Media in Everyday Life - Xtra

Mass Media: This term arises from 1920’s when media wanted to reach large audiences perceived to have shared interests. There were the masses that were created from the working middle class. This middle class was considered to have influencing opinions on social practices. Even today, the mass media is changed a bit of its structure to reach the large audience, and the idea of reaching those audiences is same.

Public Sphere: The public sphere is ideally a physical place, social setting, or media arena where citizens can debate and discuss on the current social issues. This idea has been enormously influenced by the ideas of German theorist Jurgen Habermas. He saw that the public sphere could become a “private” group who could discuss the common “public” interest in ways that mediated the power of the state. He also believed that the public sphere was a place where true public opinion could be formulated.

Convergence: Convergence was used in the 1990’s to describe the coming together of many different media forms, such as photography, video, audio, Internet, and screens. These forms of media converged in the redistributions and have resulted in the mergers of between different media industries.

Critique: A critique is the analysis or judgment of what the consumers view in the media. The critique can draw conclusion from what the media had said and may focus on the main social issues.

Digital culture greatly impacted the media paradigm from the creation of mass media. The idea of “the masses” described in the nineteenth century as changes of societies undergoing industrialization and the emergence of a massive working class. These masses were thought to have influential opinions on social practices, because the mass society described social formations in Europe and the United States during the early period of industrialization after World War II. The digital culture especially impacted the middle working class who could not read when audio and photographs came into media. Before, the primary media form was in writing. Now, we can get access to media from almost anywhere. It is amazing how much digital culture has changed from the beginning.