From Stationary to Portable: Mobile Media Consumption

-
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. We are now constantly connected to our devices to the point it has become a serious and sometimes, unconscious addiction for some of us. 

 Our mobile devices have become glued to us in a sense and have created social limitations for us.  In Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk, Connected, but Alone, she states that our virtual communication has “given us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship” (Turkle, 2012, 7:14). We get to present ourselves online as who we want to be and share whatever it is we wish to share. People sometimes forget about the human behind the mobile device and conduct poor social media behavior that can be toxic and hurtful. We sit at restaurants with family while scrolling on social media. The addiction has us constantly waiting for the next notification, story, trending topic, or scandal. Journalists are leveraging the power of us being glued to our devices by sourcing their next story through our posts. Advertisers are constantly cyber branding across all of our platforms to reach consumers worldwide. Millennial children will capitalize on the use of mobile devices. “News designed for children in an era of camera phones, instant messaging, blogs, podcasts, and video games may have clues as to how news may need to be designed to captivate that audience so they can thrive in their complex adult world” (Kolodzy, 2013). They will stumble across more advantages and limitations of using this technology as it continues to evolve. 

 Videos: (Left) Has Mobile Consumption Changed the News Industry? The Wall Street Journal discusses how the news industry needs to adapt to mobile consumption in order to preserve engagement. (Right) Mark Jurkowitz chats with PBS NewsHour about how traditional news outlets are being override by mobile news consumption.
References

Fedeli, S., & Matsa, K. (2019). Use of smartphones or tablets to get news grows again in 2017 in U.S. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/17/use-of-mobile-devices-for news-continues-to-grow-outpacing-desktops-and-laptops/
For Media Industry, Some Hope as Mobile Consumption Grows. (2012). Retrieved 20 July 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P78k_EHgNRs

Has Mobile Consumption Changed The News Industry?. (2013). Retrieved 20 July 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R50Af2CHOQQKolodzy, J. (2013). Practicing convergence journalism an introduction to cross-media storytelling. New York (N.Y.): Routledge.

Turkle, S. (2012, February). Connected, but Alone. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together#t-484334.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stream On!

-
Image
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...
Read more

Social Media Advertising

-
Image
Social Media Advertising  ______ Before social media, the only way to advertise was via television ads and print sources like newspapers and magazines. Advertisers and consumers were used to one-way mass communication” (Baran, 2019). The advertiser put out the content and the consumer received the information. In 2007, Facebook began allowing businesses to connect with users and use target advertising. This easily persuaded companies to invest more money into the Facebook platform in any way they could whether it be ads or Facebook Stories. “Advertisers dedicated 61% of their overall ad budgets to video and spent the remainder on image-based ads, per the report. Advertisers more than doubled (124%) their spending on Facebook Stories in Q4 2018 from the prior year, according to a Nanigans report shared with Mobile Marketer” (Williams, 2019). According to the Business Insider, Samsung spent $100 million on Facebooks ads (Edwards, 2013). Companies are recognizing the power of soc...
Read more

Unethical Sharing in the Digital Age

-
Image
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 ...
Read more