Media is a term that we throw around a lot but what exactly does it mean? Traditionally media is communication, whether it’s audio, visual, or print. However, as we are living in the age of media, what does media mean in today’s media driven society?

I found this fantastic article from Forbes, What is Media in the Digital Age? there is an argument that media has come to mean different things to different people, but arguably what we define as traditional media still exists but has expanded. Media is not just audio, visual, and print; but also, online and social media (Granados). This changes the media landscape, while the internet gives life to massive user generated content, social media allows one-on-one interaction instead of a one-to-many model that media usually has (Granados).

Today in media, ‘content is king’, all media is content weather it’s professional or amateur if you can generate enough traffic you can make money (YouTube is a prime example of this) (Granados). The lines between media can blur as well, advertisers argue that their content is just as much media as a movie or tv show.

Granados also argues that media is often used interchangeably with those who write or publish the news. The current President often attacks ‘the media’ for being biased, and often that ‘media’ is not necessary a professional journalist. As we are currently seeing with the Facebook ‘scandal’, an alarming amount of people get their news from social media.

“It turns out that media can be the message, the medium, or the messenger; and to complicate things in this digital age, the lines between them are becoming very blurry (Granados).”

So where do we fit this into the classroom? We can’t ignore it, students today spend the majority of their time online; the bulk of which is dedicated to social media. We are living in a digital age, and the growth of media will only continue to grow. So with an understanding that media is fluid, growing, and here to stay, how do we effectively apply it to classroom learning?

Granados, Nelson. “What Is Media In The Digital Age?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 3 Oct. 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2016/10/03/what-is-media-in-the-digital-age/.