The Media Tech Wire

  ("Welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham, June 4, 2021) In 2021, comedian and musical artist Bo Burnham released Inside , a comedy special filmed and produced entirely in Burnham's home during the height of the covid-19 pandemic. The special, which streamed exclusively on Netflix, tackled many issues such as political injustice, mental health, and as seen in the above video, the internet and its impact on the human psyche and culture. The above song, titled "Welcome to the Internet," expresses some of Burnham's thoughts about how the internet has impacted how we interact with media and culture. His conclusion is that the internet has created a culture where engagement and interaction are the most important ways to be involved in culture, and within that culture, one must be constantly engaged with as much as possible. Singing as the internet in this song, he sings "could I interest you in everything all of the time?", referencing this very issue ...

One of the most fascinating developments in the world of marketing to me is the rise of influencer marketing. The use of celebrities in marketing is nothing new, but what's interesting about influencer marketing is that it plays directly on the parasocial relationships that develop between niche internet celebrities and their fanbases. These influencers build up a sense of goodwill, intentional or not, between themselves and their followers, and there's ample evidence to suggest that tapping into this goodwill can be an effective means of marketing. Furthermore, many influencers are content creators in their own right and will be willing to create the advertisement on behalf of the marketing team in a form that best matches their content style. You can see an example of this below in a video created by YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes for the video game Albion Online (Hayes, 2023). Yet the advantages of this style of marketing aren't necessarily as direct as one might hope. While...

  Social media has fundamentally changed the global culture in a number of ways, but its greatest change comes with how we as a society consume news. Now more than ever, the news is more readily accessible to the general public, and the public has more opportunities to directly interact with journalists and news outlets thanks to the rise of social media on the global stage. Social media has become incredibly popular as a news platform for many Americans, with roughly half of American adults getting their news frequently through these websites. What's more, younger Americans are even more likely to get their news through social media platforms, with 76% of Americans aged 18-29 saying they primarily get their news through these platforms (Forman-Katz & Matsa, 2022). Yet despite this mass acceptance of social media platforms as news sites, these platforms and the companies that run them avoid the usual regulations that are expected of more traditional news organizations. This has...

Social media and the internet have drastically changed the communications landscape in many ways. Near instant access to information through websites, blogs, and social media platforms has created a platform for nearly anyone to participate in news, marketing, and social issues. Yet perhaps the biggest impact these resources have had on the communications field is the lowering of the barrier to entry for content creation. As social media continues to transition professional communications away from a more linear marketer-to-audience style and toward a more transactional model, more people are jumping in and creating their own text, audio, and video content to share with the world than ever before (Ashman, 2018). The content created by these people, referred to as User Generated Content, represents a paradigm shift in the communications world. It goes beyond simply providing the common user a means to interact with marketers, journalists, and other influential people. Now, the online co...

Social media is the ultimate marketing and advertising tool. With so many people online and engaging with these platforms, there is no better way to push a marketing campaign than through these massive and growing platforms. Major corporations are taking notice of this and pivoting their marketing budgets to focus more and more on digital media and platforms to keep up with changing trends. For example, in response to the growing trend of short-form video media, companies have begun to dedicate far more of their marketing budgets to platforms like Facebook Stories, which alone is responsible for an average spending increase of 124% (Williams, 2019). As social media continues to dominate the cultural zeitgeist, communications professionals must know how to navigate these platforms as effectively as possible in order to be successful. Knowing how to use these platforms is a good start, but to truly tap into their marketing potential, one must go beyond simple literacy on the platforms. W...

In the ever-changing technological landscape, communication workers of all stripes find themselves constantly needing to evolve the skills they need and the tools they must use to be effective in their positions. This is perhaps most evident in the field of journalism. Tools such as social media and search engines have fundamentally changed access to information, and this has created a major shift in where journalistic power is. More and more people are engaging directly with the news on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and these platforms have supplemented and, in many cases, supplanted traditional news outlets such as print and television. When seven-in-ten people get their news primarily from Twitter, it's easy to see how these platforms have become the new standard for Journalism (Mitchell et. al., 2022). What is a burgeoning journalist to do when the very nature of journalism is changing at such a rapid pace? In truth, the skills and practices learned in tradit...