#mcst 2050

[philmcniff24-blog]

Lil' Wayne on the Beach with Wesley Snipes (from his couch)

 The next big social media movement WILL be the implementation of virtual reality where users can interact similarly to how they would in real life with their media experience. I am not quite sure how this experience would look in relation to social media, but the implementation of these technologies are something that is beginning to be focused on across many forms of media.  

Many people have a desire to create the virtual reality experience for things like video games and movies to make the experience seem more genuinely lifelike and allowing the user to ‘physically’ play the game or watch the movie. This can be an extremely difficult type of media to master to make it truly life like to the users. But we are even seeing advertisements for a phone that provides a headset and allows for a virtual reality technology to be displayed through a cell phone. As it continues to expand it will become more and more available to the public and soon we might all have virtual reality smart phones, TV’s and video games.

[oliviaescribe]

The Future of Social Media

With a remarkable portion of the global population on social media and the decline of traditional advertising methods, it’s no wonder that advertising on social media platforms has skyrocketed in the past ten years. 

As of December 31st, 2015, Facebook reached 1.59 billion monthly active users. In the same year, Facebook became the largest social media advertising market, with more than $9.4 billion spent on social media ads in the US alone. This year, Facebook is projected to increase their ad revenue to $31 billion. 

The draw of social media advertising extends beyond the staggering numbers of monthly active users to the seemingly endless amount of information companies can extract from users’ demographic and social media profiles. Businesses now know how to specifically target and seek out audiences using self-reported interests, activities and hobbies, ‘likes,’ device habits, social media usage, and the time of day users are engaging on social media, whether through mobile or desktop. There’s little guessing left to do on behalf of these companies. 

I predict that as social media advertising increases, various social media platforms (and possibly, internet browsers as well) will offer a paid, advertisement-free social media experience for a monthly price. Social media platforms gain revenue in large part through their advertisement services, but for people who are tired and frustrated with constant ads, they can offer a paid subscription to an ad-free platform. This has already been done with music and television streaming services, why not with social media? 

[bchopp72-blog]

Media Impact and Effect

When analyzing the media stereotypical roles are portrayed in which society feel they have to fit into. These images are created by the relationship of the ruling class; which are corporate industries who choose the ideas that surround gender and the media and how to display them. Because of the gender binary created for the public eye, media audiences are suggested that they can simply ‘plug into’ these categories or types and that it is easy to just be what they see on the screen. Feminists are saying that popular culture, such as film, plays a huge role in patriarchal society. This is because the media plays a huge role in how it affects society. Films and corporate media create social issues that allow audiences to believe they have to be or perform a certain way.

The media is dangerous in how it portrays roles and stereotypes. However on the flip side of that good journalism acts as a counter-culture and allows other forms of media to exist. If searched for audiences can see that they do not have to plug themselves into a specific category and that it is possible to view media critically and be a passive audience rather than an active one. Being outside of the ‘norm’ allows media audiences to view the world through a different lens then mainstream media and creates social change based off of how the media is perceived from its audience.