Reflective Blog Post
The one post that stood out the most to me was the post I had made concerning a little bit of how much time I was spending on social media. Now having completed the course and looking back I can say that my social media use and habits have not changed much afterwards but instead I am more aware of my social media use and willing to take steps to change it up a little. Instead of spending so much screen time on Twitter or Instagram or other media websites before I go to bed, I want to do something like read a book so that I am not telling myself “oh I am going to go to bed soon” but then spending the next hour or so scrolling down my timeline on Twitter. I must say that I am happy about being able to use all these apps on just one medium and over this course I learned that it is thanks to media convergence. Thanks to media convergence which is the combining of computing powers with transmission capacity and the merging of traditional media with new media, the interaction that is made possible between people and institutions have increased immensely helping to progress our society. Not only that but I am glad that because of media convergence we have websites such as Facebook and Twitter that allow us to see and interpret the world. It also gives the chance to people who were seen as passively consuming media to actually producing the content for that media, an example of that is myself and the fact that I am able to create an account on a blog website or a twitter account where thousands of people see the posts I create. Because consumers are now becoming producers, I have a different view of what an audience is. Instead of just the traditional definition or notion that an audience is a group of people who are watching something or being entertained is changing because audience members can be users/fans/or followers that interact with each other and they can also be producers and distributors of media which changes the assumption that audiences are just people who receive media instead of creating it. I mentioned in my previous post about how grateful I was to be able to have all access to digital media and the fact that I am able to keep up with my friends and family anytime, anywhere. We know that media is becoming crucial in today’s world especially because it gives us access to all our needs and desires and it also gives us the chance to access education and exercise our rights as citizens which is all very important. I did not realize until doing this unit how much of a digital divide there was in this world especially when it comes to developing countries where some people cannot even simple access a cell service it makes me even more appreciative of the fact that I can just pick up my phone and do almost whatever I want.
