Introducing Media Gates!

Hello and welcome to Media Gates!
I am Foxy Cleopatra and will be documenting my experiences, activities and education during the course 'Issues in Publication and Design' I do hope you like it! Happy reading!

Media has changed and evolved drastically since the introduction of the 'Internet' or 'World Wide Web'. Obviously news, gossip and current events travel faster than ever before and with the introduction of 'blogs' anyone can be a writer. Nearly all of us in the Western World have access to the internet to some degree, for this reason we can all have a blog, which gives us an opportunity to exercise our opinion, express ourselvesand be a part of the media. Before this it was just journalists and communications professionals.
Blogs have proven to be very popular with a new one being created every 3 seconds! Blogs even possess a viral quality courtesy of the linking of blog to blog and people whom comment and are a visitor to the site.

The history of blogs has not been accurately recorded and is likely 'heresay', however the following is a breif account of the evolution of blogs:
1971- Les Earnest creates the finger protocol, which was then became the official standadrd in 1977.
1994- Justin Hall, a Swathemore student, begins compiling lists of links at his site, which continues for 11 years.
1997- The first person to call his blog a 'blog' was Jorn Barger of robotwisdom.com.

Blogs are used not only for individuals to creatively express themselves, but also for a business to gain exposure or promote products or events. Blogs for businesses also give customers the opportunity to respond. Celebrities use blogs as well as TV and radio stations.
Blogs are a user friendly, informal method of mass communications and are quite effective. Although it has been said that with the evolution of media and the internet books will 'die out' and literacy will become less and less. This, I think we will just have to see!

References:
Lisnes: Information, Knowledge and Wisdom, 'History of the First Blog'
 http://www.lisnews.org/node/27808

Kirkpatrick, D et al, 2005 'Why There's No Escaping The Blog,' vol 151 no 1, Academic Search Premier
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=110&sid=bde960b9-efaa-4dc9-835a-ca6501a8c041%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=15518920