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Old Wednesday, June 08, 2011
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Communication in the e-world - Issues

The famous remark of Marshall McLuhan, the linguist "The Media is the Message" could be called the foundation for any study on mass communication. But today, the media is no longer the message i.e. content. Mass communication media is becoming diverse, and so is the content. People�s access to the media has increased manifold and so has the ability to create a new content with each access.

"Mass communication" has started to shift towards "one-to-one communication," which means that communication is programmed to meet the demands of the individual. The Internet is one such essential tool for �personalized� mass communication. This chapter focuses on the various phases of the ongoing "paradigm shift," induced by the changes in the technological society.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: THEIR HISTORY

The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW)

Some of the best ideas are born in the worst of times it is said. And so it was that the seeds of the Internet were sown in the ashes of World War II. After perpetuating the nuclear holocaust in Japan in 1945, the US military research concentrated on ways and means to survive a similar holocaust on themselves.

In the 1960s, the problem of communicating with each other in the aftermath of a nuclear attack was taken up by America�s foremost military think-tank - the Rand Corporation�s Paul Baran. Years of agonizing research led to the creation of the first Net called the ARPANET (ARPA stood for Advanced Research Projects Agency) - connecting 4 American research organizations: Stanford Research Institute, the University of Utah, and the University of California in Los Angeles as well as Santa Barbara.

In 1971, Robert Kahn of the BBC made a public demonstration of the uses of the Net. By this time the ARPANET had grown and now connected 23 universities and government research centers around the US. E-mail was introduced and soon became ARPANET�s most used facility. In 1972, the Inter Networking Working Group was set up with Vinton Cerf as its first chairman. He was later to be known as the father of the Internet. Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed what eventually became the Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). The first microprocessor based �user friendly� personal computer (PC) was introduced in 1974. In 1975, ARPANET�s administration was transferred to the US Department of Defense (DOD). In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee had created the World Wide Web (WWW) that would help even remote computers and desktops to access the Net.

It didn�t take long for the Web to find and enjoy the effects of a world wide audience. The democratic nature of the web works because its point-and-click accessibility, as well as the absence of technical jargon at most sites, has allowed the computer novices and experts alike to explore and create the Web at their own pace and on their own terms.

A leading Indian magazine enlists 10 reasons for being on the Internet:

Communicating with people
Finding people with common issues
Finding information
Exchanging Information and Documents
Finding Support Groups
Place to speak freely
Education
Fun and Entertainment
More than just fun and games

The recent global debate over the content regulation of the Internet was obviously the outcome of the number of instances that a lack of regulation has led to. Policing the Internet continues to be a controversial issue in the United States and many other countries because of a potential infringement on free speech. It is also unclear how such laws might be enforced in the free-for-all atmosphere of the Internet.

Internet sites differ in size according to whether it is a personal set of postings by an individual or if it is to be used as an interactive reporting and reference tool for global events. Though there has been a continuous wave of technological breakthroughs in the creative content presentation, the potential for combining graphics, text, video and sound with the various WWW protocols is still being tapped.

There is a trend towards building �information communities�. With the ability to keep track of the number of users, interact with people via chat groups and email, the global community has made a paradigm shift from being passive readers to becoming interactive audiences. This chapter will compare the World Wide Web to other mass media such as newspaper and television and discuss the issues behind the �interactive� communication media and its pros and cons.

Andrew L. Fry (Vice President, Director of Projects at Free Range Media, Inc) in his abstract titled �Publishing in the New Mass Medium: Creating Content on the Internet� talks about how Mathew Gray, an MIT student, has attempted to estimate size and growth of the Web using the World Wide Web Wanderer, an Internet automation, and has reported the following results as of early 1994: "Wow, the Web is BIG". His was an attempt to quantify file transfer as a function of traffic, web server sites and of course, number of Internet users. All three are important in defining the Internet as a mass medium. The first, traffic, is a measure of interaction; the second, number of server sites, as a measure of content and the third, number of users, representing audience.

One figure commonly used to estimate the Internet user base is an audience of 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 people with a growth rate of 10% to 20% per month. The figure is derived in formulaic fashion and is the subject of debate, as is demonstrated in the copyrighted article entitled "How Big is the Internet", by Vanderbilt professors Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak. This article can be read on-line on Wired.com. The testimony before the US House of Representatives, Committee on Science, Space and Technology on March 23, 1993 by Vinton Cerf. estimates 100 million users in the foreseeable future. With evident phenomenal growth, it appears that everyone is jumping on to the bandwidth-wagon.

The Internet possesses the unique ability to combine protocols supported by the World Wide Web project to deliver information, communication and interactivity. However the Internet is only the delivery system, just as broadcast is the delivery system for television and radio, and print is the platform for newspapers and magazines. The Internet�s USP is its specificity of types of content available at the click of a button.

Watching television is a cultural phenomenon which can only occur when a large enough proportion of the available audience shares in the viewing of a particular program. But the fund of information pouring into the Web is diluting the core audience.

Broadcast programmes provide information and entertainment to an audience which is referred to as "viewership" or "listenership" and has limited interaction with content providers. It is aided by subscriptions and advertisements. So is the case of publications, where the audience is referred to as readership which interacts with content providers through letters to the editors etc.

Some web sites are delivering topical editorial content through sponsorship e.g HotWIRED, (the first web site to publish materials based on the virtues of the medium that delivers it) produced by WIRED magazine. The audience interacts directly and in real time with the content and content providers. The number of hits that the site has received can be tallied and information flow can be measured. As far as using the Internet as a marketing tool goes, innumerable examples can be cited, e.g. Macmillan Publishing has created an independent business unit which will operate as a virtual bookstore.

Competition for securing audience is gets more fierce. This bodes well for the medium because in order to attract more people to a site, the quality of the information, interaction and user experience will continue to climb as sites compete for viewers.

In order to develop successful, topical programs on the net, Andrew Fry recommends that the site must do three things. First, it must develop a recognizable look and feel (branding). Second, it must maintain a high standard for delivering hard to get or consistently entertaining material (quality of content). And third, it must build, measure, and maintain a community of users i.e. "the audience" or "information community".
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