Commentary on Hartly, J. (2004) “The Frequencies of Public Writing: Tomb, Tone and Time” In Jenkins, H. and Thorburn, D. (Eds) Democracy and New Media. MIT Press, USA, pp 247-269.
Media broadcasts are a daily occurrence and as such, they ground us. When a television channel can be switched on to regular programming, clocks become rather obsolete. Certain programming combinations are on each day at the same times, to cater to the audiences who are more likely to watch them. These generalisations are deeply ingrained in our society. For example; the six o’clock news is designed for nine-to-five workers, afternoon programming is more often than not, targeted at the stay at home mother or wife and children’s programming dominates the after school spot.
This grounding mainly affects perception of time, as well as the sense of human interconnectedness. Media becomes a part of daily lives through domestication, and as a part of integration builds human behaviour into routine. Since television programming, newspapers and magazines have different audiences, their news cycle is also affected. Magazines may have anywhere from a weekly to a quarterly news cycle, newspapers generally have a twenty-four hour cycle and television can reach out with all the immediacy of a situation, and this is becuase of the demands of the viewers. John Harlty makes mention of frequencies, which are involved in subjective experience of time. These frequencies are labelled within the cycle of creation, circulation and consumption. In most of his writing however, it is the frequency of circulation which is discussed most.
Wavelength in Media works in the same way as in the physical world. The formula, frequency multiplied by wavelength equals a constant still holds true in that whenever the frequency goes up, the wavelength goes down. Media can be ranged along a scale from low to high frequency with todays paper being high frequency, reaching less people (wavelength) with more immediacy than for example, cave paintings – which have an extremely low frequency, and yet they are known about all over the world.
As culture has accepted technology more and more closely into daily routines, the frequencies of new media have become faster and faster. From cave-paintings, to bas-relief and carvings, hand scribed books and letters, the printing press, radio, television and the internet, news can now be merely seconds in the creation. High frequency includes any publication with a frequency less than a week, anywhere between this and a year is described as midrange. Anything longer is low frequency and as society has slid up the scale towards high frequency, with “shocking” releases of news before the event, and a constant stream of information, so lives and routines have changed to match this due to a change in subjective experiencing of time.
