A medium is defined as “one of the means or channels of general communication, information or entertainment in a society. The medium of communication can be virtual or physical. Radio, telephone, newspapers, films, and photographs are all media.
In today’s so-called media technologies are very new and their impact on our daily lives changes as it evolves or other factors. Changes in the media always present challenges, but they also create opportunities. We can use the media to improve our quality of life. For society, the media, used wisely, can be used as a tool to achieve the dissemination of information. When making decisions, we need media theories – theories that explain the important role the media plays for us as individuals and guide the development of the media industry for society as a whole.
In today’s society, media operates in a very different way than it did in the past. In the past, people used more paper media, which of course included the radio and so on. Nowadays, the home is being transformed into a place of multimedia culture, combining audio-visual, information and telecommunication services. These are becoming more and more important, and electronic screens with increasing functionality are further expanding the options available for communication.
Medium and the Pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in different patterns of media use. The pandemic has affected people’s outdoor travelling, socialising and inconvenience. It is also because of this people can only spread information and communicate through the internet and media. This has also led to the growing power of social media. For example, as COVID-19 made it impossible for schools to deliver face-to-face lessons to students, a number of apps, such as Zoom, emerged to allow students to study and attend classes online. And, of course, people could work and play on media. Numerous data show that the social media industry as a whole grew rapidly during the epidemic. For example, in China, at the beginning of the outbreak, the total amount of time spent on social media by users across the internet grew by 26 percent. This is a very visual reflection of the impact of the epidemic on the growth of the media industry and the very high reliance on social media products during this time.
The epidemic can be seen as an opportunity for the media to make changes and innovate. For example, during this period, people used the Internet to better realise news reporting and public opinion guidance during the epidemic. As well as accelerating the pace of online and offline integration, especially to the traditional media as a representative of the media form of challenge. There are also, as mentioned above, users can fulfill more of their life needs online, thus affecting On the other hand, offline media are also providing services to users through various forms and more ways of dissemination, making the media, as well as the Internet, more popular and widespread.
*Reference:
Gali Einav. (2022). Transitioning Media in a Post-COVID World. Springer International Publishing.
Sonia Livingstone. (2002). Young People and New Media. SAGE Publications.
I agree with the point in your blog that media occupies a very important place in our lives in today’s society, and the function of media is no longer simply to convey information. The media influences our lives in terms of communication, entertainment learning, and working life. I agree with the example of the epidemic that you mentioned, because during the epidemic my study life in China could not go on normally, so our school opened a live online course, the media platform provided direct help and convenience for my study life during the epidemic.
Also, I think you could have mentioned the impact of media on economic development. In connection with the epidemic period, media platforms had a significant boost to economic growth during the epidemic period, for example, the live streaming bandwagon on TikTok(Chinese version) platform contributed a lot to the economic growth at that time.