New Media’s Impact on Society by James S. Gula

This article mostly informs us about the rapid changing in society including working environment, cultural changes and the publics. Basically, James S. Gula did mention a few important points on how new media such as The Internet, social networks and others affect and has changed the way we see others as well as the way we see the world.

In his article, he attempt to relate to the cultural changes that have taken place due to in good part to the technological advances, but more importantly the way in which new media is shaping our culture because of the transformation in which we receive our information. He will also express how new media can influence social appearance, values, and behaviors through the specific use of several new media channels and how marketing communication programs can leverage this phenomenon.

The enlightening piece that has opened his eyes to the changes in the mass communication was the explanation by Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail. He states that “the theory of the Long Tale is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of ‘hits’ (mainstream products and markets) as the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of segments in the tail” (Scott 18).

Apart from that, James S. Gula also mention that the new media in combination with enhanced technology has changed the way we see others as well as the way we see the world. The advent of the internet has opened a completely different profitability model that has influenced marketers into revamping the marketing strategy from mass appeal to a segmented approach. The content of websites needs to be divvied up accordingly by creating separate messages specifically designed for separate audiences within the media channel that it applies to. Therefore, each design in the websites must be segmented for different audiences so that the specific audiences recognize which messages are directed to them.

More and more people are turning into to the internet either to create a network, searching for jobs or even build and maintain their professional networks status of employment. For example, Linked-in and Facebook which has been growing at a rate of 200% a year. Goal seeking organizations can benefit from viral marketing communications programs. Viral Marketing is perhaps the most compelling of the new media channels in because of its alluring, compelling, and infectious nature.

To summarize, our society has been directly impacted through the new media channels created by the advancing information technologies. We as a society have become immune to a seemingly endless barrage of commercial messages that we endure from the moment we wake until the time we bed down for the evening from all media channels.

Reviewed by Amirul Ashraf Bin Ruslan.