What's The Deal With Airline Peanuts?

    The Sardar article only reenforces feelings and criticisms on media that I’ve had for a long time. I have felt that components of storytelling haven’t change much outside of the new platform or medium. The criteria of news value continue to strike a core with me as I’ve seen first-hand the techniques of agenda setting, economic concerns, immediacy and gatekeeping with the latter two on which I shall focus on in more detail, play a pivot role in narrative. 
    Due to the surge of the internet and influx of information anyone can develop a platform as I call it a digital soapbox. This soapbox is a projection of one’s personality into representing themselves in however light they want to be seen as. When it comes to my relationship with technology, I try to strike a balance of usage that does not consume my outlook and perceptive of life that I gained before it. 
    Much of my generation, even though I felt I was born into the wrong one has such a necessary need to continue to project themselves constantly with no substance. Growing up in the middle of this boom and being associated with both older and newer generations, I’ve felt at times lost in my friends and family’s outlook on technology. In one hand the Baby Boomers of the world have a distrust to the technology or even a dislike of something new they don’t care to understand and on the other side you have Generation Z that has a totally appreciation and dependance on the technology they partake in. 
    My online life has changed from something that was fun and a side activity to a serious model for representation in mainly to the work force and to extend church activity. It has become more of a chore then an activity as I’ve gotten older. I’m a person that believes the “shit’s going to hit the fan” and not in a negative way, I just believe that the system will overload, and, in the wreckage, a new medium will emerge. Culturally we will not change, it hasn’t changed in the years and centuries prior, so I have no hope in that end, chasing a utopia is pipe dream to paraphrase George Carlin. 
    To segue back into my two-talking point of immediacy and gatekeeping, it’s such technique that the everyday American refuses to understand and acknowledge. These two aren’t huge pillars but they are pillars, nonetheless. We can see it in our everyday news and the last administration on how effective immediacy and gatekeeping can be for media outlets that have an agenda. 
    To quote Ariane Weisel article on Immediacy in Media Theory, she states, “Essentially, immediacy is the negation of media. While media are the mechanisms through which connections are made and meanings are understood, immediacy is the manner in which the media are abbreviated and hidden. Therefore, the inherent paradox within the relationship of media to immediacy is that while immediacy is the abridgment of media in favor of the connection between the elements that are being mediated, immediacy relies on the existence of media to further reduce the theoretical distance between those same elements.” 
    This negation only hurts the audience, as instant gratification of information becomes a detriment to understanding the overall narrative and agenda of news outlets or even a president. While gatekeeping is hidden in the shadows it’s still a practicing technique in order to provide power to those media outlets. In Wikipedia, “Gatekeeping is the process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication.” This combination of negation and filtering is just a part of the problem when it comes to the control of information media outlets have. 
    I wish more people but especially Americans can continue to educate themselves rather than to give in into the media’s agenda about issues that will affect them and their children. I don’t want to sound to nihilistic here, but I do wish the public can apply more critical thinking when exposed this anything. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s true.

https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/immediacyimmediate/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeping_(communication)

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