The Mediation of Media and Our Reality

Modernly we can all see the impact of media in our daily life, but exactly how can we measure this impact? How can we see the expanse of media in daily life, and can we use media to prevent accidents that involve social media? Here we pose two questions (see below);

1. 1.      How can mediation be used to understand the effects of technological media in the creation of our reality?

We can see the physical impact of media into society through a variety of instances; legislature, pop culture, family rearing, and social interactions. In my opinion the easiest way to see the mediation of media is through family rearing, as a parent has to adapt to new types of media; either accepting types of media in the household, providing rules about types of media, or removing a new media from the family infrastructure. We see the effects of family media habits as our first showing of the mediation of media into society; this created its own reality over the past 100 years, as prior to this there was no need for family media regulations because it didn’t exist. Modern children are growing up in a media saturated environment (Douglas A. Gentile, 2002); this being a new type of developmental environment has drastically changed the way media is interpreted in the family. We all know of a child who had used the television as a sudo-babysitter, or a family that uses television as bonding time. Research on the mediation of media suggests that parents manage media in a variety of ways by creating certain rules; choosing which programs to watch together, discussing portions of programming, and limiting certain types of content (Shari Barkin, Edward Ip, Irma Richardson, & Klinepeter, 2006). This directly influences the creation of our reality, as we can see that new forms of child rearing have been made to address types of media and media saturation.

Internet as the Individual’s Personal Social Insitution?

New forms of media have fully infiltrated our society. We carry little computers with us everywhere, we use technology to teach and entertain children, and we could even go as far as to say that new forms of Media are a new type of social institution. Many older forms of media are in competition for the dominate spots in people’s lives; few people read physical newspapers but many will go to an online news website. This is not to say that older forms of media are less important in modern life, as we see that people will still buy books and mail letters, but there is definitely an influx of newer forms of media into modern lifestyles. Throughout history types of media have been introduced and changed the ideas of time and space; oral societies could transport information quickly through space but the same information would not survive time, stone writings are difficult to transport through space but will survive periods of time, and finally the impact of literacy with the notion of printing on paper transformed both realms of time and space as information was able to move quickly and be kept semi-permanently. Currently with the advent of the newest forms of media such as the internet and then social networking, we see a greater movement into full singularity between time and space. Here we see that new types of media are beginning to transform the individual beyond traditional social institutions. The ability for new forms of media to transcend time and space fills a void in our constant and ever changing society that demands to be faster and newer. This is where we must note the importance of the internet and its new ability to change and affect the individual on two separate levels; a uniquely personal level and a uniquely social level. This ability to affect individuals similarly reflects the ideas of a social institution, but this would be a new type of social institution.