Intercultural Media Studies : The Next Frontier

We have all heard that communication is the key to any good relationship. The article by David Isaacs (2014), states that “social media is likely to facilitate communication not impair it”, which is one of the main reasons for social networks and to communicate with family and friends all around the world instantly with effortless accessibility all thanks to the internet. David Isaacs (2014)

Social media and technology has improved the ability to stay connected with each other from far distances. In the article “Text or Talk: Is Technology Making You Lonely? By Margie Warrell” the author states “ online technology is a magnificent tool for staying in touch with people across miles time zones and years.” In

When technological advancement began so did the growth of social networking. Social networking became easier with the innovation of smartphones, by making social media more accessible than its initial phases. However, in social networking’s earliest stages social media sites were created with the purpose of helping people stay linked together despite the distance separating each other. During that time, the only means of using these networking sites were by having access to a computer. Without the easy accessibility to computers, people back then could carry on with everyday life tasks without social networking distracting us from the life around us. Despite social media not fully taking off until the booming of mobile devices, the earliest known form of social media is believed to have been created in 1995 by way of Classmates.com. Eventually being followed by networks such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (Social Media). Unfortunately networking quickly changed in the 2010s when smartphones became more common and social media sites began to release their products as mobile applications or apps (Social Media). In this day and age in which some school-age children are gifted mobile devices almost everyone can get their hands on social media. It has become so easy to stay communicated by means of these social media apps that we are starting to forget how to interact among each other. We are moving away from face to face

Colleges all over the United States have a variety of foreign language programs, cultural events, and study abroad programs to help American students have a better understanding of other cultures, languages, and geographical landmarks. Each of these elements are very distinctive to one’s every day life. Languages, cultures, and geographical landmarks distinguish one’s characteristics. An individual’s characteristics define their human identity and their purpose in life. Apart from one’s daily life, others display their characteristics on social media whether it is their religion, beliefs, morals, or personality to visually express how one feels about their own human identity. Today’s modern society connects with other countries mainly by social media, but does not get a full understanding of how others around the world go about his or her daily agenda. College students throughout the United States have various different ways to apply the American culture to other countries by arranging the same types of programs in colleges around the world.

Person to person communication is an instrument utilized by individuals all around the globe. Its motivation is to advance and help correspondence. Be that as it may, this sort of innovation may accomplish more damage than great. It is changing how we impart, as well as how we associate with each other in day by day life. Sarah Zay, of USA Today, expressed that "With the ascent of sites, for example, Facebook, long range informal communication might be very nearly swapping customary individual associations for the people to come" (1).Traditional cooperations will keep on being at hazard on the off chance that we don't understand the impacts of our online networking. Long range informal communication influences our lives from multiple points

Diaspora media, especially electronic media, with its facility of connection between locations, has successfully managed to improve the quality and speed of communication, as well as to shape its identity in local, national and transnational levels within a modern social context. Direct audio and visual experience allows audiences to get together and exchange opinions over a variety of topics such as languages, fashion, lifestyle, political viewpoints. This daily regular activity of sharing the same media has made people subconsciously advance the sense of belonging in a common unity (Anderson, 1983). From our living experiences, it is not hard to find out that there are so many resources of information to choose from, which means our world has been filled with media, and the diasporic space is no exception. Through all these media, people encode and decode information, accept and reject ideas, and (re)define (new) meanings of culture, community and identity. Electronic media shorten the distance between locations and helped dispersed people to share the culture of the same root, allow comparison, (re)construction of symbols, present and mediate meanings of Diasporas, localities, communities and identities. Therefore, “in media cultures social interaction and relations are no longer dependent on simultaneous spatial co-presence” (Lull, 2000. P97). Instead, they use symbols and direct visuality to carry the latter-day communal memories and offer new schedules for

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Instagram, and Flicker was invented to keep us in touch and keep us closer to our family and friends. But according to How Facebook ruins Friendships “we took our friendship online” (Bernstein). First we began communicating more by email than by phone and then switched to instant messaging or texting. By joining social Medias online

The second concept I want to talk about is virtual communities. Virtual communities are social groups whose interactions are mediated through information technologies, particularly the internet. Like modernism, virtual communities are very dependent on technology and the internet. Since science and technology has advanced in the past decade, people don’t need to go to different places to meet different people and can meet others over different social media platforms or even video games. Sometimes, those people met over the internet can become very close friends. For example, I play a lot of video games and I have acquainted myself virtually with many people playing those games. Some of them I even ended up meeting in real life and are still friends with today. Virtual communities have become such a social norm, that soon, people will have friends all over the internet. I think the aspect of virtual communities is good for society, because it allows people to have a greater awareness of other cultures all over the world. With more insight of how other societies and cultures operate, there is a greater chance to expand one's own social

In the world we live in today, people have the opportunity to interact with one another due to the advancement in technology. For many years people relied on the traditional ways of communications, for example pay phones, send letters, a house phone, in person and they even used web cam’s. Presently, people rely on modern day methods of communication such as sending text messages, emails or even messaging via social. The development of the internet has made it so much easier for people to communicate that Social Media has become the place where people interact more than ever in a mere second.

Social media improves the way people communicate with others. It allows them to meet new people. At the click of a button, millions of strangers all over the world who would have never met otherwise are able to connect with each other. Many people believe that internet friends are not as valuable as real life friendships. However with websites like “skype” and instant messaging sites, long distance friendships can be as intimate as real life friendships because social media allows friends to see each other face to face and spend quality time together whenever they want to. Because of this, internet friendships should no longer be considered taboo and should be seen as normal human relationships, “It’s entirely possible to have hundreds of

People meet online to run blogs, meaning online diaries, share information and photos, exchange Youtube videos or unionize in a political, cultural, social and economic way (Das Internet als soziales Erlebnis, 2007). But not only can real life people get together and share common interests, they can also abandon their individual personalities and become somebody else: Second Life, a virtual world, allows their members to create an avatar of their choice and guide it through its world with virtual people, entertainment, opportunities and semi-virtual marketplaces (Second Life, 2008). According to Computer Industry Almanac Inc. (2007), more than 1.2 billion people use the internet worldwide and the largest online community has over 200 million members. Nevertheless, the effect on physical relationships must be investigated. Although online communities provide social advantages for certain groups of people, they cannot replace real life relationships due to their limitation of peoples’ abilities of developing their own personalities and the loss of the sense of profound interpersonal relationships.

You see, on the internet every nook and cranny has its own culture. As in real life, the larger the community, the less peculiar the customs. This is both an advantage and a drawback. If small forum lend themselves to cliques, large ones lend themselves to atomization. I find the culture of the internet as fascinating as any, maybe even more so, because on the internet social transaction evolves fast as the internet connection, 234 bits per second.

Old media like broadcasting, print, and film created a consumer culture in the public. Participants would consume the media they could find, and that was the extent of their engagement with a piece of media. But during the digital age, participatory culture has exploded. Participatory culture is a concept coined by Henry Jenkins where consumers take part in both the consumption and the production of media. The advent of computers facilitates a low barrier of entry for creation of digital media and its propagation. With the availability of personal computers and consumer level software to manipulate media as well as the popularity of the internet to spread content, fans have become more engaged with the media they consume. In turn, participants can create forms of that media that comment and expand upon the original content. Participants who used to only consume media now have the avenues to become producers of media. In this essay, I will explore participatory culture through the lense of Lev Manovich’s Five Principles of New Media: Numerical Representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability, and Transcoding.

Media is a field of study dealing with history, effect and content of different forms of traditions from both humanities and social sciences (Winston & Winston, 1998). The core disciplines commonly associated with media include communication and culture, communication studies and mass communication. However, researchers have recently developed and employed methods and theories from philosophy, psychology anthropology, sociology art theory and most important, cultural theories (BUSHWELLER, 1984). Culture on the other hand is defined as a learned behavior mostly from a section of a particular social group (Rosner, Halcrow & Levins, 2001).

Nowadays, more active interactions across different nations and cultures are open to many people due to the development of globalization and internationalization. The growth in foreign travel, international trading and migration have led all countries been connected as a big community. These kinds of events have brought about unprecedented levels of interaction and communication among people from different cultures and different linguistic backgrounds in the world. In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of studying intercultural communication as it plays a significant role in facilitating communication between people who share no common cultures and languages. Studying intercultural communication will help to bridge cultural