How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster

The tsunami and earthquake caused a lot of devastation in Japan. However, it is interesting to note how amazing technology is that we were able to keep tabs as to what was happening there and finding out who was alive and well and who was not. It should not be that surprising, though. Japan is, after all, one of the most technology-filled countries in the world. So much that from the amount of information flowing from Japan, it can be considered as media imperialism.

Imperialism can be defined as the total dominance of a certain matter (Fuchs 2010). Hence, media imperialism is where the media is what totally dominates the place, as we could see from Japan. Many people were able to watch videos constantly coming in from Japan, and gain access as to what was happening there.

Speech, text, images... these are examples of modalities that can be combined to form something new - this concept of combining modalities is multimodality (Hull & Nelson 2005). This can be seen by how a webcam could be used to present the news.

From the situation in Japan, we could see new forms of Journalism pop up from social networking websites. Friends and families were able to check on what was happening to their loved ones by checking on social networking websites such as Twitter. There, they could tap into all sorts of information as to what was happening in Japan. This is just an example of a new form of journalism. Another new form of journalism is blogging, which can also be used to inform loved ones of their condition (Hermida 2008).

It is interesting to note that even though their country was devastated, they were still very much connected to the rest of the world. Technology is truly an admirable thing.

References:

1. Fuchs, C 2010, 'New imperialism : Information and media imperialism?' Global Media and Communication, vol. 6, no. 1, viewed 12 June 2011, <http://gmc.sagepub.com.ezproxy.taylors.edu.my/content/6/1/33.full.pdf+html>.
2. Hermida, A 2008, 'The Place of Blogs in Journalism Education,' MediaShift 22 December, viewed 12 June 2011, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/12/the-place-of-blogs-in-journalism-education357.html>.
3. Hull, GA & Nelson, ME 2005, 'Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality,' Written Communication, vol. 22, no. 2, viewed 12 June 2011, <http://wcx.sagepub.com.ezproxy.taylors.edu.my/content/22/2/224.full.pdf+html>.