At the start of the lecture we were asked about the first 5 things that come to mind when I think of ‘media’. At first I thought about the things I learnt about in media 3/4 last year, such as representations, radio broadcasts, audience, technology and consumption. Other people mentioned things such as propaganda, society and so on, and it was interesting to hear all the different things people thought of. After this activity, one of the lecturers said that media is actually not a ‘thing’. This confused me for a second, but then I kind of understood that you cant rely define media with just a few things that are associated with it.
“The media is not so much ‘things’ as places which most of us inhabit, which weave in and out of our lives. Their constant messages and pleasures seem to flow around and through us, and they immerse most of our waking lives”
-Branston and Stafford 2010, the media student’s book, 5th ed, NT: rout ledge.
The standard equation of media is…
Sender – Medium – Message – Receiver
…But this is just the mass communication tradition, which assumes the media has the power to have a fairly linear one directional flow to an audience. I’m quite looking forward to looking more into the relationship between the media and audiences, because I enjoyed studying media’s influence in previous years of study.