New Media Isn't Just A Medium (Mcluhanism)

The 'Prophet' of The Media, Marshall McLuhan

We are living in a global village - a term coined by 'the prophet of the media', Herbert Marshall McLuhan 30 years before the world knew what is Internet and what can it does to human civilization. And Mcluhan himself who would have been more than 100 year old if he had live today - didn't have the chance to experience it.   

Global village doesn't only mean that this flat world is where people can share some common values and information. As Mcluhan argued that of major effect of the global village is that it would cause people not minding their own business in the global village. Mcluhan was right when he predicted that a new medium (Internet) is going to become the extension of awareness.

Even so, many people are oblivious on how the media can build, shape, develop and control their perception, idea, and thinking whilst at the same time, subconsciously making media a reliant tool for them in everything that they do.

Back in the 90's, Tun Mahathir who was the Prime Minister at that time had lamented on how the Malays were being misled with ridiculous ghost stories because of the Malay media love to project such thing. And when the Internet had existed, he then worried about the harm that globalization could caused.

The essence of the media substance is that its becoming more volatile especially with new and latest technology that comes from all parts of the globalized world. To worry about this is futile, rather effective approaches are desirable.

Still very much alive some memory in the 90's when the government had introduced a policy 'one family one computer' as one of the way to educate the people that the world is progressing, that the 21st century has arrived.

But in this era of 'global village' we are living in,  when tens of thousands are depending on a compact and small devices on daily basis, the term 21st century itself have become like the 'one family one computer' policy - lame and old school.

Mcluhan goes further describing a Global Theater. Consumers of Internet have the ability to act as content producers. Independently.

Of recent event, we are witnessing how certain issues or even superfluous affairs getting viral and became permanent bone of contention that lingers around the net and can be resuscitate by anyone in any place at any time. 

The Force of The New Media

The power of the media is that it is not stagnant as it progresses. The media is constantly evolve and expand to another greater extend. And because of this, we have a new estate - the Fifth Estate, i.e, the new media.

The new media has made the impossible to possible. Just some years back it is unimaginable that an apolitical person in Malaysia only need couple of seconds to ridicule their own Prime Minister or even the President of United State of America on their official social media account while millions can observe.

The new media can make everything becomes news worthy. 

Today's new media frenzy has made possible for a ten-year-old kampung boy to have access to all kinds of jaw dropping matters coming from the other end of the world at the tip of his fingers while lying on his bed. Adults would engage in matters that is not related to them even an ounce in a large scale such as arguing with anonymous users on YouTube for many days because the have to disagree on something. This is one of gazillion futile act of modern day babies.

Yet, our reciprocal communication on social media is limited and only relevant to us and the people we communicate with and the effect is on few people, while the medium that serves us as platforms to communicate are far more significant as it reaches billions of people.

This is what Mcluhan meant - the medium is the message.

Leaders today are force to find new approaches in engaging the new media. To depend only on conventional media without considering the wireless world is no longer relevant. Leaders before had the privilege to live a private life, but today's leaders had to combat Internet trollers.

Example, it is the first time in history of our country where the private lives of our Prime Minister including his family being scrutinized by everybody without the need of conventional media.

If we think about the new media, most of us instantaneously would imagine some major social sites with the likes of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. In fact the power that theses sites hold, when we are discussing about an important modern historical events, it is sufficient for us to just consider these Internet sites into the discussions without getting into the details of the contents.

Example, the major events happened in country like Egypt where the world had watched live shows of the Arab spring, and conclusion that can be agreed upon is that - Internet social media sites were the catalyst in toppling the governments. Nobody predicted that Hosni Mubarak who was ruling Egypt for 40 years was toppled easily because of the existence of Google and Facebook. 

It used to be that radio is the most powerful and the most influential medium in reaching the public and gaining peoples' trust. Hitler and Stalin benefited greatly by this particular medium though they were actually lousy speaker with unattractive appearances, however, when their voices were broadcasted through the radio, the majority of the Germans and the Serbians became very loyal and gave unwavering support to those blood thirsty dictators. 

 

Before the era of the Internet, only certain people with specific credibility had the chances to criticize other people on a particular conventional media, but, the new media can make one's private life being vilified and ridiculed visible to all people even if it comes from a child.

Thus, the ability to communicate clearly is a necessity; communicating effectively with the public is an absolute necessity especially for public figures.

Now, we are living not in a modern world, in fact we are in post-modern era where the world wide web is an old school term. In the age of consumerism where television is a conventional media, broadcasting companies are now beginning to find new ways on how to manipulate consumers on the Internet by spending billions of dollars to gain enormous profit.

It is no secret now that if news reporter was once armed with a pad and pencil, now everybody has the same tools without equipping oneself with pen or notepad or even to be a reporter. An imbecile person can create an impact with an artificial matters like a professional experienced but a sham journalist. And that is very frightening.

People need to be tactful and realise that the bogus and the sham of the modern media is to stay, and so are we.

New media isn't just a mere tool for communication, it is a force of message.