Media grammars, generations, and media gaps

Abstract

This essay argues that the traditional concept of the “generation” as the signifier of separate human time relationships be replaced by the concept of human groups based on media relationships. It takes the position that today people are connected or separated more by media experience than by chronological years. This position is developed through an examination of how new media develop their own grammars, the way individuals acquire media literacy, and the effects of media literacy on ways people relate to the world and each other. It concludes that people develop different states of media consciousness based upon the order of acquisition of media grammars, and that particular media consciousness produce media gaps which separate people.