How Social Media Has Become An Integral Part Of Our Life
With the rise of the internet, media has developed into what we see today with the latest generation of teenagers who are completely reliant on their iPhones and being able to post pictures on Instagram, or Snapchat all of their friends. But how did it get to be this way?
Stories and poems started off as an oral tradition where they were handed down from one generation to the next. Culture is a big part of media, and it spread once people learned how to write because they could copy down the stories they were being told, and share them with others that way as well. The Information Age began with the development of the telegraph in the 1840s and when the Civil War rolled around, news had become something extremely valuable. The development of the telegraph is what led to the radio, fax machine and cellphone. The 1950s and 1960s were when the electronic phase of the Information Age really took with the introduction of the television. Then personal laptops, cable TV, DVDs, cellphones, and smartphones were introduced and have continuously been updated into the technology we know today.
Most teenagers in the 21st century have completely stopped watching shows on TV. Netflix users have skyrocketed and according to the website Statista, Netflix had 93. 8 million subscribers at the end of 2016. This has led to the saying “Netflix and Chill” which is used widely in the teenage population of the world, implying that two people will hang out to watch a movie on Netflix and end up hooking up with each other. The term media convergence has two separate meanings. The first involves the merging of content across many different media platforms. The second is called “cross platform”. This is the business model that allows the market to gain more resources. The best example of media convergence would be your smartphone. You can use it to text, look up anything you can think of on the internet, or to check your e-mail. All of these things and more, were put together and then shrunk to fit into a pocket sized device that nearly everyone has today. One of the older explanations of how the media worked was that mass communication was a sort of linear process - known as the Linear Model of Communication - used to produce and deliver messages to a large audience. In the linear model, senders would transmit the message through mass media channels to a large group of receivers. Gatekeepers would act as filters for the messages, and would decide which message would actually be produced for the receivers. The linear process also allows for feedback, where the audience could return messages to the senders through many media platforms, such as e-mails or phone calls.
In the digital era, the linear model does not work as well. It is a very bumpy path from point A to point B as words and images can cross over into one another. One of the reasons Apple got back on top was because Steve Jobs had big dreams for himself and the future of the Apple company. Another reason is because Jobs made a deal with the company Microsoft in hopes of getting Apple back on their feet. The linear model of convergence worked for Apple in the start, because they were able to create their products and market them to a wide audience who could then give them feedback on whether or not the product was good, and if it was actually needed in that age and society. Apple is now the biggest technology company in the world, supplying us with computers, watches, phones, and more. Companies must get their products advertised in smaller amounts of time now as not many people are watching television. You may just be scrolling through Facebook or watching a YouTube video, but you are going to have to sit through some sort of advertisement. The non-linear model of mass communication played a big part in Apple becoming as big of a company as they are today. The selective exposure model would play a bigger part as more people were buying Apple products and everyone else around them wanted to have them too. During the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple displayed an advertisement for their Macintosh. The ad was so different from the rest, that it caught the audience’s interest.
After 1997 Apple scrapped everything that they ever had and started fresh, which included a new advertising company that they are still with today to, sell their products as best they can. It all started with the ‘Think Different’ campaign with the video of multiple famous people who have made a difference in the world even with all of the tough times that they faced, with a well worded script behind it. This campaign caught the eye of many people who were then interested in purchasing an Apple product.
Today, since Apple is such a large company, therefore their advertising does not require much to gather interest from an audience. Apple likes to keep things simple. It does not matter if it is the newest MacBook, iPhone, or even just the Apple Pencil, they are going to make a huge profit. Apple uses a sort of the bandwagon advertising technique with their products as most people now have an Apple product and if you don’t, you may be seen as “uncool”.
