The Nature of Media

Page 388

While we talk about “the media” all the time, media are not actually one unified entity. They take many different forms and have many different uses and effects, as we see with Alice and her family. Some media communicate messages very broadly (such as television), while others have more narrowly targeted audiences (ranging from special-interest magazines all the way down to Twitter updates targeting a specific list of followers). But different media also have several qualities in common that distinguish them from face-to-face communication, such as interpersonal or small group interaction.