Task 8 - from personal media to influencing masses

For long media channels have filtered news and information for audience, so that audience gets what the media channel decides is important to share and forward. As now one person can influence and have audience by himself, professional media channels are challenged to know more and explain why some news are shared and others are not. At the same time these media channels get quick feedback that either praises them for shared information or blames for leaving something behind.

Before the communication was one-sided, people got what they wanted. This week I heard a American talking about his high school time in the beginning of 80's when they also had only 3 TV channels to choose from compared to hundreds they have now. All these TV channels have to compete of having bigger audiences. And if during 80's a channel could easily have 80 million people watching a show, then today it's already good if they have 1 million, the drop has been enormous. At the same time, all these channels get feedback from their audience and have to rely on it. Even more and more they are using real-live shows. It's cheap, but from the other side its direct communication of the audience. The audience is who decides what is going to happen and participants are among the same audience.

This we already know that privately held blogs might grow even bigger than official media channels or newspapers online versions. These people who manage their personal blogs usually are not professional journalists. They just care about a topic so much that they want to talk about it, and if there is enough readers, who read it and share it, comment blog posts and it's searchable through search engines - it will get into masses.

Lüders wrote in his article "Internet works within all of society's social systems, increasing levels of self-reflection." There is nothing new in her statement. Internet is generally cheap, it can be used with cheaper technical tools and it's accessible by most society classes.

For me talking about the possibilities that Internet provides usually seems even totally common thing. So it has changed the way we communicate or perceive information. Mass media is not the the same mass media we knew 20 years ago. I am more interested in how people use these new ways they have and if and how it has changed a person or groups? I think people more and more understand how much influence they might have. There has always been the desire to influence, but now people have the tools they didn't have before. We already have some really good examples of how Internet has helped to start non-violent revolution (through Facebook in Latin-America). It wasn't done deliberately, but it happened, because so many people with same thoughts saw the outcall and new they were not alone with their thoughts and it gave them safety feeling.

So I am thinking what more is there to come, how much individuals knowlingly use the mediums and tools they now have?