Blog 1: Media in Everyday Life

Mass media are media forms that are used to reach large groups of individuals with shared interests.
Convergence is a term for the coming together of previously separate media forms to create a new mixture or bundle that groups them together.
Public sphere is the idea that there are public and private interests that are separate and the general populous is within the public sphere. Within it, they can voice opinions about issues in things like debates.
A critique is a response that criticizes a notion or work, such as media imperialism, and gives reasons to persuade an audience to reject or affirm the original notion.
There is some debate about how the technology affects the paradigm of mass media. Some say that it has become less controlled, since in the last only literate educated people had access to an inflow of information. This has certainly changed since anyone (in America at least) has access to news via radio, television or written forms of information. On the other hand, since only a few major companies put out the information, some people believe it is a more closed off system because the government and media companies can work together to produce only the information that serves some purpose rather than an unbiased and whole story. From this viewpoint, information has become more scarce rather than more open since news stories are designed. Both situations seem true to me. The former because I don’t go a day without learning something new about the world in thanks particularly to the internet and the latter because when Michael Jackson died, nothing of importance was shown on televised new stations for days.