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The Titanic: The Sinking Of The Titanic

Decent Essays

John Dewey’s concept of a “public,” (sic) as a group of individuals who together are affected by a particular action or idea, which was introduced in his The Public and Its Problems, is not dead. This definition is vague and broad enough that it is adaptable to societal changes. The variety and sheer volume of the “public” has grown exponentially with the changes in technology and transportation. These changes have eliminated boundaries and made the transmission and receipt of information almost instantaneously. Kruckeberg and Tsetsura (2004) asked: “is today’s communication “revolution” more accurately a “reformation” in which each person can be his or her own journalist within a global milieu of interactive multimedia?” (p. 85) Comparing the reporting on two historical tragic events illustrates the answer to this question. …show more content…

Reporting of the Titanic hitting an iceberg was received fairly quickly through the new technology of the Marconi wireless radio system; however, the hours of silence that followed and patchy communication led to erroneous headlines. According to web article: How the sinking of the Titanic was reported, by Jack Dearlove, April 13, 2012, The Daily Mail stated “No lives lost” and conversely the Washington Post stated “One thousand eight hundred souls lost”. Fast forward to September 11, 2001 and we can see how the statement that “each person can be his or her own journalist” can be true. On that day so much of what was reported did come directly from those experiencing the tragedies and the information flooded the internet almost

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