Social : The Media's most powerfull weapon. Part 1

Social media can be said to have three components;

1. 
   
   Concept (art, information, or meme).
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).
   
   
   
3. Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print). (WIKIPEDIA)
   

SO im not going to be boring and explain what media is as its easy to identify, however when you dive deep into how media interacts and influences our lives, that's when it become interesting.....


 We have become a nation that relies on technology, from contacting friends to writing this very blog. As time moves on there is more things we can do with our impressive library of gadgets. We are so reliant on technology that the loss of information on a computer or no internet access can be devastating to work or die hard facebook users. Its a sad thought to know we are probably the laziest humans through the progress of time, but do we care? of course not were only interested in telling our friends on certain social media platforms that we've got a hot new date for tonight, as interesting as that is, and it is, its perhaps useless information that is being shared amongst everyone at an alarming speed.



COMMUNICATION is perhaps the best reference for this. Have a look at my time line...



Letters > Telegrams > Telephone > Text messaging > Email > Instant chat > Statusing ( Facebook/twitter) 

 Over time the medium in which to communicate has vastly changed and with it the amount of information that can be sent via these methods. From it taking days for a letter of love to reach a loved one to now being able to send multiple declarations of love within second, although that's probably going to land you in some sort of trouble.



SO as mass communication has evolved so has the way in which media uses it.

I found this graphic very interesting. Instantly you cane see the vast amount of companies depicted and the various methods in which they operate. Take a look at the outer blue circles, i bet anyone reading this uses at least 5 of them, i know i do. With that in mind, think about how we all gain our information, how we all take what's said to us or put in front of us and most of the time take it on-board as reality and truth.



Newspapers are the best example of this, we pick it up, read it and believe every word, i mean why would it be published if it wasn't real? Of course were not that stupid and do take newspaper articles with a pinch of salt. There is a website called The Onion.
It is a database of joke news articles, but most believable, which plays on the fact how we as society believe most of what we see distributed in the form of mass communication. 



Touching on the subject of mass communication we know that the internet is now the most dominant force among the tools available to any given media company.
Due to the internet being an information highway of the world we can literally find out anything.We can buy anything, look at anything, read anything etc. It is indeed incredible the amount of information that is stored in one single source, and its available at the click of a button. However we don't usually examine where any given piece of information has come from. The fact that any person on earth can now go on to the internet and publish anything they want is alarming and amazing at the same time, of course the media is well versed in this field. Any user can spend no more than 5 minutes innocently browsing the net before they come across adverts, pop ups and articles advertising products and displaying certain news bulletins, information that perhaps would have taken days to each years ago. The power of advertising is phenomenal. It influences how we spend our money, our time and our lives.