MEDIA AND ITS FUNCTIONS:

“Media is a means of conveying something such as a channel of communication” – Lule

Media – plural of medium

A person’s voice is a MEDIUM.

According to commentators, media is:

 the technologies of mass communication

ex: a. books b. magazines c. newspapers
 broadcast media:
ex: a. radio b. film c. television
 digital media:
ex: a. internet b. mobile mass communication

Under the internet media are:

a. e-mail b. internet sites c. social media d. internet-based videos and audios

It is easier to define “media” than to determine what it does and how it affects the society.

“The medium is the message.” – Marhsall McLuhan (Media Theorist)

 His statement was an attempt to draw attention to how media, as a form of technology,
reshapes societies.

Television (introduced in 1960s) is not a simple bearer of messages – it also shapes the social
behavior of users and orient family behavior.

Television has also drawn people away from other meaningful activities such as playing games or
reading books.

Smartphone – allows users to keep in touch INSTANTLY with multiple people at the same time.

The technology (medium), not the message, makes for social changes possible.

“Different media simultaneously extend and amputate human senses.” – Marhsall McLuhan (Media
Theorist)

Media has positive and negative effect.

Positive:

 Expand the reach of communication

Negative:
  Dull the users’ communication capacities

Before, exchanging of stories was done orally.

Storytellers had to have retentive memories.

Pappyrus – started becoming more common in Egypt after 400 BCE.

This development, according to philosophers at the time, dulled people’s capacity to remember.

Something similar can be said about cellphones – there is a positive and negative effect.

Positive:

 Provide the capability to talk to more people instantaneously and simultaneously

Negative:

 Limit the senses because they make users easily distractible and more prone to multitasking

“The question of what new media enhance and what they amputate was not a moral or ethical one.” –
Marshall McLuhan (Media Theorist)

 His statement was drawing attention to the historically and technologically specific attributes of
various media.

NEW MEDIA – are neither inherently good nor bad.

CONCLUSION:
Different media have diverse effects on globalization processes.

At some point, it seemed that global television was creating a global monoculture. But now, it seems
more likely that social media will splinter cultures and ideas into bubbles of people who do not interact.

Societies can never be completely prepared for the rapid changes in the system of multiple unintended
consequences.

Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, will continue to engender social changes. Instead of fearing
these changes or entering a state of moral panic, everyone must collectively discover ways of dealing
with them responsibly and ethically.