The internet - it's not just for cat videos

Media Studies 2.0

Mr Pet Cam

WOW! My husband has been saying for years that we need to get a Go-Pro on our cat and see what he gets up to! And lo and behold, it’s already been done.  Yet another example of someone with a great, innovative idea actually taking it to a market and making it a reality. 

I don’t think I’m so cynical as to think that the creators of sites like Mr Pet Cam and Dog TV are in it purely for the money. Sure it’s a business, but if they hadn’t already had an interest in animals it probably never would have happened. Is it a service fulfilling a need (or want)? How many people spend hours daily looking at cat videos for free; the interest is definitely there. Look at the burgeoning of cat cafes. And surely I'm not the only person who knows a cat with their own Facebook page?  

Melbourne's first cat cafe

Digital media’s accessibility and global reach allows people who do not have access to vast amounts of start up funds to build up a business without mega capital investment, in this case providing the content of the business itself, but also allowing marketing relatively cheaply.

William Merrin’s article, Media Studies 2.0: upgrading and open-sourcing the discipline, points to the vast complexity of the worlds that the interconnectedness of digital media allows. I think any aspersions he is casting are aimed firmly at his colleagues in academia, some of whom refuse to give up their hegemony on the bridge of media studies even as the boat is being tipped on its head.  

What is intimidating is the breadth of the subject with which we have yet to come to grips. If Media Studies 2.0 is ‘recognising, confronting and exploring’ the changes brought about by thriving digital technology, then perhaps we need to just get on with bridging the digital divide and get to Media Studies 3.0 where we know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

Merrin’s explanation of the mass communication era broadcast media model (one-to-many) being replaced by a horizontal, peer-to-peer, bottom-up model rings true.  

I really like the way Merrin acknowledges that media studies needs to open its arms much wider to encompass pretty much all other disciplines such as theology, engineering, science, social theory.  Its not just about the twentieth century mass communication industry business model.

The loss of ‘common culture’ is noticeable to me; I can see it in my own family where each of us is a  PRODUSER of ‘very different personal and peer-centred content’. 

I also feel the pull of and see sense in the new paradigm of ‘collective intelligence’. And this seems to be the direction Merrin sees us heading. Good. Sign me up.

And get this lazy cat off my desk. He needs to be out and about earning a living like the rest of us.