Television and the Internet - Ellen Seiter

Recap: This article by Ellen Seiter goes into the idea that television will become the rule of the Internet. This article was done in 1999 so at this point is a little out of date about the actual internet and its usage. From her research, she seems to think that the internet will be comprised mostly of information about television and that media producers will be focusing on the television aspect. She also goes into the use of the internet by women, and how they are subject to different standards than males, with males gaining the most usage time at home and work.

Comments: First thing that strikes me is that during the time frame she wrote this article the internet was being targets with various ideas of how it should be used and that people in general were of a higher class that used it on a regular basis. While at the time it was fairly true users were more often male and of a higher income bracket that doesn’t hood quite as true today. Just in the seven years, since this was written, there has been a large change in the number of people with computers at home. The cost of computer ownership has dropped dramatically where most middle class families have access to a computer and even some lower income brackets have computers at home. Now, granted there still is a large shortage of computers in the lower income households, there are now more computers at school and other locations that allow lower income families access to computer. It would be interesting to see how her research would turn out now about how much time the female is getting on the computer with families. We have seen that a large number of teens use the computers quite frequently with tendency of the youth today being very techno savvy. I think as the new generations grow the internet and the time spent on the computer will grow together.
Seiter’s concerns that media giants and computer giants are going to rule the way the internet is used isn’t quite as big now as it was seven years ago. There is a large amount of internet use not geared to TV, Porn, and other computer related topics. The proliferation of information on the internet has been moving with leaps and bounds to other areas as well. A new online database like Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, started in 2001 has grown into huge resources for anyone to use. This is just one example of new internet uses not geared to the television. AS for the technology realm of the internet, one could look to Google as an example of a non-traditional media giant. Starting back in 1996 and then officially forming the Google.com address in 1997. They have become the worlds largest search engine all the while retaining the relaxed non-corporate mentality. Google has ties to many media giants but maintains a fairly unobtrusive appearance. Their method of advertising is a subtle and more specific type of advertising. I think this gets away from the idea of the normal media blitz that is used by the other media giants.
Basically, the internet has grown and is used by more people of both sexes than ever before. Yes, there is still slant to the male side but it is getting smaller.