This too...

Perhaps the most useful thing about this blog is the chance it gives me to shore up the gaps when I forget things in our class discussions. As we spoke about the Radio West broadcast, we covered some ideas about growth through new ideas, and that breaking down our tendency to cluster into comfortable groups can help us gain new points-of-view (or at least appreciate the humanity of those with opposing points-of-view).

What I forgot to go back to is something called consistency theory--which is the idea that despite our access to many different points-of-view in the media, and particuarly online, we tend to not choose to access those different ideas. Instead, we often return to what is known and what is comfortable. This isnt' to say we don't like new media messages--we consume them voraciously. But typically, we get 'new' messages from tried-and-true sources, with slight variance from what we think we'll like.

Example: If I have every Scorpions album ever printed and I'm starting to get bored of them, I may end up loading up on Iron Maiden MP3's. I may also end up buying the Guitar World magazine with Metallica on the cover, rather than Wired, Better Homes and Gardens, or Elle.

Of course, this is a generalization, like just about everything else we'll study. I noticed quite a few of you who combined vastly different musical genres and other wide-ranging ideas on your blogs. Just remember consistency theory as another way to talk about things general media audiences do generally.