While on the train I read an article titled “Studying Me-dia: the Problem of Method in a Post-Broadcast Age” by “William Merrin”, the guy seems really concerned about all the ‘Me-dia’ being created. Basically the article talks about how in the current day and age the sole producers of ‘media content’ are no longer massive broadcasters, they are instead every individual creating huge amounts of content on a daily basis. He looks at this from a media studies standpoint and… crys. He states that this huge diversity means it is no longer possible to have a single comprehensive understanding of the state of the media – i agree. Its not possible, in fact if it were possible it would be impossibly hard to do, you would need to take into account everybody’s personal facebook timeline and vine account while hacking into their snapchats.

So, what should we do about it, should we just give up on studying media? No. Of course not. We simply need to figure out whats actually important to study. You see, in the age of broadcast media it was possible to study and understand everything, but now in this day and age its virtually impossible (pun intended). I suppose we have to learn that we cant have everything, we need to decide whats important and whats worthy of study. This can be decided by looking at pop culture, or simply from what we experience in our own social circles and then forwarding on our experience. This is effectively what search engines try to do: they gather all the information and then hand us what seems to be popular or important. Granted this means we only experience our world the way Google wants us to, and information will fall through the cracks, but i suppose theres not going to be a totally perfect system.

In the end of the day, the world of the ‘Me-dia’ is clearly the most rapidly expanding and fastest changing beast on the planet, and for now the best we can do is pick our favourite bit and try to understand that one, and just maybe stay on top of it. But dont stress – in about 2 weeks people wont even remember what colour the dress is.