I gazed through some social media studies articles and journals and came to a few thoughts. The new media has overtaken the world by its massively fast power and speedy reach through so many people and places. I also noticed (roughly counted) that there are more capture screen of tweets displayed in telly and more tweets are read out on radio channels than how many television shows' and radio streaming links are posted on Twitter. This signifies that the world is keen to receive information and spread news (and thoughts) via something ultra-quick and massively (or privately) conveyed and accessed.
Television today, not only flooding the society with dramatic tears in reality show and talent show, but also ownership and conglomerates' fights between channels and political interest. I am confident to say that the education role of television, presently, is only 10 to 15%, while the rest is entertainment and commercialisation of human interests and business minded. Either the programme, the advertisements, or the news, a very little amount of education and useful information is outweighed by the propaganda and consumerism drive. It's like all topic and life aspect are inevitably exploited into a commercial purpose. Even the education and information parts in television are visibly utilised as a product placement or promotion, either commercial, industrial, ideological, as well as political. Hence, telly is no longer my option in refreshing my blunt head and thirst of knowledge.
I too. Tweeting and Tumblr-ing is so much easier and more desirable for me once I have a snap thought about something, or just to report what I have in my sight in any particular moment. Not to mention that some telly stations are now enabling and encouraging citizen journalism to take part of their humanitarian mission and sharing-the-knowledge to wider public, I still find it a bit effortful and inefficient to actually send my live video of accident, a public violence or a law-breaking by authorities to a television whose owner is one of the police's friend's and/or reporter is dating or marrying one of the politicians involved in particular crime, etc. In short, it is just more instantly to post something via online, especially social media. In fact, now televisions and radios are running their own Twitter and Instagram accounts to keep up with public's neediness of information and entertainment.
Today, there is this crazy little thing called Path. In the place where I live, Indonesia (focusing in the Capital), we are surrounded by critical (and sometimes idiotic) people who misuse and abused the importance of private social media like Path. It was initially only for 150 friends to share your path with, but then I am lack of real reason why it has expanded and increased friend-limit into 500 now. I am not going to elaborate and name cases by cases appeared since the privatisation number of Path friends was misused, but what I am pointing at is how people are so dependant to social media now that the first thing they check in the morning when they open their eyes is their social media feed.
This is not crazy compared to how my parents were not actually turning on their telly when they woke up those days in the past. I came to think if it's actually them who weren't so into media and were not enthusiast about finding new information and watching news, OR is it us nowadays who aren't aware the real human touch and direct interaction is also important things to do? Was it them who hasn't got any easier access to handy media like today, OR is "what's going on in the world today" the most wanted thing in our head? Has the media changed function from source-of-information and became "my everything", OR distance humans and events are more important to us rather than our-own real personal problems?
I learnt that many revolutions, moments, activities and movements, world's moments, national issues, economic and business matters are discussed and involving so much of new media; both the utilisation and the manifestation, both the propaganda and collecting common perspective about something. It is a massive topic, too much to discuss in one single writing, but always interesting even in the closest occurrence about how new media has affected many things in our life aspect. Our selection of food and fashion, our daily journey, our psychological remedy, our political views, our religious beliefs, and almost everything is accessible via social media. Is this a good thing? Or everything is going back to "it depends"? Will there be any proved theory that humans are now actually controlled by the media and distant influence rather be the ones who control the media and a determinant entity of what should and should not happen in this world?
I believe the former.