The Internet and the Mass Media, Authors: Lucy Kung, Robert G Picard, Ruth Towse, Book Review by Johnson Thomas

Book Title: The Internet and The Mass Media

Authors: Lucy Kung, Robert G. Picard, Ruth Towse

Paperback edition, Pages :182

ISBN- 978-1-4129-4735-0
Sage publications
www.sagepublications.com

This is probably the most opportune time to discuss the impact of the Internet and mass media on our day-to-day lives. When technological changes take place , they are exciting, sometimes destructive and confusing and even have the power to alter the status quo. Young people adopt them faster than old people and richer countries and people have access to them much before poorer countries and people. There are many dimensions to these changes and they have to be considered from many points of view-as economic, social and political opportunities and threats. These changes impact on the whole of society both within a country and in the international context.

The 26/11 ambush on Mumbai orchestrated by terrorists allegedly from across the border, found incessant expression on the internet and mass media. Live telecasted shot-by-shot accounts by Indian news channels and individual bloggers have in fact created a storm of public opinion in favor of and against the indiscriminate use of mass media.

While the Indian newscasters upped their celeb and shrill quotient to grab maximum TRP’s, the foreign channels like BBC and CNN played it cool by calling in their experts, Christianne Amanpour and Co, when necessary, while the regular newscasters kept to their schedules with frequent updates on the terror attacks on Mumbai. The Indian counterparts were seen to be scrambling for one-upmanship, rattling off the number of shots fired, number of grenades thrown, number of terrorists, NSG, Marcos and police commandos in action while throwing in live interviews with the culprits, in an effort to pack the air waves with maximum bytes. And the fact was that none of it was entirely accurate, thus exposing their lack of expertise. It also compromised the whole operation as revealed by Naval Chief Admiral Mehta in a recent press conference when he called the media a ‘disabling instrument of the country.’
The strangely hypnotic and trancelike dance of death as relayed by the newscasters was like a c-grade bollywood product that went on and on, seemingly never ending in it’s narrative elongation and ridiculous in it’s numerous mini-climaxes. In fact when the inhuman bloodbath found it’s logical end, everyone from the security forces, the politicians to the newscasters were found wanting and were left red in the face! And , the viewers were in a state of shock; when it wore off the shock turned into anger. Of course, the erstwhile newscasters, not realizing their own susceptibility, continued to ply their idiot-box faithful with their seemingly holier-than-thou craft.

The internet, on the other hand played a much more mature role of news disseminator, providing a detailed view of what transpired without resorting to jingoism or melodrama. Blogs, file sharing websites and other websites like Twitter.com which provided short text updates were hotting up with messages at the press of a button. Bloggers relayed messages and pictures much faster than the news channels could. News appeared to be more accurate and precise on the net than on the news channels. Citizen journalists also joined in with first person accounts and on-the-spot frames. There were a few bloopers too, but they were few and less compromising than what was shown on television and this despite the fact that the internet is a wild untamed, uncontrolled and unregulated space. During the sixty hour siege of Mumbai there was a time when the news channels were blocked for a few hours but the internet carried on unhindered. The impact of this multi-media news-rush is there for all to see. People are enraged and becoming more demonstrative, Politicians are slipping out of their comfort zones, intelligence agencies are getting the short end of the public ire and media persons are forced to defend their ethics. Events like the one in Mumbai have definitely propelled new media to the forefront, it has not only gained recognition but also a faithful following.

But this was not the case five or even ten years ago. Take the case of music; five years ago when P2P and MP3 were setting shop, the industry were all jittery perceiving file-sharing as something likely to precipitate a crisis, reducing sales and cutting off revenue streams. But today the industry reckons that the internet has made business more secure and easier to expand. Sales have increased tremendously and revenues from licenses have added many zeros to the returns. Electronic books were similarly perceived as a hindrance to paper book sales but today not much has progressed on that front. There are many more examples to demonstrate the effect of the internet and the mass media but examples quickly date: what is attempted in this book is an overview not so much of the outcomes of the use of the internet but more of how social scientists set about analyzing the processes involved in the adoption of, adaptation to and acceptance of the internet in the context of media studies.

This book is the result of an initiative by the European Science foundation’s Committee on Science and Technology(COST) procedures that led to the COST A20 Project, that measured the ‘Impact of the Internet on the Mass Media.’ Spearheaded and Planned by Professor Colin Sparks, the moving force behind this initiative, a group of people from different countries, experts from different disciplines, met regularly to exchange intellectual viewpoints on a topic that was arguably difficult to analyze. The authors of this book are social scientists from all across Europe doing research in the field of media industries and specializing in a range of disciplines media and business economics, communications, cultural economics, cultural studies, media management, media technology, political science and sociology. They also share an interest in the impact of the internet on mass media. This book draws together what the authors have jointly concluded about the impact of the internet on the media industries. The book’s standpoint is multi-lens, interdisciplinary and cross national. The aim of this book was to present a contemporaneous account of researches arising out of objective academic investigation and this I say has been achieved without much difficulty!

Johnson Thomas