Mass Media: a means of communication that reaches very large audiences
Public Sphere: an area where people (private interests) can come together to debate and discuss the pressing issues of their society (public interests). It is the circulation of ideas the is essential to democracy.
Convergence: the coming together of media forms. This results in the merging of previously discrete ranges of services (phone, tv, internet)
Critique: the analysis of something-lets say the media-that results in the conclusive review or assessment of the media
The immergence of new technologies and the digital culture as changed our media paradigm in primarily three ways. (1) Mass Media has become more accessible to the general population. Historically newspapers were the primary medium for mass communication. This excluded the illiterate—a large part of the population. Now with the advent of new technology such as the radio and television, the media is accessible to everyone. In fact we now have the opposite problem. We can’t avoid the media! (2) The development of the internet has opened up mass media even further. People are no longer simply consumers of media, passively watching and listening to mass media broadcasts, but they can now take part in it as producers. They contribute to the media by uploading a variety of types of media (pictures, text, videos, podcasts, etc.) where they are accessible to all (well at least those who have internet access). (3) Finally, mass media has become very centralized. Consolidation has brought about huge powerful conglomerates that control mass media. So although there appears to be a proliferations of options (the 100s of tv stations), there is in fact a narrowing range of opinions brought about by centralization of ownership. These large conglomerates, which control the flow of information, sell to advertisers and make their decisions not based on the audience but on corporate interests.
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