New Media and Technology

The article- A Unified Version of London 2012: New-Media Coverage of Gender, Nationality, and Sport for Olympic Consumers in Six Countries (from the Journal of Sport Management, found in the AppState Library database) is about the influence that new media has had on the coverage of The Olympics. Even though I am not a huge fan of sports, I am obviously in the minority as everyone else I know loves sports and watches the Olympics every year. This topic is a really good example to use when talking about the influence that media has on our culture, because sports and the Olympics are a large and important part of our culture.

The article begins by describing the importance of media coverage on the Olympics (most people are not able to actually attend the event, so they rely on media coverage). This aspect relates to the importance of media in general, but especially new media because now we are not bound by transportation/geography to receive current, real-time information.

Then the article describes the way that traditional media (defined in this article as print-magazine and newspaper- and broadcast-TV- media) has chosen what sports are covered and in what light (as we know in the Communications field as 'agenda-setting theory'). The example they provide is how women's sports were not given much coverage, therefore deeming them not as important as male sports.

Now, with new media (defined in the article as internet coverage), all sports are covered and in a more equal light. Now there are less issues with equality regarding what sports are covered, how gender is portrayed, and how nationalities are portrayed.

In my opinion, this article strongly relates to the idea that new media is able to reorganize culture. People no longer simply "consume" the information they are fed from the TV/newspaper. Surely people are able to give feedback/comments on online news sources. That is my personal explanation for why online news has changed the content of Olympics coverage. That would explain how interactivity in new media can influence the messages we receive. As Marshall McLuhan said, "The Media is the Message".