“Listicle” comes from “list + article” A listicle is a short article written in the form of a list. You have most likely seen them with titles like “10 Amazing Facts About Spider-Man” or “7 Of The Oldest Pieces Of… Read More ›
Future of journalism
The Quantum Theory of Mass Media (II). Content: a shift from chunks to a flow
The internet has shifted the news from a portioned to a streamed mode of consumption. A news feed in social media is an example of such an information stream. The news teasers in social media represent, in essence, the wave-particle… Read More ›
The Quantum Theory of Mass Media (I). What is the unit of media consumption?
Now, what is a quantum of mass media content? The length of any piece of content gets shorter and shorter as the formats for delivering the content get cropped to satisfy the consumers’ ever-shrinking attention spans. But how small can… Read More ›
Facebook wants to be a World Wide Paperboy
Will a packaged internet platform defeat the open web? This could either save or bring down the global media industry. The New York Times reports that Facebook has been quietly negotiating a deal with the world’s leading media outlets to… Read More ›
The really immortal qualities of good old journalism
“Does a journalism education still matter?” asked Professor Joe Banks recently on J-Source[1]. He clarified, “The question lingers because of the array of digital tools at the disposal of the general public”. Among the other “yes-answers”, he argued that editors… Read More ›
Text? No longer
Some thoughts on possible obsolescence in the Media Studies Triangle, Ontario Media Literacy Program “In 1988, Ontario became the first educational jurisdiction in the world to mandate media literacy as part of the English curriculum”, reports the “Media Education: Make… Read More ›
Content marketing: How companies are turning into media. Case studies
Brands are engaged in a media arms race. Creating relevant and valuable content is no longer an option, but a necessity. Traditional marketing boils down to managing brand information distribution, while content marketing strives to create conditions in which information… Read More ›
Trees die twice: the beautiful end of the book era
A library in Picton organized the DiscARTed Art show It was a cozy evening event organized by a local library in a small town. Anyone who wished to participate had been encouraged to pick up discarded books from one of… Read More ›
Clay Shirky, devices and the brain’s weathering
Why the Internet guru Clay Shirky eventually banned the Internet in class. (A distorted precis, comments, and notes on the margins of Shirky’s reflection.) New media evangelist Clay Shirky has recently prohibited students’ use of digital devices in his class…. Read More ›
Extension, amputation, alienation… Copying!
McLuhan wrote that the tools shape not only users and their needs, but the entire environment as well. Thus, the automobile has given rise to several industries, and a network of highways and roadside infrastructure, including motels, supermarkets, etc. Arguably,… Read More ›
Human as Media 