COM 101 : Entry 7 (Fin)

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is defined as any communicative transaction that occurs through the use of computers and computer networks. Examples that people might be more familiar with these days include e-mailing, instant messaging using MSN or Yahoo messenger, voice calls or video conferencing through Skype, blogs such as the one that you are reading now, as well as social networking sites such as Facebook and Friendster.

With the rapid sophistication of technology and the onset of digitilization, the phenomena known as Convergence is starting to take root. This refers to the merging of the Internet and traditional media companies as well as the coming together of computing, telecommunications and the media in a digital environment.

Gone are the days where people solely rely on pen-and-paper or real life face-to-face social interactions. In its place, we are able to interact with people across the globe in the blink of an eye and gain access to news that local papers deem unworthy of coverage -the possibilites are endless. Some homeworks these days even encourage the use of CMC to promote the sharing of opinions!

Article: Girl Scout banned from selling cookies on Youtube

Wild Freeborn's attempt to use Youtube to help sell her cookies is an example of the one-to-many communication pattern. Rather than contribute to the burn-out of her shoes, the budding little entrepreuner decided to make use of CMC to reach out to a wider range of audience, though she would only accept orders from her home community so that she could personally deliver the cookies. The issue of safety was raised here.

In this instance, Wild is relatively safe since she had enlisted the help of her father to oversee the project. However, this may not be the case for many users of CMC. Unlike Wild, not every user has pure intentions when initiating communication with others through CMC. Therein lies several other issues, such as the emergence of Internet crimes.

(Unfortunately, not everyone is as resistant to internet scams)

Through the use of chatrooms,instant messengers, emails and other technology, ignorant souls may be led astray and duped in elaborate scams and identity theft resulting in loss of money. Even without direct communication with the perpetrator, information can be stolen from us through malwares, such as viruses, that are spread across computers. Although information transmitted via CMC may be traceable, it is extremely hard to do so in the case of professionals who cover their tracks. Apart from monetary crimes, some people might even be subjected to physical crime in the real world, such as falling prey to sexual predators.

As can be seen, the freedom to assume a personae of one's own creation through CMC can be used for both good and bad.

Discussion

Do you think that the shift towards Computer-Mediated Communication is a good thing ? Are people becoming over-reliant on the availibility of information online that they hardly pause to ponder its validity ?

COM 101 : Entry 6

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Food for Thought: The Media

Mass communication is generally defined as a form of communication through which institutional sources (ex. Govt body, media agencies) address large, diverse audiences whose members are physically separated from one another.

Let us consider some aspects of the media as food for thought. Out of the 4 main functions of the media, namely Surveillance, Correlation, Cultural Transmission and Entertainment, I believe that Surveillance and Entertainment tend to take precedence in the lives of the average person.



Provision of news is an example of the media function, Surveillance (the gathering and dissemination of information). I feel that it is a great fallacy on our part to accept media messages at face value and ignore the agenda setting functions of the media, ie. The media's ability to raise the importance of an issue in the public's mind, which may not even be true in reality.

Take the cartoon above as an example. There is the implication that previous news reports had portrayed violence breaking out in the Middle-East on a daily basis. How much of that is true and how much of that is a load of hogwash ? The viewer will never know since he/she/it is not experiencing the violence on-site (an unobtrusive issue) and as such, the media will have a great influence on the viewer's perspective of the Middle-East as a place awash with daily violence.



In this next cartoon, we can see that the media may not be as liberal as it is made out to be. The view of the media reflecting and reproducing only those ideas, meanings and values that uphold the interests of the power elite is known as Media Hegemony. If the guy being polled does not conform to any of the options given, do you think that his view will be reflected in the results pertaining to how liberal the media is? I think not. Being as powerless as he is (unless he turns out to be some super hero or politician in disguise), his thoughts are likely to be silenced if it turns out to be negative in nature, or is seen to oppose the status quo. Thus, the diversity of choices present here is merely an illusion, and it can be seen in reality as well, when diversity may be used to camouflage any one dominant ideology.



Look at the last cartoon above. Do you see the underlying concepts behind what is known as Cultivation Theory aka the theory that media messages do not influence audiences attitudes directly but instead cultivates it indirectly ? Although the theory is generally applied to the televised world, the psychology acting behind the printed media and televised world is approximately the same in this case, with both drawing upon the availability heuristic as one of the influencing factors.

Through mainstreaming, analogous to "Every time you open the paper, someone's stealing something", the media is able to create a synthetic reality which people eventually take up as the common view (cultivation). In this example, as they are constantly exposed to news of crime, they take up the view that "Crimes these days are attributed to the changes".

Furthermore, a resonance occurs when the audience's everyday experiences matches those they view on TV, or read about in the case of the cartoon above, reinforcing their possibly misguided viewpoints. In the situation present in the cartoon, there is a possibility that instances of crime in the past and present are identical, just that the media did not include such reports as frequently in the past compared to the present, resulting in the cultivation of unsubstantiated attitudes held by audiences.

Discussion

With the influence of the media in mind, where should we draw the line between implicitly believing what we hear, watch or read, and having to analyze everything from the media ? Surely it would be too tiresome to continuously ponder whether our personal views have been pre-determined or distorted by the media ?