AUDIENCE: How are traditional experiences of the media changing?

If you were to ask a Grandparent, or even a parent, what their experiences of media technologies were when they were our age they would most likely say Newspapers, Magazines, Books...Radio, Vinyl Records and maybe a Television with four channels. Most would also claim that they had a perfectly good source of information from these technologies.

If you wanted to know the The News you would listen to the Radio, watch the News at 10 or 6 or read a daily newspaper where hired and paid Journalists would report the stories that were said to be relevant to the reader: war, disaster, politics and business. It was the definite fourth estate, reporting on nothing except the other three.

Since the creation of the Internet and, possibly even more importantly, web 2.0 (the ability to interact with and add ones own knowledge to a site) for a modern day person who wishes to know the days news there is a realm of ways of going about it. Similarly to the past, you could indeed pick up a newspaper or listen to the radio but this is very linear media as the User is dictated to as and when they can find information: the News on the radio is only on every couple of hours. This way of finding the news may also not be accurate or as up-to-date as you'd hope; the articles have often been written a day or so before and so will not have details on THAT DAYS events.

In the past we would have to give up our search and wait for the next news announcement or be content with waiting till the following days newspaper but today society is rocketing forward at an astonishing pace: no one has the time to wait!

Impatience has paved the way creatively for new technology. This generation of people will be very much accustomed to knowing everything as soon as anyone else does. A bomb goes off in a distant town, on the other side of the world? within minutes there will be reports, photographs and videos plastered over the Internet for the entire public to see. RSS links allow the news to be fed directly to you with texts and updates on your mobile, whilst sites on the Internet offer email updates so that you are constantly kept "in the loop".

This global village effect means that nothing is secret anymore: if you know about it, chances are definite that people the other side of the planet will also know about it. Now thats something to tell your Grandad.