BY ANA MARIE SUAREZ
Before the rise of new technology, mainstream media─ like television and newspapers─ was used in delivering various information to a wide variety of audiences and/or consumers. People intend to buy a newspaper whenever they want to read local news or listen to a radio to know the latest news. Students have to go to the nearest library to study or get answers to their assignments. And films are only shown in theaters. But as the technological innovation continues to be a worldwide breakthrough, all these can be accessed through a single medium that anyone can just put in our pocket. This transition of every information─ from across a number of media─ having been converged, integrated and placed in a single medium is media convergence, as explained by Henry Jenkins, a media scholar and Co-Director of Comparative Media Studies of MIT. He said in an interview that “we carry pieces of media with us.” Thus, unlike in the past years of how people struggle, we have now a quick access to relevant information and easy share of ideas in the palm of our hands.
In the new era of technological advancement, information can be obtained in just one tap. A smartphone is a newspaper, a radio, an encyclopedia, a shop, a television, all in one. All these kinds of media are digitally available, especially with the use of the Internet. Basically, “connection is what people crave” according to Stephen Fry. People don’t need to send mails via post offices. Mobile messaging applications are available to connect to other people with geographical distances. Pierre Levy has this idea that instead of being afraid to the possibility that humans might be replaced by machines, he believes that this certain technological advancement would lead to collective intelligence that will make sure of the accuracy and validity of the information contributed by humans. As mentioned by Jenkins, Pierre Levy’s point is that:
“In a network society, nobody knows everything… but everybody knows something. If there’s an enormous array of different kinds of expertise and knowledge out there that we rely on to make sense of the world around us and the more we have broaden access to those other kinds of expertise, the stronger position we’re in ourselves.”
In the present, people don’t learn just in a four-walled classroom but also online. Anyone can acquire knowledge from different websites─ tutorials on YouTube and through websites with free online courses run by experts, for example.
However, may it be that powerful, no one can deny that this phenomenon has faced many challenges. In contrast with the old one-way media, media today became participatory as anyone can agree or disagree through comments, share, or contribute to any website, for example, that contain information widely accessible by many. Perhaps, the credibility of the information posted online are doubted by some scholars and experts. In addition, fake news spread rapidly on social media which is a very serious problem. People who are less knowledgeable on how to determine what news is true tend to believe fake news and might share it to a number of people. Another problem is that some people commit illegal acts online especially when things they wanted aren’t legally available online.
In my perspective, this technological shift is very significant to how the world works. Through media convergence, people’s works are done easily and in a short span of time. It enables us to multitask and do things without hassle. However, as users, we also must be cautious in looking for the right information and have careful basis and analysis on its accuracy as well as the reliability of the information conceived. We also must set our limitations online. To conclude, there is no way we have to be afraid for this media revolution but instead we should embrace it.
Sources:
“Media Convergence.” https:// http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=7lcUKjGKiEw
“Henry Jenkins- What is Media Convergence?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFbJCdCoNIc
Levy, P. (1997). Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Retrieved from https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=550283
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