The Loss of Culture: The Changing Role of Communication

Although, tradition serves as a core common ground for a culture’s identity, today, technology has been instrumental in breaking down cultural tradition into specialized areas within the communication discipline. When examining various contexts of media and technology, we see the role of tradition begin to fragment. However, this same media and technology also presents future possibilities of coherence and continuity for the discipline of communication. Through examining differing contexts of technology’s affect on tradition in culture, we can explore tradition(s) lost and found; traditions that may limit, integrate, or even establish a new found structure to help promote the common ground of tradition in the communication discipline. he Canadian communication theorist, Harold Innis (1964) introduced the concept of time and space-based modes of communication, positing that “time-based modes contribute more elements that are essential to cultural identity than those based on space. ” This paper examines different types of contemporary communication including, blogging and social networking an