MediaDork

Stream On!  Streaming services have completely changed the movie and music industry. We went from only being able to listen to music on the radio to having access to music everywhere we go. We went from only being able to watch motion pictures in the cinema, to watching them whenever we pull out our mobile devices. Due to tremendous leaps in technological advancements the music and music industries have had to adapt to appealing to consumers and their use of streaming services and mobile technology. Apple was responsible for the impactful shift in music. “Bringing your entire music collection with you was practically unthinkable before the iPod. At the time the iPod was introduced, if someone wanted to carry their whole library — let's say around 200 CDs — the best option was a portable CD player that worked with MP3 CDs” (Costello, 2019). Before Apple stepped into the MP3 scene, I owned a small SONY MP3 player that required you to carry a few small floppy disks with you. The...

From Stationary to Portable: Mobile Media Consumption _______ When we look around our environment as we travel through the world, it is guaranteed that we see almost everyone with some sort of mobile device. Many engage in the participatory culture of social media and consume their news with these devices. “The share of Americans who often get news on a mobile device is nearly triple the 21% who did so in 2013” (Fedeli and Matsa, 2018). When information is posted online, our mobile devices quickly give us access to this information no matter where we are. We get to stay abreast of political decisions being made, see new company’s campaigns, receive live updates on sports games, and what is currently trending in our social circles all across the globe. Marketers, companies, news channels, influences, and individuals are tailoring their content to fit these platforms and keep up the pace within their own industries. We have access to this information 24/7 because of our devices. W...

The Digital Impact of the Invisible Cloud Having our information accessible in the cloud and technology that supports the interconnectedness can be a double-edged sword. There are a lot of positive impacts the cloud has had on the field of Journalism. As a result of cloud technology, journalists working out in the field can upload their notes to Google Docs and instantly share them with their co-workers back at the newsroom. People in the newsroom can get moving on a story as the details are still being documented because of the cloud. Another way journalists are leveraging this technology is by uploading photographs that can be used for their stories. For example, "the New York Times uses Google Cloud to encode and preserve their entire photo archive of millions of photos-putting a powerful resource in the hands of their reporters" (Krishna, 2018). Google Suite, an iCloud based software, is now in high demand for not only journalists, but all kinds of communicators. “Th...

21st Century Journalism The rapid changes taking place within this technological age have significantly impacted our culture, the way we interact with our devices, and one another. Social media apps have created a space for consumers to network globally and engage within the participatory culture. The engagement comes in the form of videos, photos, status updates, tweets, live feeds, and gifs. The consequence of our newly hyperconnected world has drastically affected the media industry. The mobile industry has changed the way journalists collect their stories, how consumers prefer to view their content, and how journalism is being taught in the classroom.  The mobile industry has caused journalists to develop new strategies when capturing stories. Live feeds from people’s mobile devices via social media apps has changed the narrative and process of acquiring it. Anyone can become a “field reporter” by simply recording and sharing what they see in the moment. This has led th...

Unethical Sharing in the Digital Age Technological advancements have created new opportunities for us to share, connect, discover, and engage with reality and the digital world. Although we have been afforded many beneficial advantages from these developments, the inevitable consequence is the creation of new ethical dilemmas. Communications professionals are finding themselves discovering and approaching ethical dilemmas in a completely different way because of the impact technology has had on the communication field. Journalism often requires communications professionals to face conflicting values and information that could possibly harm others in the process. Defending controversial decisions made by journalists comes down to a conversation about ethics that does not always yield a straightforward answer, "While journalism ethics, as with the philosophy of ethics in general, is less concerned with pronouncements of the "rightness" or ...