Media Metamorphosis: Talking Back

“The Media are 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 edition

The media industry has changed.

This statement is not a particularly cutting-edge one. Since the invention of the internet in the 1990’s those within and without the media industry can see how distinct and encompassing the shift has been. Technological advancements in rapid secession have catapulted the industry forward miles, leaving many of its practitioners without stable footing and feeling somewhat sick to the stomach. The possibilities and even intrinsic nature of the industry must be re-evaluated as, whilst it is easy to see that the media has changed, how it has changed and exactly what effect this change will have is a topic far more complex.

It is in Making Media Studies that David Gauntlett tackles this re-evaluation and urges the reader to look at the industry with different eyes than we have before. Nothing is stressed more than that the media game has changed, the primary facet of this being that there are more players than ever before. This approach was interesting to me in many ways. Gauntlett actively pushed his argument away from negative assertions around technological advancements opening doors for surveillance and data exploitation, and instead drew the eye towards creativity. Gauntlett paints a picture of a world more actively engaged in creation and communication that ever before. His words express the industries shift from linear communication models such as the effects model to more circular models of communication; emphasising active audiences and open texts. Gauntlett’s work is quite enchanting to read as his flagrant optimism is contagious. He does not deny the existence of the aforementioned negative consequences of an ever expanding media, he simply assures that it is outweighed by the opportunity that has come with it.

A reoccurring point that stuck out within his work was how media are ‘triggers for experiences and for making things happen’. He constantly pushed that the media does not simply reflect the world but actively engages in it, and visa versa. Interactivity could surely be seen as the defining feature of new media and Gauntlett urges us to not dismiss this opportunity. Media are ‘places of conversation, exchange, and transformation’, no longer a one sided expression of information, what defines new media is our ever growing ability to talk back.

It is this conclusion that finally let the penny drop for me.

I always assumed I was open minded to this new wave of media as I was a part of the generation that saw it grow. My childhood was one of the first to see active media engagement entrenched within my upbringing. My generation were the ones who slept through all those countless cyber-safety speeches, who went from dial up to wifi, Myspace to Facebook… we are seen as the technology generation yet here was something massive that I had missed. At the end of Gauntlett’s introduction he urges us to shift our minds from the question ‘what do the media do to us?’ to ‘what can we do with the media’ and it dawned on me the exact extent of the industries change. I have wanted to be in this industry for so long, and all that time I have seen it as the ‘other’. That I must ‘break in’ to the industry to find a place within it, to have a voice of my own. Yet Gauntlett’s words show, thats not the case. What I saw was still linear, to speak I needed to enter an industry that had all the tools to project my voice across cities and countries… but those tools no longer belong simply to the media industry as we know it. The game has changed.

What Gauntlett delivered to me in his text was a realisation that perhaps I should not be looking to establish myself in an industry placed above the masses and deliver my messages to them… perhaps my role in this new media age, is to be amongst those people, to spark discussions, exchange ideas, and engage with the world I wish to effect. Perhaps my role is not so much to talk as it is to talk back.