the commonplace book are a bit of a historical hump. People have a sense of privacy and secrecy, it exists within everyone and not everyone is willing to share those secrets. However, what the commonplace book is compared to, blogs and open online journals, are still big. People have blogs, sharing stories and experiences, out in public. I see this mainly as a person’s way to either share experiences to connect with people, or hope to become internet famous. Which I think is another factor that plays largely into how today’s society views information. People try to become internet famous by pulling some crazy stunt or dare, all in the hope of being an online celebrity. Which there are also people who fabricate things that make the internet blow up. This mainly ties into how information is now viewed, while the internet provides everyone with a fast way of gathering information, like for an essay or tips for math problems, there is also a slew of ‘false information’ or ‘false news’ one of the bigger ones in the past year or two is the ‘Momo Challenge’ which was spread around online social internet platforms as a challenge for teens and adolescents to perform dangerous and violent acts from harming others to suicide attempts. This was later found to be a hoax, but caused a massive scare that kept it online for quite some time. Much like how the article mentioned that the information on a book can be no more true than the ones spoken by mouth. Now no information written in text is reliable unless with different sources, since information on the internet can easily be forged and posted. Probably one of the reasons why history or English classes require several sources in an essay, just to prove the information being evaluated is true.

In conclusion, the interwebs have changed a lot, and will continue to change as time moves on and technology becomes more complex and streamlined. The role mass communication has on the world will not die out, just change forms. While information can be forged and changed, the internet still provides us with access to the biggest library of information in our century. That won’t be changing any time soon, despite the false information infecting it.