How has the internet changed our notion of ‘Collective Identity’ ?

The new media today is still a MASS audience, it is even a bigger audience than before as new technological advances keep accelerating and economies have been boosting rapidly in some parts of the world which were not up to date technologically. Such as China, India, Iran, Croatia, Cuba etc … Not only this, but Web.2.0 can be accessed nearly anywhere in the world, to get internet connectivity to your laptop now days, it is as simple as using a memory stick provided by a company such as 3. However, in terms of Britishness, the audience has also become bigger, it is actually a government objective to create ‘Digital Britain’, this is an economic, environmental and user friendly aim. This probably won’t be fully successful for some time though, as there are still too many of the older generations which are ‘Digital Immigrants’. Not all people have Computers in their home yet. The mass British audience is actually changing it’s notion of selective identity because we no longer a mass audience in terms of similarities, only in numbers. The audience is now more selective in choosing how they interpret the messages.

The internet has allowed and opened doors to an unbelievable amount of communication methods. Blogs, social networking, wiki, twitter, file sharing, online gaming, 3G, email, virtual words, video conferencing etc … Everyday people in Britain are meeting people from different cultures and identities over the internet, creating relationships with them and socialising with, often via instant messengers, online gaming or chat rooms. There are even full communities on the internet for instance, clans or guilds in online gaming, they have official websites, Teamspeak (microphone) servers, game servers and even meet up and it’s all done because of the internet. This utter freedom to connect with others in the world, is it creating all the technological advanced countries into one mass audience and are we loosing our collective identity as British people?

The internet is without a doubt changing our collective identity, the influence and connection with and to other cultures certainly is one big factor; the biggest influencer is the world super power, America. If you look just on the most basic level, Britain gets lots of their media such as their films, music, games and news before anyone else in the world, we also get there companies and corporations. Britain has even become more Americanised in the way we have now inherited ‘Litigation Culture’, every time you turn on the TV now, there are adverts asking you to sue people on a ‘No Win, No Fee Basis’. So combining the freedom of the British people to connect with other cultures, the corporations and businesses coming over from America and others countries, the idea of the American dream in so many young persons minds completely un-aware of how influenced they are by the media, and the part that the British media has to play in it such as papers like the daily mail that are full of propaganda, Britain’s Collective Identity has and is certainly changing.

Postmodernism is always a heavy influence in the change of ‘Collective Identity’. Over the last twenty years, what has become acceptable in the media and what hasn’t has rapidly changed. We now have the watershed for instance on TV, after this, almost anything can be shown on TV. But the internet has no restrictions to what can be put on it and what can be viewed at any time of the day, it is also now the biggest form of media consumption ever. The internet is by far and to such a large degree the most flexible to its content and mass audience form of Media in the world. All the new generations of people who are ‘Digital Natives’ are exposed to everything on the internet. Internet Pornography for example is readily available on the internet at any time of the day, totally free, totally legally and advertised massively. Not to mention all the adverts that are on normal websites, full of models or half naked men and women totally sexualised. The generations of ‘Digital Natives’ are totally exposed to this all the time and are influenced all there lives by it, they are even influenced when walking down the street looking at random people who are sexualised, advertisers, cars, shops and even music. I am not saying all this is totally a bad thing, I am saying that it would never have been appropriate to wear such revealing clothes for instance on an everyday basis and the internet has a massive part to play in the influence of Britain’s ideology and value streams.

“Web 2.0 isn’t a thing, it’s a state of mind” ‘Sabbah 1985” This quote by Sabbah is very true, he is saying that Britain and actually much of the world is totally reliant on the internet, it has become our infrastructure of security, economy, communication and arguably society. If the internet was to go down for even one day, it would be economically catastrophic; it would be the rise of a whole new moral panic. Teenagers or ‘Digital Natives’ are almost totally reliant on the internet as well, for communication, fun, education etc … Most teenagers spend over two hours on the internet every day, often for non-educational purposes. Over 90% of households in Britain have a games console in there household, a majority of them now connected to the internet, not to mention those that do PC gaming as well. In the last twenty years or so, books have been almost totally replaced by TV, internet and gaming. Our Notion of British ‘Collective Identity’ is now totally different and arguably non existent accept on the most basic level such as language and sport. But our values, culture and ideologies are all a big mix of America and Europe.