Section outline

  • what is the effect of new media?

    The impact of this new media on society is varied in both positiveand negative outlooks.Internet makes everyone a publisher and everyone a librarian, inthat anyone can both produce and retrieve an unprecedented amount.of information. The gate-keeping and agenda-setting functions of thetraditional media establishments are bypassed in favor of searchengines and directories. Ideally, this means that any person withInternet access (still a fairly small number, confined primarily to thedeveloped world) can gain information about any issue, event, orplace, without the restrictions of time, expense, geography, andpolitics that used to limit such information gathering.By chatting with strangers in chat rooms and readinginternationals newspapers online, we believe that we are learningabout foreign cultures and perspectives directly from the sources.What is new in this type of communication is that young peopletoday, and not only they, are happy to decide for themselves what iscredible or worthwhile and what is not. The old media model was:there is one source of truth. The new media model is: there aremultiple sources of truth, and we will sort it out. The mass mediaaudience is no longer a captive, today's media consumer is unique,demanding, and engaged.