Aaron DaCosta Prof.

Grayson MJD 101B 27 August 2013 Comparing and Contrast Present and Past Media As the Latin poet Juvenal once noted in a famous line that all people want are panem et circenses or food and entertainment. This observation holds true today and I believe it can be applied to peoples habits of media consumption by todays global society and the population of 18th century Paris. Before reading the article, I made the nave assumption that because of the immense choices when it comes to getting our news, today our definition of news would be much less stringent then our internet deprived French counterparts. However, Parisians were just as interested in the multiple affairs that their King was involved in as the state of inequity and corruption the monarchy kept them in. It is logical to think that the same people who believed the royal sex life provided prime material for gossip would be just as interested as Rep. Anthony Wieners latest indiscretion as we are now. In regards to how people shared information socially now and then; the main concepts remain but the amount of weight placed on social discussion has been changed. This dynamic has shifted because modern technology has enabled us to produce a higher volume of social discussion at a rapid pace, while before much more effort was involved to get other peoples viewpoints and validate your own. Everything that could be debated by a trip to the salon for a long discussion is now available to anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection. Because of this ease of access, everyones opinion counts less and social discussion of credible news is not just limited to small groups of wealthy, educated people, or even geographically limited. In

summation all though the pace of news and discussion may have changed, since people are the ones who create media, the news has not varied.