It’s a Wednesday night and to get over this mid week hump you decide to watch some TV. Your dad is sitting there, reading his paper, while your mum gets dinner ready and listens to the radio. You’re all reading/ watching/ listening to these things and enjoying your time, just having what you have infront of you. Your little sibling though is in the corner, on their laptop watching and commenting on a YouTube video while having a discussion on their favourite forum. These are the examples of the two different types of media we have today.
We have here the monologic media, one form of media that can spread its voice to many people who do not affect what the media discusses. The other form of media is called dialogic media, media that can be changed and altered by the users. Before the internet came about, all media was monologic. People couldn’t interact and change what was showed. But since the rise of the internet, we have had many websites pop up bringing about this dialogic media. Forums, YouTube, Reddit are all great examples of the people responding to and changing what we are reading/ watching/ listening to. It’s giving us, the audience, a say in the topics around the globe today. We can have a chat about something millions of miles away too people millions of miles away thanks to dialogic media.
Janey Gordon gives us great examples of the audience participation in dialogic media in her article,The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere: Mobile Phone Usage in Three Critical Situations (2007, p. 307-319). She shows us three case studies in which technology and the audience have changed the way the media has seen certain events. Dialogic media has changed the way audiences are seen today. From the audience being told what they are told and that’s it, into the audience discussing and challenging what someone is telling them through comments, video replies, and many other forms of reply.
Dialogic media is only going to be further enhanced with the bringing in of Google Glass. Having a camera, word to text module and the internet wherever you are at the touch of a finger or the sound of your voice r the movement of your head means the audience can have a voice wherever they go. Dialogic media is the way of the future and monologic media has no way to stop it.
References:
Gordon, J (2007), ‘The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere: Mobile Phone Usage in Three
Critical Situations’, Convergence, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 307-319.
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