Media Technologies and Communications, Essay Example

Introduction

Intercultural communication is as old as humankind. The eeriest historical records indicate interaction between people from different tribe and varying geographical region. Intercultural communication is said to occur when a message produced in one culture must be processed in another culture. To understand this definition it requires understanding of two important ingredient- communication and culture. This two terms are defined in the paragraph below.

Communication can be defined in various ways depending on the writer’s objective or specific scenarios. In simple term, communication can be defined as the management of the message with the objective of creating meaning. This definition is precise and describes what take place in every communication event. On the other hand culture simply refers to rule of living and functioning in the society. The culture provides the rules for playing a game of life.

Media are derived from the Latin word middle. This clearly shows that the media is in the middle of the communication process. Specifically the media lay between the sender and the recipient.other component of communication include the massage, environment and the channel It is impossible to have the newspaper without printing press, television program without the television set or transmit visual images on the internet without the computers. The technologies are an important part of the communication. The importance of media is widely recognized. Different media are capable of communicating different information. Medial forms influence the way people think and are capable of shaping the character of our social relationship. This paper focus on the media technological apparatus and how rapid technological growth have influence intercultural communication.

The history of human communication began with oral tradition. With time, the dissemination of the message evolved from simple oral communication to script; print wired electronics, wireless communication to digital communication. The introduction of computers marked a great change in information dissemination. A drastic change in the communications media has greatly affected human perception of media with respect to the usage of time and space.

In the present digital communication, time has been compressed by reducing the distance between two points. This distance reduction has led to people feeling that the local, national global space is absolute. In addition, the reach ability of the digital media has now extended to all people. This is very important because, in the absence confinement of time and space, the dissemination of the message is no longer a privilege only possessed by churches and government, but is equally shared by all individuals.

Different media have different technological capability that affect the delivery of the text, sound and visual image. For instance, the radio can broadcast a live music performance. In this case, you will hear the sound, but not be able to see the performer. Am magazine could print the story of the concert and provide photos to show how the event looked like. However, the sound will be missing. A television could broadcast the concert providing the video and the sound, but it is awkward to provide a written script on television. Internet is unique in its ability, it can provide, print, sound video and still photos.

Because of their capacity and limitation, the various media technology provide the different way of communicating. Technology is, therefore, the key point. It places the limitation of what media can be used for and makes some media more suitable for some purpose than others. As the media technologies evolve, it provides a different opportunity for a different form of communication (Watkinson, 2001).

All the innovation in the digital media has changed the way the human think, live and act.  For instance, digitization as a hybridization of print and electronic media in a banal code convert analog to digital that requires different mode of production and dissemination. The impact of new media on human society is demonstrated in the aspect of cognition, new form of esthetic and social effect. Cognitively, the new media demand a nonlinear nature and creation of an expectation for the content, which affect the way people use media. Socially, the most evident effect of new media is demystification. This means that the traditional design for large, homogenous audience is disappearing. It is replaced by specific and individual appeal that allows the audience to access and create the message that they wish to produce. Visually the digital media bring a new digital esthetic view. This refers to deliberate creation of virtual experience and sampling as a means of developing new contents (Upadhyaya, 2002).

The digital media have also played a key role in accelerating globalization in human society. The globalization is responsible for the transformation of all aspect of human society. For instance, culturally and socially globalization has redefined community, cultural identity, and civil society and demand a new way of intellectual interaction. Economically global competition has intensified (Tatipamula & Khasnabish, 2008). For a company to succeed in the global market, they are required to have understanding of the local market. This help them to meet the requirement of the global client .they is also required to seek open market globally and foster effective management in global transactions. Due to the development of new media the global trend, create social network and activities. They redefine social, cultural, political, economic, and geographical boundaries of human society. It stretches the social relations, accelerates the social; exchange and involve both microstructures of personhood and macrostructure of community.

The media technology dictates the process of social change. The argument of the technological determinist raises an important question about the social impact of the new technology. Technology determinism fosters the technology as a tool of social change. The technology determinism laid more emphasis on the overwhelming effect of the technology on the uses society or organization (Shearer & Huxford, 2003).

Technology is seen as a powerful tool that is introduced into social situations. From this perspective, technology causes thing to happen through a series of intermediate steps. The problem with the approach is that there is no human element n the kind of analysis. The technological determinism is structurally constrained, and thus, no human action. The argument is that the technological properties demand certain result and that the actual humans do not use technology so much as they use people. In this view, the society is transformed according to a technical human agenda.

Contrary to the technological deterministic, many scholar argues that social forces determine that technology. This viewpoint acknowledges that technology maters, but the way in which the technology is developed or used is shaped by social forces such as economic pressure, cultural norms, and legal regulation (Carpentier, 2007).

The impact of the new media on the intercultural communication

New media have brought human society to a highly interconnected and complex levels.  At the same time, a new media challenge the existence of human communication in the tradition sense. The new media influence the form of a massage as well as how people understand each other in the process of communication especially those from different cultural group.

The new culture hatched by the new media has created a continuity gap between the tradition and innovation within a culture. The cultural gap causes difficulties in understanding and communication between the generations and among people of the same culture (Hong, Huang, & Kuo, 2010).

In addition, new media create communication gaps between people of different ethnic group. The fragmented nature of the new media has switched traditional cultural themes, grammar, or map to a new pattern. This results to loss of traditional cultural logic. The rearrangement of the cultural patterns requires community to realign their communication behavior within their community and learn a way of interacting with other communities (Furnell, 2008). New media fosters new culture in communities, in this regard, the process of intercultural communication triggers ambiguities and uncertainties. The greatest challenge is how to adjust to a new situation and smoothly reach the goal of mutually understanding for people from different cultural group in this chaotic stage of cultural change.

Conclusion

New media provide a space in which people from a different culture freely express their culture and their opinion and establish a relationship. Meanwhile, New media also challenge the existence of communication both in intercultural and intercultural. This due to its characteristic that is dissimilar to tradition media.

References

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Carpentier, N. (2007). Media technologies and democracy in an enlarged Europe: The intellectual work of the 2007 European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School. Tartu: Tartu University Press.

Furnell, S. (2008). Securing information and communications systems: Principles, technologies, and applications. Boston: Artech House.

Hong, Y.-W. P., Huang, W.-J., & Kuo, C.-C. J. (2010). Cooperative communications and networking: Technologies and system design. New York: Springer.

Shearer, B. F., & Huxford, M. (2003). Communications and society: A bibliography on communications technologies and their social impact. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.

Tatipamula, M., & Khasnabish, B. (2008). Multimedia communications networks: Technologies and services. Boston, Mass: Artech House.

Upadhyaya, S. (2002). Mobile computing: Implementing pervasive information and communications technologies. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Watkinson, J. (2001). Convergence in broadcast and communications media: The fundamentals of audio, video, data processing, and communications technologies. Boston, MA: Focal Press.