Monday, September 19, 2011
It's gratifying...(Post)
There has been a shift in how our uses and gratifications are met psychologically as a people that are now online daily. As we know, previous media was scheduled and mainly not interactive, but today’s media allows people to “pull” in as much information as they need through process gratification and content gratification, which are both available online. Basically, we are able to fill the need of being entertained and occupied (process) or collecting information we want (content), instantly. This is a far cry from waiting until tomorrow’s newspaper, next month’s Journal or another two days to see the re-run of the episode you just missed. Now, we can act on our initial motivation and couple that with the ability to find content on-demand through an active search process
Something interesting to me was the participant in the study describing her preemptive research of a future roommate that resulted in her transferring dorm rooms to avoid potential problems before they could even occur. Being online gives us greater access to those that we interact with and the ability to learn, and form opinions, about them before we have the chance to meet them in person which dramatically changes personal interactions.
--CG
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Hi Tim, your point that media users today can pull in whatever information they like without prohibition brings up another interesting point of the fragmentation of news. As Internet users can now access real time news from all over the world, it has now become common practice for journalists to upload the latest news while often failing to follow up on the previous days news stories. I believe this is a major detriment to the quality of journalism today.
ReplyDeleteYour second paragraph detailing the respondent who swapped college rooms as she felt she wouldn't get along with her roommate is a frightening thought. I think it's important to accept that people often have online and offline personalities. While a lot of the time our online identities are a reflection of who we are in real life, I believe value judgments and such are needed to be made in person. While I have admitted I am superficial on Facebook, I do not believe I would ever be so superficial to judge somebody without meeting them face to face. The fact that people do is horrible and hopefully not a common occurrence.