New Media Essay
Alisa B. Schaeffer
August 10, 2015
COMM/400
Robert Hughes

New Media Essay
Founding new ideas in the world and giving life to these thoughts and imaginations - that’s what innovation is. With the help of technological marvels such as the computer, and subsequent Internet, the world has entered into a modern era of communication. However these technological advancements directly impact our civilizations, changing our cultural trends and reshaping our social perception. The media influences society by presenting persuasive messages to people, changing their thoughts about their appearance, values, and behaviors. The key is to understand how new age media does this. By doing so, we can better understand the socioeconomic perceptions of the modern world and can work for the betterment of the society and the global economy.
Programs that communicate with the masses know that it’s important to send their messages to the society. And because they already know how their messages can influence the society, they put it to their advantage. They make it their target to reach out to as many people as possible, presenting this enormous audience with their personalized messages and exploiting them for the benefit of the media. In 2006, in his book “The Long Tail”, Chris Anderson discussed how the media has shifted from small informative shows to large number of shows targeting the consumer’s demand. The media delivers only those things that people want to use or see. So it can be seen that when trying to find the source of influence, we circle back at the mass media developers.
One of the biggest sources of influence is the movie industry. But where did this influence come from? We should keep in mind that the movie industry has always been able push beyond the boundaries of our imaginations to make us experience things that seemed so far-fetched. The source of all these imaginative marvels is none other than the human minds. Envisioning an invention and turning that thought into reality is what has led us to this age of communication. For example, in 1832 Samuel Morse thought of the first electromagnetic telegraph. In today’s world, that might not seem like a big deal, but the concept and innovation of telegraph went on to greatly affect future inventions and those inventions led to the creation of today’s information superhighway as we know it.
W we can find numerous ways to communicate with the rest of the world. Probably the most recent ones’ that gained immense popularity are social sites like Facebook. Giving people the chance to connect with people from all over the world, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity or socioeconomic conditions, these sites gained notoriety very quickly. But this is not without its problems. With the innovation of new ways of reaching out to the world, new ways of cyber-crimes, especially cyber bullying have also increased. This is a serious act of cyber violence that often mentally damages the victim and it’s increasing at an alarming rate.
Another downside of these types of media is that people sometimes lose the sense of personal communication in their life. The lack of personal touch in the relationships develops a lack of values and personal responsibilities. This form of new media is a powerful tool that reshapes the values of the society, changing our views towards the people around us, the world, and subtly controlling our actions.
With an array of applications and features, the cell phone is another technological advancement that has become extremely popular. Starting from simple text messaging and calling, these devices often contain features such as wireless internet, global positioning systems (GPS) access, high mega-pixel cameras, a multitude of downloadable apps, and so on. While now we take these features for granted, there was a time when all of these were thought to be borderline fantasy. Earlier TV shows and movies presented them as a possibility