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At no other point in human history has technology played so vital and all pervasive a role in every day private and public life as now. Though the limitations imposed by nature were overcome right from the time when the project of modernity got introduced, yet the birth of new technologies have busted even the limits of `industrial` technologies. The industrial age technologies suffered from the basic defect of `producer-bias`. Consequently, they were cast in the top-down mould with little regard for individual customer preferences. The new information and communication technologies broke the reliance on mass-based production systems and resurrected the model of individualized production. This marked a paradigm shift in the production, distribution and consumption patterns of products being delivered by the ``smart`` technologies.
In the world of media, it meant the end of mass media monopolization of the global and local public spheres. The alternative voices became more strident and eye-catching with the arrival of the new media. A large number of media users migrated from the older mass mediated public sphere to the cyberspace, the new public sphere created by the new media. This migration was accompanied by the drift of the advertisers and the marketers to the new public sphere, granting it the legitimacy that it required in the attention economy of the new millennium. Regulatory regimes followed which raised their own controversies. The birth of a new baby in the house is always a matter of challenge to the elder sibling. Expectedly, the mass media technologies too reoriented themselves to keep their flock together. But, the story is still in the making. The end is far, too far.
The book, Media in the Swirl, is an attempt to record the multiple perspectives on this swirl in media in different cultures and climes. Taking a cue from the mantra of new media action, the book is the product of a collaborative venture among researchers in different parts of the world. The insights presented in each of the contributions have been dovetailed into five sections. The first section attempts to capture the signs of transition in the media, the second engages with the issue of the role of media in the emergent knowledge society, the third interrogates the role of media in development, the fourth raises issues of identity construction and negotiation in the globalized world of the new millennium, and the fifth explores issues of the real and the authentic as a result of the changes in the media.
All in all, the book should be a good read for those interested in getting a global feel of the media in the swirl, researchers active in the area of media criticism/theory, postgraduate students looking for information on the recent precipitous developments in media, and media practitioners wishing to get acquainted with the promise and potential of these changes.
ISBN - 9788182746534
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Pages : 358
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