Lesson Five: If Pain Persists, Consult Your Nearest Practitioner

(Source: TopNews.in)

Gaining sound practitional advice, in many instances, can be a painstaking process. Being passed on from one professional to the next takes time, money and patience, often only to receive a incorrect diagnosis and poor expert advice. Rather than sit in the appropriately titled 'waiting room', New Media has allowed users to access health information in an instant, linking their exact symptoms to an approximate diagnosis using sites such as MedHelp.org. I have experienced this personally, having visited 6 different professionals between 4 clinics, only to be incorrectly cleared on two seperate occasions of muscular injury.

Having this kind of access to medical information online, however, can provide a misinterpreted diagnosis of ones symptoms. Lewis (2006) raises this issue in his article Seeking health information on the internet: lifestyle choice or bad attack of cyberchondria? Cyberchondria, according to Yellowlees (2000), "occurs in anxious or hypochondriacal patients who start spending too much time chasing around the Web searching for information which may make them more anxious".

Like health supplements, which should be taken as directed in unison with physical activity and other professional advice, information and advice taken from New Media tools such as MedHelp.org should be used to narrow the scope for your local health practitioner, rather than a quick-fix or self-diagnosis of your medical condition.

Lewis, T. 2006. Seeking health information on the internet: lifestyle choice or a bad attack of cyberchondria? In Media, Culture and Society.

Med Help. 2011. Available at http://www.medhelp.org

Yellowlees, L. M. 2000. The World Wide Web is becoming a new medium of medical practice in The Medical Journal of Australia, 173 (629-630).

Lesson Four: Living Under the Bleak Gleam of 'GOD, the Media', Isn't So Bad.

In Jim Carrey's 1998 film 'The Truman Show' a world is depicted where we unconsciously go about our day-to-day lives under the absorbing affect of the media. A false world where we are made to believe what we see, unconsciously or not. Mark Deuze's 2011 article 'Media Life' attempts to explain that our reality is indeed not that far separated from the life of Truman Burbank, by claiming that our lives too, our own reality, is no longer existant or we are oblivious to it because our lives have become so consumed within our 'media lives'.

We may live in a society where the force of media is so controlling that we never question, nor critique its presence or accuracy in our own realities. But when we begin to recognise the glitches in this media life, we can begin to question what reality and freedom actually is, and what it has become. Deuze explains "If we live our lives in media and we choose to take responsibility for it, what exactly are our options to constitute each other and ourselves in society, to be free and mediated at the same time?" (2010, 144).

One solution can be made: ignore it. Although he does make some valid points about how each personal can create multiple personalities of themselves and others, Deuze dramatically overestimates the control that media has on our lives. Sure, we might be oblivious to it, but according to most of the human race, we aren't living in a reality TV show, nor pretend to in our daily interactions with others. If we cannot properly understand how the media controls us, like myself, then why complicate the course of life by attempting to question it? As far as we're concerned, the realm that we are living in now IS reality, no matter how different it might seem to our nihilistic post-industrial academics.

Deuze, M. (2011). Media Life. In Media, Culture & Society, Volume 33, issue 1, pp. 137-148.

Lesson Three: Wanted for Speaking in the Land of the Free (Speech)

(Source: Care2 News Network)

WARNING: This article contains raw, unedited war footage which may be sensitive to some viewers.

The case of Wikileaks, the non-for-profit organisation allowing the public freedom to access confidential government and military cables and documents, has sent shockwaves through international governments and citizens alike. My opinions aside, there are obvious criticisms to be made on both sides of the fence.

Clay Shirky asks how ubiquity of the internet affects U.S Government interests and policy. He highlights Hilary Clinton's promotion to freedom of access, production of content and speech online (2011, p28-29). Fast forward one year since her January 2010 announcement, the U.S is trying frantically to shut Wikileaks down and have Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, charged with espionage. All the while, Wikileaks has burst the freedom of access argument wide open by refusing to reveal the identity of their sources, while openly displaying the confidential details of others.

(Source: The Young Turks)

While the news media continues to toss the hypocrisy card from one side to the next, we are forgetting the fundamental aspect of this argument: the freedom of opinion within the public sphere. In Marrissa Prince's self-titled blog, she states “you cannot deny that new media is making the barrier between the people and the government more transparent than ever” (2010). With not even 3% of Wikileaks 251,287 leaked U.S embassy cables released in the four month since their obtain (wikileaks.com), there is still much to be speculated, argued, and thankfully, publicly discussed.

Prince, M. 2011. 'Internet = Freedom of Speech?' from Marissa Prince.

Shriky. C. 2011. “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology; the public sphere and political change”from Foreign Affairs, Vol 90 Issue 1: p.28-41

Wikileaks. 2011. Cable Viewer. Exact URL hidden.