Chapter six of “Media in Everyday Life” covers in depth the effects of the digital revolution in the 1990,s and the creation of creation of the mass media in the 1960's. Mass Media As defined in the article is a change form public local broadcasting to national and multi nation broadcasting. The effects of this change led to narrow casting and the targeting of niche audiences by media companies. This change in broadcasting has picked up a fare share of criticism; The critics of mass media makes claims ranging in credibility, the least credible being that mass media makes youth violent and unable to preform well in school, while more credible claims such that mass media only offers more predetermined choices for passive audience to choose form and hence limits and destroys opportunity for freedom of expression.
The mass media has also changed how news is covered in current society, News now travels faster then ever before, the mass media runs 24 hour news stations knowing that even at 3AM some one is watching in some part of the world. 24 hour media coverage for the world at large by a few cooperations causes a lot of news to not get covered and leads to wasteful use of resources ( do people in South Africa really need to know about a missing person in California?). Also looking at the media event of 9/11 we see that Terrorist even use the mass media network to their own ends, timing the second twin tower crash 15 minutes after the first one so that the whole world, my self included, could watch the second plan crash live. Finally the mass media has greatly altered the Public Sphere. Once shaped by town hall meting and local events the public sphere is ever growing in size and encompassing the world as McLuhan once put it in a “global village”. The public sphere was once, in the earlier half of the century a space for debate of ideas and politics; mass media has since changed it to be more sensational.
The digital age has changed our media paradigm. The public at large has gone form news views and the occasional lucky (or unlucky) part time news makers to being full time news production crews. Social networking has given the public an amazing ability to report and critique events amongst them selves. This can in some cases lead to ground breaking reporting as in the Iranian riots and in others a media obsession over Paris Hilton's twitter account. In short digital media has given the public the ability to quickly communicate but is still plagued with the mass media sense of sensationalism.
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