Introduction
Questions have been raised considering the viability of the internet as a medium of communication to the mass. This has partly been attributed to the phenomenal growth that it has had over the years and it remains to be seen how well it is going to be fair in the media arena over the years. The traditional ways of communicating to the public have changed due to the advent of the internet. They have had to adjust to accommodate the ever-increasing curious and technology-conscious crowd of people. It is threatening to surpass them and this has brought the question of whether that is the signal of a dramatic end to the traditional ways of communicating. This paper is an analysis of this scenario and it tries to view it from the angle of the pe3ople themselves as the agents of transformation (Gilder, 1992).
Relationships
The Internet has the capacity to change the relationships people have. This includes family, friends, and the notorious field of romance. Dr. Kimberly Young (1999) evaluates the use of the internet at the individual level and the impact it has at the social level after the seed of addiction is planted on a person’s mind. She claims that there has been a serious case of internet addiction. Based on a study she conducts by asking a few questions that she says are fundamental to knowing an internet addict. Some of the questions include: do you feel restricted time-wise when it comes to the internet? Do you constantly long for the next internet session? After answering these questions and more she determines how much you are an addict depending on the yeses and no’s (Young, 1999).
She concludes that the internet has fewer physical hazards but the emotional hazard is quite pronounced. The medical implication is pronounced especially where a person has a condition such as cirrhosis of the liver or hypertension. This addiction only serves the purpose of deteriorating the effect. The study found that 53% of internet addicts had familial problems that bordered on relationships with spouses and children. They also had problems academic wise and occupationally they found it hard to cope at the workplace (Young, 1999).
This study is a statement of how influential the internet has affected individuals and how it continues to evolve in the lives of people. In as much as the mainstream media may want to brush it aside, and continue believing that information will always be channeled through television radio, and print like newspapers, it remains to be seen how well that will work. People have already developed addictions to the internet and that is enough to say that if it were to spread well to other countries especially in Africa, it would completely revolutionize the social lives of people.
Kraut et al. (2001) revisited a sample of users of the internet whose study had been conducted and found that they used the internet badly while at the same time communicating through it. They did a three-year follow-up where they sought to know whether that was the trend. Their study concluded that the use of the internet in a bad way to further hatred and engage in bad internet viewing had greatly dissipated with a notable shift towards better use to communicate and socially interact with the rest such as families and friends. Therefore their study found minimal, if any, ways the internet was being misused. However, internet misuse is found especially in people who get addicted to some aspect of it. This makes it hard for a person to leave that particular aspect leading to the purported misuse.
They however say that the embracing of the internet’s usage as a means of communication in the future will depend on the evolvement of people’s quality of online relationships and the number of times people are bound to be online. Further studies they conclude show that online relationships do not have the gloss and this makes them weaker compared to other relationships. Therefore it is the vibrancy with which people embrace social groupings on the internet that will determine the shift towards them being as real and pronounced as the other relationships. These relationships are also going to be dependent on the personality types of people. The extroverts are mainly going to be the winners while the introverts are going to struggle to form a relationship online. This denotes that the people who use the internet are limited and more needs to be done to make internet availability a reality in many countries so as internet media can be fully exercised. (Gilder, 1992).
Social Sites
Social networking sites have come a long way to completely change information receiving and dissemination. Although the internet has not reached a large media in the world, the people who use the internet especially in western countries have embraced it fully. The mass media will not be killed by this; rather it has the capacity to enhance information flow. This is because people will use what is at their disposal to communicate to the world what is happening on the ground (Kraut et al., 2001).
Information nowadays flows from the remotest of areas due to the availability of and continual usage of the internet. This is especially made possible by the introduction of internet enabled phones. These are used to send reports as people talk on blogs update their status updates on sites such as twitter and face book and as they capture and upload videos of the realities on the ground on sites like you tube. This has manifested itself in countries like Iran. In that country the government is finding hard to control the media it has always sought to control due to the technology savvy young generation that has come. Prior to the election in which the incumbent president was reelected, the government had banned international media from covering it invoking cases of untrue information and support for the opposition.
This case is an example of how the internet was successfully used to help the traditional media to have their way. They would urge people who were witnessing what was happening to capture that and upload on their websites. This would later be communicated by the mass media. This denotes that instead of fighting or been adversaries of each other internet and mass media are working to improve information rendering (Kraut et al., 2001).
Corporations
The internet has become an essential way of communicating to the customer base. By having an interactive and up to date website, corporations are steadily but continuously offsetting the advertising budget. Though this has improved advertising, usage of other frontiers to tap into potential markets has become necessary. This means that the money that was been used to or was allocated for advertising has been spread over a number of advertising frontiers. The mass audience has reduced and internet audiences have become the darling of many. Companies that want to remain relevant in their respective fields have to take into consideration this group of people that have shifted from mainstream to internet media. The rate of usage of print news papers has been reducing. This has brought the question of its existence in the next decade with critics viewing it as a dead horse that has finished the race. Advertisers have shifted ground and little advertising is done on the newspapers (Holmes, 2005).
Analysis and Conclusion
The question been raised is how often people use the internet and the frequency of the pages they visit. Studies that have been carried out indicate that people go to the internet with a reason: checking mail, visit their social pages and answering mail. They rarely read the advertisements on the internet. Those who are addicted, have a special attribute of the internet that keeps them glued on the screen. This may be internet games and social sites that were cited as the most popular addictions on the cyberspace. Others include most notorious one of the internet adult porn. Therefore it is the norm to have the mass media lead the pack but the internet is coming fast and is bound to overthrow the traditional media. However the working relationship between the two will determine the success of both of them in the mainstream market (Holmes, 2005).
References
Gilder, G 1992, Rise and Fall of Television: In Life after Television, Norton, New York.
Holmes, D 2005, Communication Theory: Media Technology Society, Sage, London.
Kraut, R. et al. 2001, Internet Paradox Revisited. Journal of Social Issues, vol. 14, No. 1, pp 1-16.
Young, S 1999, Internet Addiction: Symptoms Evaluation and Treatment, Innovations in Clinical Practice, vol. 17, no. 1, pp 23-34.