Week Two - Topic 1c: Are new media a source of progress enhancing social activity?

Are new media a source of ‘progress’ in the sense that they enhance things we do in spheres of social activity – business, education, shopping, democracy etc? Could we say that such a proposition involves an ‘ideology of progress’?

Lister et al: page 11

Lister suggests that ‘new’ can carry the connotation of ‘the most recent’, along with the ideological implication that ‘new media’ will be better and more enhanced than its predecessors.New media are arriving declaring that they provide improved efficiency, better communications and favourable conditions in education. I think that new media are a source of progress and do enhance things we do in spheres of social activity.

New media have greatly improved business; email and the WWW have given businesses the opportunity to communicate quicker both internally and externally and to expand using websites to showcase their particular company. Laptops and Blackberry phones with the ability to connect to email and the internet has also enhanced business life.

Education has also received a remarkable benefit from new media. Students using the Internet for research and contacting tutors and computers to type up and print assignments have improved the education sphere. Also aspects of the internet mean students can download lecture information, search the library for books and access online journals.

Shopping can now be done online which may be an enhancement to some people’s areas of social activity. A few clicks on the internet can buy anything from a new book, to a pair of shoes to the food shopping, which can be a time saver. The down side to the ‘new media’ version of shopping is credit card problems, waiting for delivery and it also takes away the social aspect of shopping.

It could be suggested that the proposition that new media enhance the spheres of social activity involves an ‘ideology of progress’. However, similar to ‘upgrade culture’ this has the problem of people wanting the newest format of media just for the sake of them having the newest product available. New media are all a progression of something, which has lead to there being an ideology of progress in our culture which underpins the idea that the newer a product is, the better it is.