Download Chapter 10 The Internet: Mass Communication Gets Personal

Chapter 10
The Internet:
Mass Communication
Gets Personal
What is the Internet?
• “A diverse set of independent networks,
interlinked to provide its users with the
appearance of a single, uniform network.”
• A mass medium incorporating elements of
interpersonal, group, and mass
communications.
Development of the Internet
• How do we make incompatible computers talk
with each other?
• How do we share information?
• Can we maintain military communication after
nuclear war? (But this system was never
built!)
Packet Switching
• 1964: Paul Baran develops decentralized
computer network for Air Force.
• Messages are broken into small data packets.
• Packets are sent independently across the
network.
• Receiving computer reassembles message.
• But Air Force doesn’t build this network.
• Donald Davies proposes similar civilian network
for Britain. Also not built.
How Packet Switching Works
ARPAnet
• Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects
Agency
• Networking incompatible computers across
the country
• Went online in 1969, same year as the moon
landing
Connecting Incompatible Networks
• ARPAnet led to multiple packet-switching
networks
• How do you link them together?
• Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf created rules for
networks to communicate with each other
The Internet
• TCP/IP—Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol
How data are transmitted and how computers
can locate each other.
• Internet
Internetworking of networks.
Interpersonal Communication
on the Internet
• Electronic mail (e-mail)
A message sent from one computer user to
another across a network.
• Instant message (IM)
An e-mail system that allows two or more
users to chat with one another in real time.
Group Communication
on the Internet
• Listservs
An Internet discussion group made up of
subscribers that use e-mail to exchange
messages between members of the group.
• Usenet
The original Internet discussion forum that
covers thousands of specialized topics.
Mass Communication
on the Internet
• Predecessors of the Web
• Hypertext
Material in a format containing links that
allow the reader to move from one section to
another and from one document to another.
Tim Berners-Lee and the Web
• Enquire Within Upon Everything
• Wouldn’t it be a good idea to be able to share
documents located on computers anywhere in
the world?
• Created the World Wide Web and gave the
software away for free.
Major Components of the Web
• Uniform resource locator (URL)
The address of the content placed on the Web.
• Hypertext transfer protocol (http)
The standard set of rules for sending Web
content over the Internet.
• Hypertext markup language (HTML)
The programming language used to describe
the content on Web pages.
Key Web Principles
• One address to take users to a document.
• Everything should be accessible/linkable.
• Any type of data should be available on any
type of computer.
• The Web should be a tool for interaction, not
just publication.
• No central control.
Accessing the Web
• Mosaic—The first graphical Web browser
• Growth of high-speed continuous (broadband)
access to the broadband Internet access
• Expansion of mobile access to Internet
Who is on the Web?
• Traditional news media: CNN, USA Today, NPR
• Movies and television: Promotion of shorthead content and distribution of long-tail
content
• New media: Slate, Huffington Post, Daily Beast
• Aggregator sites: Google, Yahoo, AOL
Video Games as Mass Communication
• Video game consoles as media content
devices
• Mario, Sonic and Master Sergeant—Video
game stars
• New venue for advertising
• Profitable part of popular culture
• Major element of media synergy
Giving Individuals a Voice
• Online media makes everyone a publisher.
• Wikipedia
A crowd-sourced encyclopedia.
• Weblogs (blogs)
A collection of links and commentary in
hypertext form.
• Is search a medium?
Long-Tail Online News
• Citizen journalism
• Sharing news through social media
• Mobile phone video
The Hacker Ethic
• “Access to computers should be unlimited and
total.”
• “All information wants to be free.”
• “Mistrust authority—promote
decentralization.”
• People should be judged by skills, not by
“bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or
position.”
Cyberspace
• Taken from word cybernetics—the science of
communication and control theory.
• Originally used in 1982 magazine story by
William Gibson.
• Gibson also coined cyberpunk—a style of
writing and movies that deal with the blurring
of the lines between humans and computers.
Community on the Net
• Less than 25 percent of world has Internet
access.
• Digital divide: Affluent communities have
more access to Internet than do poorer and
rural communities.
• Mobile media starting to bridge gap
Conflicts Over Digital Media
• Controlling online content
• Privacy and the Web
• Is the online world where we want to be?
Media Convergence
• Bringing together traditional legacy media
with online media
• Reverse synergy:
When you get the worst of both by combining
old and new media
• Moving from media outlets to brands:
Is the New York Times a newspaper or a brand
of news?