topic 1 week 1 part A

This post will evaluate some new media in terms of their characteristics and their usefulness in everyday life. A subsequent post will follow with the remaining new media of task 1 on it.

Email

According to Lister et al, email and email lists allow for one to one and one to group text based message distribution. (2003:166). It is instant, free and can often hold 10-15mb of information without upgrading. Files and pictures can also be sent through email. Whist I agree that email is one of the most important inventions of the last 30 years, the more up-to-date and appealing way for me to communicate with friends and family is through social networking sites, which allow me to keep up with the goings on of my friends, but also allows me to look at and share pictures with them. Email does, however, allow me to communicate quickly and effectively with tutors on the course and people involved in the university whom I do not know personally. I also imagine that it will become a huge part of communication in the workplace after University. There are particular drawbacks to this method of communication though. Email lists are a way for marketers to push their, often unwanted, products towards a mass audience, and they are also a way to spread email viruses throughout a mass range of computers. Email is also an impersonal way of communicating and sometimes what’s written in an email can be ambiguous and context can be lost.

Does anyone actually use email to communicate with their friends or have mobiles and social networking sites taken over?

IRL's chat rooms, messenger services.

An IRL, or 'internet relay link' is described in Lister et al (2003:166) as “live synchronous text-based conversations constructed by participants”. IRL can also be shorthanded to IRC (replace link with chat) Chat systems may have numerous channels or rooms which the people that use them may enter. Messenger services are an easy and instant way to communicate. I use them frequently to talk to friends and family because it is direct and free. As with emails, some context can be lost through text as opposed to face-to-face interaction but as the interaction is instantaneous, any ambiguity can be quickly cleared up. Chat rooms have had a lot of negative press for linking up people with false identities and are often blocked out on child protective software for this reason. I have never been interested in using chatrooms as I prefer to talk to people that I know personally. It can, however, bring people of similar interests together, which is often difficult for niche groups. This is why some say the internet has created a global village.

Any one have any experience of chat rooms and know more about their characteristics? does the press surrounding peadophilia put anyone off? or even the stereotypes of a chat room user (lonely, no communicative skills, a bit sad? ) put any one off?