The History Of Media Surveillance

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Media surveillance has been going on since the beginning of communication with people. Media has transformed from print, such as newspapers and books, to telephone calls and radio broadcasts to television and finally to the internet via email, blogs, and social media. Systems have been developed over time to search these sources for particular information that is determined by the industry using the software. The industry uses examined in this paper will include the uses by the healthcare industry, the corporate industry, and the government. (Sasaki, 2009)
The surveillance of print has long been used by corporations to find out more information about their consumers. It began with actors, authors, and politicians wanting to know what the public was saying about them. Companies emerged that would clip out the articles by hand from the newspaper reviews of political campaigns, books, and plays. (http://www.cyberalert.com) The media then was centrally controlled by the publishers so the majority of society did not have a need to monitor this information. Governments were then only interested in individual communications, which happened primarily by mail and had to be sorted through and read by hand. (McCoy, 2014)
The history of the modern media surveillance systems begins first with the invention of the computer and the use of software. Before the internet, information was only transported between computers by a physical storage device or an extremely expensive network. Software for media surveillance was only used to scan the media that was available in data form for particular key words. It could then be stored and indexed to be later analyzed. (Sarlós, 1982)
The real transformation in media surveillance systems happened wh...

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...se, lessening the number affected by the outbreak. It will also be used to control rumors that are spread about public health disease prevention, such as vaccine confidence. They will be able to counteract rumors and inform the public of the correct information by using the correct avenues of communication. (Prashanth, 2014)
The use of media surveillance systems is becoming widespread. It started out primarily for companies to find out their consumer’s views on them. This is still being used but being transformed by the change in media. The internet and social media have provided the information that the healthcare, government, and corporation industries need to better their services. The uses of these systems in the future will enable us to gain a better understanding and be able to predict behavior. This will transform how we view ourselves and our world.

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