Essay on The Power of Media in the Digital Age - 1762 Words

The Power of Media in the Digital Age Across from my old high school, where once a pool hall seduced us away from classes, there is now a trendy bar and grill frequented by the recently-graduated. I visited this establishment to reflect upon the nature of media, culture and what it means to be literate in the 21st century. The implications for teachers, libraries and society in general may be daunting, but they hint at excitement, too. There I was, an English major, a man of the book as it were, all ready to cast aspersions left, right and center at these clearly illiterate, shallow young hipsters. Within sight of my old high school library, I was ready to join the crowd of experts and†¦show more content†¦They were more aware of what was going on than I was and could clearly tell the scores in the games and the events in the news, as they spoke in clusters of conversation about what the media imparted. Whats more to the point is that they were not dealing with text on a superficial level (though much of the content they were dealing with was trivial) but in cognitive terms they did so with far better acuity and retention than I could. So the question was, what had media added and what was lost? This one admittedly unscientific observation serves, I think, as a good allegory for those of us directly involved in sorting through ideas about culture and media literacy in the digital communications age. If one looks upon the scene with the glasses of an older, print-based paradigm, it is easy to see a sad portrait of lost reading skills. On the other hand, if one only for a moment considers the possibility that what one is seeing is in fact new literacies, then there is a whole new series of questions which need to be addressed. If we take as our definition of culture the good old Oxford Canadian Dictionary definition, that is,Show MoreRelatedNetworking Systems1077 Words   |  5 Pagespotential influences of the rapidly expanding networking systems at our lives, cultures, beliefs, politics, and even at our identity formations. Thirteen years ago, at her various researches, she underlined probable risks as well as facilities. This new age media, or mean of communication, brought the necessity of reconstruction, negotiation and redefinition of some concepts within the context of socio-cultural structures such as community, liberation, nationalism and identity. Unsurprisingly, extensiveRead MoreImpact Of Globalization On Journalism On A Global Scale1677 Words   |  7 PagesPower and democracy play an extremely large role in media industries as well as spatial, economic and political inequalities. 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