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Media Shock

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Media Shock is a term coined by Communications scholar and political analyst David Taras[1] to describe the “magnitude and jolt-like force of media change”.[2] It stems from a belief that the rapid progression from traditional media to new media technologies has and will continue to have notable effects on society, including changing the way previous mass communication tools such as the newspaper and the television operate. Taras is especially concerned with the effects of new media on the Canadian media landscape, cultural environment and democratic life.[2]

Elements of Media Shock

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These are the conditions that induce media shock.

Rapidity and Suddenness of Media Change

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Many of the staples in today’s mediascape were only established a few years ago, operate very differently from their media predecessors and yet they have become giant media conglomerates. Google began in 1996 in a garage, just 23 years ago yet it has many products both on the both several software and hardware.[3] Most popular is the Google search engine which averages 40,000 searches per second and 1.2 trillion searcher per year worldwide.[4] Facebook which began in 2005 to connect Harvard students, now has 2.32 billion monthly users at the 2018-year end.[5][6] Twitter which began just a year later in 2006, now has 321 million active users.[7][8] In such a short time, these media companies have become commonplace as mass media. Not only are the private corporations rapidly growing, but there are also swift changes in the hardware because it now takes less time to innovate multiple products.[9]

Large Scale and Pervasive

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New media, like previous communication technology has become a part of everyday life.[2][10] Ubiquity is not uncommon to mass media tools, but what makes new media technology different is the scale at which it is a part of daily life.[2] Not only are media professionals making content on the internet, but the low barriers to entry and prosumer function means that every day people can contribute their own content as well.[2][11] This leads to the creation of larger amounts of content in less time than ever possible with traditional media.[2] It is for this reason than more than 60 years of television history makes up only a spec of content when compared to the billions of YouTube videos that have been uploaded.[2][12]

Decentralized Information flow

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Another element of media shock is that information no longer flows with a top down approach.[2] Within the traditional media structure, content travels from professional media producers to consumers whereas new media technologies allows consumers to also produce their own content.[2]

Corporate Concentration and Control

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A contributing factor to media shock is the role of media corporations.[2] Communications writer Ken Auletta refers to Google as “the front door to the world for many people”[13] because it is a private company like many others in the media industry that holds a lot of information.  The concept of media shock suggests that their profit-making agenda shapes the way we view information.[2] For some companies, paywalls and subscriptions are the way to make money while still providing information.[14] For others, algorithms that present users with information it predicts they want to see, fosters the creation of an audience that according Marxist ideology, can be sold to advertisers as a commodity.[15]

Screens Merging

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The integration of screens also contributes to the conditions that induce media shock.[2] In the age of new media, content is not bound by the medium. News is not only consumed through newspapers or television shows through the television screen. Smart devices, compared to technologies of the past, allow for a more mobile flow of day to day life.[16]

Survival of Traditional Media

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The rapid change of the media landscape has made it difficult for traditional media to compete.[2] For example, according to the Economist, the newspaper industry is struggling to remain successful because the internet delivers content better[17]. The searchability function helps people find what they are looking for quickly[17] and the mass accumulation of content at the fingertips makes it more appealing to use devices rather than newspapers.

Effect on Canada

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Traditional broadcasters have historically played helped connect Canadian citizens across vast geography and despite a variety of cultural backgrounds[2]. The collapse of traditional media institutions is viewed as threat to Canadian national identity by scholars such as Taras.[2]  

Television Competition

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Another result of media shock is a struggle for traditional, Over the Air television broadcasters to compete when Over the Top broadcasters such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Hulu and others are creating content that is high quality and serves niche tastes.[2]

Global Connectivity

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Taras also attributes global connectivity to media shock.[2] Communications professor Joshua Meyrowitz proposes that electronic media allows users to enter private spaces of people from around the world in ways that allow for access to experiences they would not otherwise live through.[18] This connectivity is also reflected in the global economy. The stock markets in separate regions of the world are increasingly sensitive to each other.[2][19]

Social Media and Political Organization

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Political participation of those under the effects of media shock is another aspect of life that is affected by the change to new media.[2] Taras suggests that the speed of the medium allows for fast political organization.[2] He also indicates that there is some debate as to whether political action on the internetis truly effective or merely a superficial form of engagement scholars call slacktivism.[2][20][21]

Redefinition of Privacy

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One of the allowances of new media is datafication of all activities on the internet. Data, whether mundane or sensitive is collected by corporations and processed and analyzed for different reasons.[2] Due to the newness of the digital age and minimal regulatory precedent, there is a lack of clarity when determining what information is considered public or private.[22][23] This raises questions of who has ownership over content, prosumers or applications, understanding of consent policies and the regulation of sharing with third parties.[22][23]

Reference List

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  1. ^ "David Taras". The School of Public Policy. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Taras, David, 1950-. The digital mosaic : media, power, and identity in Canada. Toronto. ISBN 9781442608887. OCLC 888557508.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ "How we started and where we are today | Google". about.google. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  4. ^ "Google Search Statistics - Internet Live Stats". www.internetlivestats.com. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  5. ^ Phillips, Sarah (2007-07-25). "A brief history of Facebook". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  6. ^ "Facebook users worldwide 2018". Statista. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  7. ^ "The history of Twitter, 140 characters at a time". Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  8. ^ "Twitter: number of active users 2010-2018". Statista. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  9. ^ Bayus, B. L. (1994). Are product life cycles really getting shorter?. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 11(4), 300-308.
  10. ^ Deuze, M. (2011). Media life. Media, Culture & Society, 33(1), 137-148.
  11. ^ Ritzer, G., Dean, P., & Jurgenson, N. (2012). The coming of age of the prosumer. American behavioral scientist, 56(4), 379-398.
  12. ^ "• YouTube by the Numbers (2019): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts". 2019-01-05. Retrieved 2019-04-07.
  13. ^ Auletta, K. Googled: The End of the World as We Know it. New York, NY: The Penguin Press, 2009. p. 283.
  14. ^ Macnamara, J. (2010). Remodelling Media: The Urgent Search for New Media Business Models. Media International Australia, 137(1), 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X1013700104
  15. ^ Fuchs, C. (2012). Dallas Smythe Today - The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory. Prolegomena to a Digital Labour Theory of Value. Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 10(2), 692-740.
  16. ^ Oswald, K., & Packer, J. Flow and Mobile Media: Broadcast Fixity and Digital Fluidity. Jeremy Packer and Stephen Crofts, eds. Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Mobility and Networks. London: Routledge, 2012, 276-287.
  17. ^ a b "The rebirth of news". The Economist. 2009-05-14. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  18. ^ Meyrowitz, J. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1985.
  19. ^ Cerny, P. G. (1994). The dynamics of financial globalization: Technology, market structure, and policy response. Policy Sciences, 27(4), 319-342.
  20. ^ Christensen, H. (2011). Political activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or political participation by other means?. First Monday, 16(2). doi:https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i2.3336
  21. ^ Gladwell, Malcolm (2010-09-27). "Small Change". ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  22. ^ a b Gangadharan, S. P. (2017). The downside of digital inclusion: Expectations and experiences of privacy and surveillance among marginal internet users. New Media & Society, 19(4), 597-615. doi:10.1177/1461444815614053
  23. ^ a b Mai, J. (2016). Big data privacy: The datafication of personal information. The Information Society, 32(3), 192-199. doi:10.1080/01972243.2016.1153010


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