Discussion post: Online Media: The Internet, Social Media, and Video Games
CMST 432 Media Systems and Communication Technology
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Recommended Text and Materials
Hanson, R. E. (2018) Mass communication: Living in a media world (7th ed.). SAGE.
Recommended Resources for Additional Exploration
The Mass Communication student companion website:
http://edge.sagepub.com/hanson7e (Links to an external site.)
This site is a particularly good resource for review of course materials.
Chapter 10: Online Media: The Internet, Social Media, and Video Games
Discussion post
· How does interacting online differ when you do it through an app rather than through the World Wide Web?
· Discuss your own experiences but also those of other consumers as described in the text and other sources.
Chapter 10 Overview
Summary and Learning Objectives
The Internet arose in the late 1960s out of efforts to share expensive computer resources provided by the military to universities across the United States. The initial network, called ARPAnet, went online for the first time in the fall of 1969. The network operated using packet switching, a method of transferring information that breaks down messages into small packets that are transmitted separately across the network and reassembled once they are received. Through e-mail and file sharing, ARPAnet soon became a tool used by academics to collaborate and communicate across the country.
As the number of incompatible networks grew in the 1970s, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocols that allowed the networks to communicate with each other. In 1983, ARPAnet started using the TCP/IP protocols. This is commonly seen as the true beginning of the Internet.
The Internet is unique among the mass media in allowing interpersonal communication through e-mail and instant messaging and group communication through e-mail, instant messaging, SMS, the World Wide Web, search, mobile apps, blogs, podcasts, and streaming media.
The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee, while he was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. His goal was to produce a decentralized system for creating and sharing documents anywhere in the world. The web has three major components: the uniform resource locator (URL), the hypertext transfer protocol (http), and the hypertext markup language (HTML). Berners-Lee published the code for the World Wide Web on the Internet in 1991 for anyone in the world to use at no cost.
A growing part of online interaction is through social media, which is defined as media that allows for user-created content, comments, tagging, and social networking.
Video games are an emerging part of modern mass media that have been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as deserving full First Amendment protection. In addition to being a popular activity, video games, in the form of eSports, are also a spectator event now.
The Internet in general and the web, in particular, were based on a set of values known as the hacker ethic. This ethic holds that information should be freely distributed and that individuals should have as much control over computers as possible.
The World Wide Web has turned the Internet into a major mass medium that provides news, entertainment, and community interaction. The web offers a mix of content providers, including traditional media companies, new media companies offering publications available only on the web, aggregator sites that offer help in navigating the web, and individuals who have something they want to say.
The web has been criticized for elevating rumors to the level of news, making inappropriate material available to children, collecting private information about users, and creating a false sense of intimacy and interaction among users. This can be seen with the Russian hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
Over the past several years, the transmission of media content has been moving from channels of legacy media into those of online digital media, allowing people to access content when and where they want to.
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Chapter 10
The Internet:
Mass Communication
Gets Personal
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#DisabledAndCute
Disabled author Keah Brown decided she liked who she saw in the mirror and proclaimed she was #DisabledAndCute on social media
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#DisabledAndCute
Critics in disability community saw “cute” as a diminutive term. Brown realized she couldn’t make everyone happy
Seen as a conversation starter between disabled community and media
Trying to get disabled actors to play disabled characters
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What Is the Internet?
New mass medium incorporating elements of interpersonal, group, and mass communications
“A diverse set of independent networks, interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network”
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Development of the Internet
How do we make incompatible computers talk with each other?
How do we share information?
Can we maintain military communication after nuclear war? (But this system was never built!)
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Packet Switching
1964: Paul Baran develops decentralized computer network for Air Force
Messages are broken into small data packets, which are sent independently across the network
Receiving computer reassembles message
Air Force chooses NOT to build this network
Donald Davies proposes similar civilian network for Britain; also not built
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How Packet Switching Works
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ARPAnet
Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
Networking incompatible computers across the country
Went online in 1969, same year as the moon landing
Intended for primarily academic use
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Connecting Incompatible Networks
ARPAnet led to multiple packet-switching networks
How do you link these small networks together?
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf created rules for networks to communicate with each other, a protocol known as TCP/IP
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The Internet
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
How data are transmitted and how computers can locate each other
Internet
Internetworking of networks
Data exchange follows specific rules
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Online/Mobile Media
Electronic mail (e-mail)
A message sent from one computer user to another across a network
Texting and direct messaging
Electronic message systems that allow two or more users to communicate in real time
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World Wide Web
Hypertext
The format of material containing links that allow the reader to move from one section to another and from one document to another
Tim Berners-Lee, Enquire Within Upon Everything:
wouldn’t it be a good idea to be able to share documents located on computers anywhere in the world?
Created the World Wide Web and gave the software away for free
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Major Components of the Web
Uniform resource locator (URL)
The address of the content placed on the web
Hypertext transfer protocol (http)
The standard set of rules for sending web content over the Internet
Hypertext markup language (HTML)
The programming language used to describe the content on web pages
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Key Web Principles
One address to take users to a document
Everything should be accessible/linkable
Any type of data should be available on any type of computer
The web should be a tool for interaction, not just publication
No central control
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Accessing the Web
Mosaic – the first graphical web browser
Growth of high-speed continuous (broadband) access to the broadband Internet access
Expansion of mobile access to Internet
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Search as Medium
Many countries put limits on search
Limits on Nazi materials in parts of Europe
Major online companies struggle with ethics of trying to do business in China
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Mobile Apps
Is the web dead?
Apps are big part of how we interact online
Mobile devices becoming dominant method of going online
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Blogs
Collection of links and commentary in hypertext
Blog reports brought down former CBS anchor Dan Rather after he mishandled a story on President George W. Bush
Blogs let writers talk directly to readers, bypassing legacy media
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Podcasts and Streaming Media
Online tools such as YouTube let non-journalists post video news stories online
Streaming media gets long-tail movies and video in front of a larger audience
Distributing audio and video programming no longer requires a broadcast network
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Social Media
User-generated content
Comments
Tagging
Social networking
Customization
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Video Games as Mass Communication
Video game consoles: media content devices
Mario, Sonic and Pikachu – video game stars
New venue for advertising
Center for online community
Profitable part of popular culture
Protected form of speech
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Media Transformations:
Video Games as Spectator Sport
Through streaming services such as Twitch, video games are now a spectator sport
“Esports” championships occasionally broadcast on cable sports channels
Ability to stream via Twitch built into many top video game consoles
Top streamers can make $500,000 per month from subscribers
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Diversity and Representation in Video Games
LGBT and Asian-American consumers slightly more likely than public at large to play video games
Same groups feel that they are underrepresented in video games
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Diversity and Representation in Video Games
Most video games offer limited range of body type diversity
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The Hacker Ethic
As defined in Steven Levy’s book, Hackers:
“Access to computers should be unlimited and total”
“All information wants to be free”
“Mistrust authority – promote decentralization”
People should be judged by skills, not by “bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position”
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Hacking to 2016 Presidential Election
Russian Internet Research Agency set up fake social media accounts to promote dissention on controversial issues
Russia Today (RT) at Sputnik spread false stories on social media.
Russian hackers stole 1,000s of Democratic e-mails and shared them through WikiLeaks
Russian hackers broke into voter registration systems. No sign they changed votes, however
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The Notion of Cyberspace
Taken from word cybernetics – science of communication and control theory
Originally used in 1982 magazine story by William Gibson
Gibson also coined cyberpunk – a style of writing and movies that deal with the blurring of the lines between humans and computers
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Conflicts Over Digital Media
Controlling online content
Protecting intellectual property
Privacy and the web
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Media Convergence
Bringing together traditional legacy media with online media
Reverse synergy
When you get the worst of both by combining old and new media
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Everything Is Data
More and more media being delivered digitally
Mobile phones often have unlimited talk time and text messages, but definite limits on data use
Streaming services replacing satellite/cable for many subscribers
Cable companies experimenting with streaming apps to replace set-top cable boxes
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