The Zone of Proximal Media Development

A girl who sings in her bedroom, posts the video clips of this online and just a short time later is performing a duet with pop idol Justin Timberlake. A brand that creates a profile of an attractive but fictitious woman on a social network website and has her talk positively about the brand. A global community of people who collect photos of chairs that no one is sitting on...The possibilities of the media are extending ever further into our lives. An increasing number of services and products are seeking to attract our attention and our money. This essay explores the pulsating relationship of global networks and local communities in the light of media developments. It devotes specific attention to the development of crossmedia herein.The viewpoint presented is to analyse the current developments in the light of existing behaviours and patterns. The zone into which I then venture is, to use the term of the developmental psychologist Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development.