Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

We are in a universe where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning. ( Baudrillard, 2007 , p. 99) Digital communications technologies make traditional media forms more portable and affordable and allow us to choose from a wider variety of content and sources of information, but while digital delivery of messages and the number of sources increase, traditional media industries try to survive economically. Digital media consumers can no longer assume that the same practices they have taken for granted in the past will result in messages that represent facts, or are true. Many of the newer digital media technologies and distribution systems allow a person to become publisher, producer, and content creator – all bypassing traditional hierarchies of control that insure quality. The elimination of the “middle men,” where most factual information would be vetted, changes the equation among producers, content providers, and media consumers. In digital-speak, the term used to describe the process of user-generated media content that bypasses traditional “middle” processes is “disintermediation” ( Cornog, 2008 , p. 38). From an economic perspective, the “old media” infrastructures (primarily advertising-based) such as print, radio, and broadcast television, are not the same ones that support digital media, in which transmission primarily occurs over the Internet, cell ... log in or subscribe to read full text