Chapter Review

COMMON THREADS

74

One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is about the commercial nature of the mass media. The Internet is no exception, as advertisers have capitalized on its ability to be customized. How might this affect other media industries?

Most people love the simplicity of the classic Google search page. The iGoogle home page builds on that by offering the ability to “Create your own homepage in under 30 seconds.” Enter your city, and the page’s design theme will dynamically change images to reflect day and night. Enter your zip code, and you get your hometown weather information or local movie schedules. Tailor the page to bring up your favorite RSS feeds, and stay on top of the information that interests you the most.

This is just one form of mass customization—something no other mass medium has been able to provide. (When is the last time a television, radio, newspaper, or movie spoke directly to you?) This is one of the Web’s greatest strengths—it can connect us to the world in a personally meaningful way. But a casualty of the Internet may be our shared common culture. A generation ago, students and coworkers across the country gathered on Friday mornings to discuss what happened the previous night on NBC’s “must-see” TV shows like Cosby, Seinfeld, Friends, and Will & Grace. Today it’s more likely that they watched vastly different media the night before. And if they did share something—say, a funny YouTube video—it’s likely they all laughed alone, as they watched it individually, although they may have later shared it with their friends on a social media site.

We have become a society divided by the media, often split into our basic entity, the individual. One would think that advertisers dislike this, since it is easier to reach a mass audience by showing commercials during The Voice. But mass customization gives advertisers the kind of personal information they once only dreamed about: your e-mail address, hometown, zip code, birthday, and a record of your interests—what Web pages you visit and what you buy online. If you have a Facebook profile or a Gmail account, they may know even more about you—what you did last night or what you are doing right now. What will advertisers want to sell to you with all this information? With the mass-customized Internet, you may have already told them.

KEY TERMS

The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book. The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.

Internet, 46

ARPAnet, 46

e-mail, 48

microprocessors, 48

fiber-optic cable, 48

World Wide Web, 49

HTML (hypertext markup language), 49

browsers, 49

Internet service provider (ISP), 50

broadband, 50

digital communication, 50

instant messaging, 51

search engines, 51

social media, 52

blogs, 52

wiki Web sites, 53

content communities, 53

social networking sites, 54

Telecommunications Act of 1996, 62

portal, 63

data mining, 66

e-commerce, 66

cookies, 66

spyware, 67

opt-in or opt-out policies, 68

phishing, 69

digital divide, 69

net neutrality, 71

open-source software, 72

For review quizzes, chapter summaries, links to media-related Web sites, and more, go to bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

75

The Development of the Internet and the Web

  1. When did the Internet reach the novelty (development), entrepreneurial, and mass medium stages?
  2. How did the Internet originate? What role did the government play?
  3. How does the World Wide Web work? What is the significance of it in the development of the Internet?
  4. Why did Google become such a force in Web searching?

The Web Goes Social

  1. What is the difference between a “Read/Only” culture and a “Read/Write” culture of the Internet?
  2. What are the six main types of social media?
  3. What are the democratic possibilities of social media? How can social media aid political repression?

Convergence and Mobile Media

  1. What were the conditions that enabled media convergence?
  2. What are the significant milestones for mobile devices as playing a part in media convergence?
  3. How has convergence changed our relationship with media, and with the Internet?
  4. What elements of today’s digital world are part of the Semantic Web?

The Economics and Issues of the Internet

  1. Which of the four major digital companies are most aligned with the “open Internet,” and which are most aligned with the “closed Internet”?
  2. What is the role of data mining in the digital economy? What are the ethical concerns?
  3. What is the digital divide, and what is being done to close the gap?
  4. Why is net neutrality such an important debate?
  5. What are the major alternative voices on the Internet?

The Internet and Democracy

  1. How can the Internet make democracy work better?
  2. What are the key challenges to making the Internet itself more democratic?

QUESTIONING THE MEDIA

  1. What possibilities for the Internet’s future are you most excited about? Why? What possibilities are most troubling? Why?
  2. What are the advantages of media convergence that enable all types of media content to be accessed on a single device?
  3. Google’s corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” Which of the five major digital corporations (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook) seems to have the greatest tendency for evil? Which seems to do the most good? Why?
  4. As we move from a print-oriented Industrial Age to a digitally based Information Age, how do you think individuals, communities, and nations have been affected positively? How have they been affected negatively?

ADDITIONAL VIDEOS

Visit theVideoCentral: Mass Communication section at bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture for additional exclusive videos related to Chapter 2, including:

Editors, producers, and advertisers discuss the varieties of user-generated content and how it can contribute to the democratization of media.

Jim Spencer, the founder of Newsy.com, describes his news service that delivers multiple sources on individual stories straight to laptops and other mobile devices.