Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
McKibben's idea of creating a media equivalent of a farmer's market, this means
drawing on the educative potential of small and slow media such as discussion
groups around specific films and books, peer-to-peer sharing of user-generated content
on the Internet, practical media workshops, community-based radio stations and the
creation of meaningful public dialogues on certain media messages, thereby helping
to contextualize corporate media with a more localized situated knowledge.
Digital media
The Internet is the media platform of the twenty-first century, and is the focal point
for the convergence of virtually every other traditional and familiar media of
communication - speech, still and moving image, news and information, political
debate and campaigning, environmental monitoring, community access, public art,
and, of course, advertising and marketing. It is potentially a 'smooth' way of spreading
ideas in a virus-like fashion (Godin, 2002). For public communicators, including
public relations specialists and marketers, the Internet allows global reach to be
achieved at relatively low cost. Website visits, clicks on ads, products purchased and
others recommended, and documents or videos downloaded can be counted and
campaigns evaluated. Direct sales and customized marketing are now virtually
ubiquitous: 'customers who have bought X may also be interested in Y' or 'welcome,
we recommend . . .'. Despite this, websites can be impersonal and invisible to those
not looking for them, which means that Internet search engines are becoming
increasingly important, commercially valuable and ideologically influential.
The Internet has also been used effectively by radical activists and campaign
groups as new technology and open-access publishing of pressure group material
has improved, and facilities for digital interaction, communication, debate and
dialogue have expanded. The real possibilities of the Net as an organizing tool became
clearly apparent at the time of the anti-capitalist protests in Seattle in 1999 (Bennett,
2003; de Jong
et al
., 2005). Bennett (2003) argues that the integration and growth
of Internet communications has influenced the form and perspective of political
campaigns - from being ideologically based to being more personal and with looser
modes of association. Political issues that tend to be relatively ignored by government
or traditional media, such as food standards, environmental issues, labour relations,
human rights and cultural identity, are picked up, often to the clear discomfort of
corporate and government bureaucracies and politicians. Communication practices
become almost inseparable from organizational and political capabilities and, to a
significant degree, serve to constitute many contemporary protests, forms of activism
and social movements (Cottle, 2011a). For example, patterns of digital communication
allow the following:
•
Campaigns can change shape and continue over considerable lengths of time.
•
Digital communication campaigns are frequently quite rich in addressing identity
and lifestyle issues.
•
Digital hub organizations often become resources for other, emerging, campaign
groups.
•
New media can influence information flows and agendas in mainstream mass
media news outlets.
