Send Me Those Pictures

So in thinking about remediation, I think most of us can grasp the concept that mediation/remediation has existed since communication began to function as a tool of humanity.  One thing that comes to mind is that while the central purpose(s) of remediation have remained pretty much unchanged so far (as far as I can contemplate right now) the rate at which we participate in remediation has changed incredibly in recent history.

Internet.

Obviously.

Here’s an example I just thought of.  Let’s say some sort of news occurs

within an institution, say a mob of people on the quad or green street after a game.  Before the University or the newspaper or even the police can respond with a message (whether through the web, e-mail, or procedure) news of the ‘event’ and a reaction to it spreads wildly by means of cam

era phones, text messages, and facebook posts throughout the campus.

While we see technology initially as the driving force behind this informational phenomenon, I think this process of remediation still depends on an entity that behaves practically independtantly from raw technology.

Community.

The University could have a massive computer system at its disposal with formal procedures and policies to guide its use to ensure the most rapid line of communication to the student community, but that authoritative community is much smaller than the student population.  The massive sense of community within the student body seems to allow for this rapid communication, even though it has no formality or procedure behind it.

It seems here to me that community rules over the mere presence of technology as far as how the remediation unfolds.

You could say the same for pictures sent over and over of the same thing.  The same event or image captured with ten different camera phones, digital cameras, and video recorders, then sent to a thousand friends depends more on community than technology.

Does this idea of remediation depending on community rather than our new media technology make sense?

Does the remediation of a message or image gain or lose meaning depending on who does the re-mediating?

Does the rapid nature of new media remediation a more accurate, raw sense of our surroundings, or one that becomes more and more misconstrued?

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