cultural model.
First of all, what is culture anyway? It can be described in a number of different ways, but for our purposes the definition most applicable states that culture is a way of life passed on to members of a society through time that keeps the society together. This includes behaviors, beliefs, and values that are learned. According to media scholar James Carey (1989), "Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed." Communication is about maintaining social order, a shared reality, and a sense of community; the language and culture that we have affects the way we see reality. Furthermore, communication is the process of producing new shared meanings out of historically shared meanings and individually created meanings. As illustrated in the figure below, people learn culture from media and language, and people create culture using media and language to gain this shared meaning.
cultural model in a mobile world.
Once mobile devices became much more advanced than the original mobile phone call feature, and mobile devices started to become part of the everyday lives of the majority of the public, they began to relate to the cultural model much more clearly. James Katz, professor of communications and director of Rutgers University's Center for Mobile Communication Studies, supports the cultural model of communication when he states that "Cell phones are enabling people to create their own micro-cultures; they are changing cultural norms and values, and demonstrating consumers' ability to modify and reproduce technology for their own use." People have discovered infinite ways to create shared meaning with others. Whether forming a community around a certain video captured by a cell phone, a ring tone made and distributed by an inspiring artist, a picture uploaded to Facebook from a cell phone camera, a mass text sent out inviting people to a rally, or a "tweet" on Twitter sent from a mobile phone warning people of tragedy, we have found ways to create individual meaning and form shared meaning from historically shared meaning with the mobile phone-an important artifact of our culture.