Week 4: Mediation: Space

The media creates a certain relationship between people and the way media communications and technologies are used.  Again, this applies to the same sense of ‘a social whole,’ from the media ritual subject matter in week one, which is a continuous and constant factor of media and its relation to humans.  Our sense of space goes beyond our own physical geographical borders and is quite literally as large as the individual can make it.  By ‘make it’ I mean how far a person communicates, or relates themselves to media in general.  This can be either quite controlled, or simply a matter of local, regional and/or broadcast media.  Newspapers give a simple yet comprehensive example of this.  Local newspapers tend to report on local happenings and occurrences, with smaller sections on international affairs, but are more or less organised spatially to provide information on local/regional areas, creating a sense of similar media space to those in the same physical area.  However with new technology, such as electronic news sources, it is difficult to make the information so localized.  Instead, stories are less local and are broadcast internationally, and although there may be a slight regional focus, the information is more easily accessible so is therefore more widely accepted.  Television broadcastings have been quite regional as well, however as the media creates an influence over its audience, our sense of media space continues to grow. The example in the readings by Shaun Moores regarding Princess Diana’s death and funeral illustrates this well.  Although millions of people did physically place themselves in the same ‘space’ as the funeral and mourning sites, millions of viewers across the world were watching the same broadcasting of the event, including being in the same time and space of the media.  The millions of people watching/present didn’t know Diana personally, but due to a building up of how the media represented Diana and, as referred to as ‘a will to ordinariness” by Moore, Diana was a likeable, relatable and influential public figure.  This is how the media is able to create relationships of the same media time and space between people and its matter.

‘Dailiness,’ as such the Scannell readings, is still influencing our sense of media time and space, however now that information is so readily available and so immediate (e.g. Internet) the sense of belonging to a media ‘space’ is not as relevant as belonging to a media ‘time.’  With the Internet it is possible to create our own spaces by discovering and choosing what information to follow, when we would like to follow it and how often.   The Internet also allows for different forms of communication to occur, such as electronic mail, instant messaging, video chats, social networking, blogging, etc.  This ultimately means that our media space can literally be anywhere as long as we have a means to communicate to/with the other place.  Cell phones can also be categorized quite similarly, allowing us to communicate with others regardless of where we are.  However I do question whether this still means we have a media space.  Do we have no space? Is it just a matter of immediate communication and immediate information now?  This is what Hay has touched on in his readings.  The possibilities for individual media spaces are constantly growing, therefore how can we belong to an actual space?  Simply because the options are so vast, I can quite comfortably suggest or make the claim that people will never belong to a certain space, or simply two spaces (Moores’ ‘Doubling of Place’)  because the growth and development of media and communications is endless.