New media in everyday life

In this article, we must emphasize how media technologies allow us to amplify our
experiences, options, and choices in relation to ourselves, regarding information and
education. Also, what it means to be living and growing up in an era saturated with
digital media, considering that technologies are never external to society, they are
always sociotechnical and shape our generations. All of this will be illustrated by
examples of New Media, Television and Cinema.

Every Technology is relational to aspects of human life, such as social networks to

young people, where each individual can in some way reflect the selves they think
they are or wish to become, and this is partly because social media is a space where
users can experiment safely. Moreover, how individuals present themselves on
websites (public presentation) as a kind of fictional character created by them to
please what they think others want to see and tell their own truth. If we analyze it,
then this is an ideal medium for the construction of a wide variety of private worlds
and through them, for self-exploration. Of course, this has always generated
changes in the everyday environment of people, As John Seabrook quoted in
Chandler 1998 “A home in the real world is, among other things, a way of keeping
the world out… An online home, on the other hand, is a little hole you drill in the wall
of your home to let the world in”.

Another important aspect inside social media are “fake news”, because they shape
people’s beliefs and perspective about what is happening in the world. For instance,
in Venezuela this represents a big issue not only due to news spread around the
globe about the “situation of the country”, but because of false information created
nationally by the government to instill fear, generate expectations that are above all,
to misinform and to undermine the few institutions that remain in the country.
Therefore, traditional media is highly censored, the pressure of censorship is very
severe, so venezuelans require social media for information, from YouTube channels
to Twitter. As the historian and communicator Bernardino Herrera points out “El fruto
de todo esto es la deserción del Estado para no informar a los ciudadanos
venezolanos sobre el estado del país y esto se complementa con la desinformación
para invadir, intoxicar las redes sociales de noticias falsas, para no hacer nada
creíble, para que los venezolanos no tengamos alternativa de información ni
siquiera en las redes sociales”. It should be noted that fake news are popular in
social networks because it supports the role played by 'wishful thinking', what people
desire to happen, the reinforcement of what society believes makes this material so
that it spreads like gunpowder, because it is attractive, sexy and says what people
think, what people would like to know, in such a way that ignorance prevails over real
knowledge. This is possible and easy to spread because of the facilities that the
digital era offers us with Television, home computers and new media at home.

Only when we find out how easy it is to control and manipulate an entire generation
just by communicating misleading information about their own environment, we
understand the power that New Media has in our lives. As McLuhan points out in his
theory “The new technologies of the electronic age, notably television, radio, the
telephone, and computers, make up a new environment. A new environment: they
are not merely added to some basic human environment . . . They radically alter the
entire way people use their five senses, the way they react to things, and therefore,
their entire lives and the entire society.”

Referring to Television, is evident to all of us, that this media influence people’s
education and knowledge about several aspects of the outside world, because there
are good programs that help us understand many subjects: science, medicine, the
arts, foreign languages and so on, since we spend most of our free time watching it.
In the same way, It can be a didactic tool, because we can find information about
countries or people we had no idea about their existence and "travel" from our
homes to every corner of the world, so it’s evident that we find useful information into
entertainment. Also, through Television we understand better politics, history, culture,
and current events, making it easier for us to stay aware of all the things that
happens near or far from us.

On the other hand, despite “edutainment”, that means education combined with
entertainment, can be positive for childrens and many people, there is another face
of the word “edutainment” inside the Television media, because even though, it offer
us an easy way to learn about politics, current events or cultures, it may misinform or
manipulate people’s mind through news. It is well known that each channel has too
much interest in attracting more public, but not necessarily to educate or inform
them with the right information. In spite of the fact that “Fake news” are more
common on social networks, in this case we are referring to mislead information in
which television news stations like CNN and BBC are subjected to the “deep fake”
treatment, with their anchors made to say manipulated statements that could even
lead to mass panic or tendencies inside society, for example “yellow press” which is
a type of journalism that presents news with flashy, scandalous or exaggerated titles
with the commercial purpose of causing astonishment or scandal, although generally
these news do not have any evidence and without a well-defined investigation. This
problem is exemplified by countries such as Venezuela, Cuba and Russia, that are
dedicated to censor private television channels in order to avoid freedom of
expression, so that the main information platforms of these countries are exposed to
the manipulation of the government power, such as “Russia Today”, the
multi-language Television channel that represents Putin's official point of view, has
been one of the sources that has worked the most to misinform people. It is the
same position as “Cubainformación” and “Venevision” to spread false or tendentious
news, nationally and internationally, with the only purpose of manipulate public
opinion.

In the case of Cinema, it has been an important part of the entertainment industry for
a long time and plays a very important role in the development of human society
from education to entertainment, especially because many of us don’t have lives as
adventurous or glamorous as the ones presented in movies, we are not always doing
extraordinary things in our day to day, so we enjoy seeing other people living like
that in movies to escape from monotony and routine, that is why recreation has
always been an important part of human activity and with the coming of the
television, video tapes and private channels, cinema has become a part of almost
every home. Despite it’s a way to distract ourselves from reality and to enter in a
whole new world full of ideas and emotions, Cinema has a significant educational
value because we learn a lot about different cultures, ideologies, people, religion,
economic background, and political thoughts and history from across the world and
time, there are so many new things which enrich our mind with interesting details of
new information. Above all, it also enhances the imagination power of people,
because each director has a different way of showing his own perspective of the
world creating a massive impact on people.

An important aspect to be considered, is the proliferation and availability of different

kinds of communication media impulsed by technology (programming and electronic
devices) such as, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Whatsapp,
Snapchat, Google, among others. Which are leading a tendency to:
● to reduce the quantity of words in a communication
● to increase the “do it yourself” communications
● to increase the use of images and graphic design
● to interact with a wide variety of people
● to get access of a huge amount of information
● to be able to maintain contact with people and communities sharing
information
This new reality obviously is changing the way we think, act and understand
ourselves, making up a new environment where it’s necessary to interact in a new
way in which the electronic device and its programming has become in a real
extension of us. As Sherry Turkle said in 1984 “When you create a programmed
world, you work in it, you experiment in it, you live in it. The computer’s
chameleonlike quality, the fact that when you program it, it becomes your creature,
makes it an ideal medium for the construction of a wide variety of private worlds and
through them, for self-exploration. Computers are more than screens onto which
personality is projected. They have already become a part of how a new generation
is growing up.”

In conclusion, it’s evident that social media and new technologies have made its way
into our lives as never in the past, the world has become increasingly connected and
interactive. Even though, this interaction could be positive or negative, a big part of
the information shared between us on social media and the information obtained on
Television or Cinema, influence all human generations, allowing new cultural and
social behaviors to emerge. All of this information, as well as, the growing quantity of
communication media available to everyone, is changing the way we learn about
several subjects of life and shaping our new thinking and perspective about the
world.

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