Methods of mass communication have developed from mid fifteenth-century printing presses (seen above), to devices that now fit in the palm of your hand. It is hard to know what will be invented ten years from now, much less what will arise out of the next five-hundred year span. One thing is sure, youth will help determine how information will be delivered. The tools they choose to use play a part in how information is gathered and transmitted.
It’s hard to walk anywhere on Red River campus without seeing students gazing at the screen of a laptop or desktop computer. They are integrated in our lives that we all take them for granted at this point. The world is at a users fingertips (if you have a service provider) and virtually anything you want to discover is only a website away.
Students have constant access to computers and each year it’s getting harder to find teens who do not own their own cell phone. For many of them, this is their first personal communication device. Teens appear to make the most use out of a cell phone by using it for texting, with conversation coming in a close second. The immediacy of sending brief messages in a matter of moments seems to be a deciding factor. This is the basis for the popularity of Twitter as news can pass by word of mouth to thousands of people in a matter of minutes.
Knowing todays youth is highly connected to the web is the first thing to realize about getting their attention. From here on in, the process can get complicated. It’s easy to feel lost when well over 100 million websites in the world are competing for attention. The device itself can dictate what type of information is sent. Whereas a cell phone generally has a limited amount of information it can send at any given time, the flexibility of a computer in this sense is superior; for now. It is generally seen to be an easier device to read from, though products like the iPhone are gaining popularity with users.
Every day there are stacks of unsold newspapers at any number of places, including this campus. The era of newspapers isn’t drawing to a close, but society is assessing its convenience. In the era of online news, RSS feeds, and podcasting, it’s becoming harder for a daily newspaper to compete. Many people maintain their own weblogs as well where opinions and information pass from person to person to person.
All of todays technology is tailored for the present. Any plan for the future of news must contain online presence. Today’s youth could not imagine a world without the latest technology at their disposal. They are seen as a testing ground for what will work and what will fail. As they will design the models of the future, society needs to make sure they have it.
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