Both articles this week point out how media production and communication technologies are getting stuck into our everyday life, becoming an integral part of the daily social and public grind. It is very easy to see this in our world – look at the i-pad release. Just today, I have gotten over 5 e-mails and facebook messages about the impending release, and the “Win a free i-pad!” deals, and that is on a normal working day. It is pretty amazing to see how something like the i-pad, an over-sized i-phone or i-pod, can be so needed in our society already, but it does emphasise how much technology and new media play a role in our day to day living.
A problem that is being faced by the media production companies is keeping ahead of the trends, but not so much ahead as to lose touch with the average consumer. These companies need to go to great length the measure and research audience participation, and it seems that the older methods are not keeping up. Researchers can no longer cover everything just by watching, recording and interviewing their subjects, as this does not seem to show them how a person gets meaning from their media use. It also points out how media is playing such a central role in our lives, as we can no longer ask a person what they do use and expect a reasonable answer.
What it can show us however, is how media production and audience participation intersect; each one just adds to the other. The audience determines the media being produced, as the media producers determines what comes into the audience’s world. Before the i-phone, I did not care at all about what phone I used, if I could message and make/receive phone calls, I was content. Then came the i-phone and I do not know how I could get around without it. It shows me bus and train times, I can find places on a map as I walk. Before apple said I needed one, I thought I had everything I could want in a black and white brick of a phone. The i-phone also shows how audience participation is changing the media with the use of applications. Manufacturers could not have predicted what we wanted before we made our mark and created the myriad of applications now available.
A final point in the interaction of media production and audiences, is the idea o the diffused media. Media, thanks to audience interaction changing production, is now available anywhere at any time. This means that audience participation is now available everywhere as well – pushing media production to new limits, and meaning we can not completely research uses.
