Weekly Media Story 12

http://m.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/18/newsnight-inquiry-bbc-helen-boaden

One of the executives that pulled the plug on the jimmy Saville news night story, was made to step down as a result of not letting the story go through. An email sent around through the staff, says she will be coming back. The pollard document which is the report about the jimmy saville case will be published today at noon.

Link to News Corp Powerpoint

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3LRsG7jNLgEZkZqZjJFQkRFUjg

Weekly Media Story 11

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/13/uk-online-obsession-ofcom-latest-figures

This article is talking about the ofcom figures for online usage, describing it as an 'obsession'.

• 60% of phones in the UK are smartphones
• Uk consumers download 424 mbs of data a month - almost 60% more than last year
• Increased usage in mobile phones has been driven by social networking on mobile phones
• Almost 25% of people use catchup tv serviceses a week
• Thats first place in the international rankings, way ahead of US
• Leading the way in online shopping, 
• Uk consumers spend an average £1083 per anum
• 36% use the internet as the primary source of news

Cover Work

News Corp's publishing are to  focus on losses at Times and Sunday Times

• Thetimes and sunday times cost an estimated £1million a week. 
• The companies have been able to run at the losses because news corp can absorb the losses, due to their financial position. 
• The film and tv side of news corp is more profitable.
• They want to make changes but dont know if they wil be allowed because of the bad publicity. 
• Competitors are also operating at a loss

This poses a serious problem due to the division from within news corp as a result of the bad publicity that the priniting side of the company has received over the pat 18months. It wasnt hidden but was masked because of how much money was generated by the broadcasting and production branch of newscorp and is something that needs to be addressed, especially with the fall in circulation of the newspapers. 

Sunday Times circulation falls below 900,000 for the first time

• Fell by a little less than 1%
• 7.51% fall compared to last year
• All of the sunday newspaper competitors are also losing money and sales
• Artificially boosting circulation numbers
• The sun might fall below the 2million mark 
• Sales of the sunday paper have fallen nearly 50%

I dont think that this is really that serious as it is also happening to their competitors  It is serious but not extremely bad because its just the way that the market is going. If it was just there circulation figures that were going down then it would be a cause for concern but not so much as its happening to the rest of the firms. 

Uk Newspaper advertising facing bleak forecast for 2013

• Predicted 9% decline 
• Revenue is expected to fall below £1billion 
• In 2005 its estimated that the newspaper advertising market was worth £2.5billion
• Prospect for regional newspapers is looking better

This is a huge problem for UK newspapers because there main revenue is generated from advertising. If the revenue is no longer there than this could be the decline of an industry that once drove every nation. This could be the start of the decline of print. 

The ups and downs of BBC Online 

• Less than 8million people online in 1997 
• More than 50million today

The figures have tended to fluctuate but there clearly has been a huge increase in the amount of views on the website. Its showing how the way people reccieve the news is changing. When big things happen in the world online is usually the first to report it as it allows the most flexibility. This is supported by the chart we are given. 

Weekly media story 10

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/06/spotify-pays-500m-dollars-royalties

• Spotify has had to pay a ton in royalties back to traditional media institutions 
• Supports that power is in the hands of a few

Is the media more democratic as a result of new technology?

Is the media more democratic as a result of new technology.


digitcal divide


With this new media age we are in, web 2.0, we have so much technology around us, internet enabled phones and tablets that all allow us to voice our opinions. Voicing our opinions can take many different forms, for example, citizen journalism, user generated: videos, pod-casts, blogs etc. We are allowed to voice our opinions through services such as youtube and blogger for example, however these services are owned by the same company. This supports the idea that even though the audience has more power than it did previously, media still is in the control of the dominant media firms, for example google twitter, facebook. People have been given more of voice thanks to the new age of media, but they still are under the watchful all seeing eye of gatekeepers, who decide what can be made mainstream and what not. However people still are able to get their points across and make news by virally spreading things, for example the bus driver uppercut wouldnt of made news if it wasnt for it spreading around the internet, mainly through social networking websites. Nichie target audience websites such as worldstar hiphop enable things like this to be news, because they allow for UGC to be accessed by a wide audience. This is the same with youtube, blogger and other similar websites and services just like it. There is a digital divide in our age where people dont understand technology or whatever their reason is not to use it. New technology allows for us as a culture and community to bridge the gap and try to reduce the digital divide, by things making a big enough noise on social networking websites and nichie target audience websites, that they cannot be ignored by the big traditional media insitutions that are the main source of information to the digital have nots, of the digital divide. To answer the original question, yes the media has become more democaratic as a result of new technology for the reasons above.

Article work

The first article bascially is talking about how the new age of media, media 2.0, is still in the hands of a small number of conglamerates that control the media. It gives the impression that the audience is getting empowered and that they are becoming producers, which is true to an extent, but really the gatekeepers and editors still have the power. Not everyone is taking the power that they can have, the power that they can now become producers, they are producing amateur videos of family videos, and other nonsense, not videos promoting any ideologies or trying to change the world. According to the article participation is hard to define, and that a very small miority are participating and being active on sites such as youtube whereas others are just viewing the text for whatever pleasure they seek or need.

In the second article they are talking about any possible link between democracy. It also talks about how people are trying to go against the media grain, they want to be different and have their voices heard, example being rage against the machine. It also talks about how Michael Jacksons death is an example of democracy about how audiences were able to obtain the news story before traditional news outlets were able to mediate the story. They also talk about how blogging is another example of democracy. It concludes by saying that citizen journalism wont make traditional news irrevlevant but it will complement traditional news.

Notes from article

• Web empowers to an extent 
• 2 sides - political and trivial 
• Political challanges and more serious, empowers audiences
• Trivial - a joke, entertainment purposes
• Power still in hands of traditional media institutions. 
• Political - Ian Tomlinson, Arab spring 
• dumbed down "age of the ameture 
• Traditional and ugc run side by side 
• Web 2.0 empowers 
• Traditional media being viewed in different ways 

Weekly Media Story - Week 9

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/leveson-inquiry-12-months-378-testimonies-four-optionsone-judgment-8360642.html

• The leveson inquiry is almost finished
• Inquiry looking into the phone hacking scandal at news of the world 
• Finishes after 12 months 
• With likely result in changes to the way that the british press is regulated

Virtual Revolution - Ep2

Driving the perfection of information
Twitter - social networking - 2006
Iran June 2009 - Peaceful protest
- Ban on Media
- Turned to Twitter to share
- 200,000 tweets per hour at peak
- Youtube report news

1/4 population connected
"It will have a more profound impact than the printing press"
Gives power to people to challenge old power centres

Negative - State control

Unmediated
Interactive

We change our tools and our tools change us - Jeff Bezos

No central control - cant be shut down
Wiki Leaks - provide information - Julian Assange

UK fight on climate change
Protests - organised online
Express views on politics easily
"empowers anyone that needs it"
Authority of the state
State vs citizen

China - 60 years cimunisum
253 million onine
Tech drive economic growth
Censorship
Want to block dale Lama
30,000 police web
Great fire wall of china
Block western sites that critise
Survellience


China Earthquake
Citizen journalism
50 cent army - 300,000 - internet commentators - promoting communism
Block and redirect
More open = More democratic
Rise of political consisness
Leaders of china + Russia responsing to bloggers online
BBC/NY times blocked

Al Queda - Shock tactics - propeganda
Divide humaity not join
Portable homeland

Appluade it for voice and power, can be used for good or ill

Estonia - 2007

Most wired country
97% banking transactions done online
Russia vs Estonia
2 night riots over statue movement
Cyber attack vs Estonia
Denial of Service - State doesnt know who
Government websites
Bank websites

Paypal - Peter Thiel
Paypal - New world currency

Facebook - 350 Million/ would be 3rd biggest country in the world

"web collapses distances"
"cyber balkanization" - lots of little internet communites hating each other

Developments in new/digital media mean that audiences can now have access to a greater variety of views and values. To what extent are audiences empowered by these developments?

Developments in new/digital media mean that audiences can now have access to a greater variety of views and values.  To what extent are audiences empowered by these developments?

Audiences are able to access more texts due to the birth and continued growth of web 2.0 ( Tim O'Riley). Web 2.0 is described as a medium that allows audiences to become producers of media texts. As a result of audiences being able to produce media texts, they are able to promote their own views and values. There are huge amounts of views and values available on the internet through "web-based software such as blogs". This is supportive of pluralism, which is a society of competing groups and interests, none of them predominant. To an extent this is correct when regrading web 2.0 and new/digital media.

Audiences have been empowered by the ability to challenge organisations and get the truth out of situations where it wouldn't necessarily of been known to the public. For example Ian Tomlinson's death was initially reported down to him collapsing and first aiders not being able to resuscitate him, whereas the truth was that he was hit by a policie officer and had a heart attack as a result. His family has since been able to seek justice as a result of the user generated content. Another example of how audiences have been empowered by the developments in new/digital media is the Arab Spring. Arab spring is where several North Africa countries held a series of protests, aimed at their displeasure at the governments of their respective countries.

Audiences are able to produce media texts, but one view on this is that they are only able to imitate and replicate media texts of traditional media. This view supports the marxist view, that the media is controlled and dominated by a few. Web-based video websites such as youtube, allow for both ammuatures and traditional media to run parallel with each other.  Some of the amateur content is described ans "trivial" and "dumbed down". This  once again supports the marxist view that the media have dumed down their output. Even though amateurs are allowed to produce and publish content, the majority of views of web-based services such as youtube are still for traditional media outlets, for example catch up television or music videos. The way that the media texts are being consumed are changing but people are still consuming the same traditional media.

Audiences have been given power to an extent, but the power is still being held by the few dominant in the media industry.

Weekly Media Story - Week 8

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/20/news-corp-legal-threat-brooks-coulson-charges

• Under new US laws News Corp may come into trouble due to bribery. 
• News corp is getting ready to split its self into 2 divisions, tv and broadcasting and then the newspaper  and publishing side. 
• Shares have risen over 34% in the last year 
• 
  

News corp and it charging for news

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8186701.stm

This article is from back in 2009, Murdoch said that free news would be over, this was in the wake of his company, news corp, announcing big losses. Since then subscriptions have been introduced amongst all news corp websites, and since then they have seen an increase in revenue, thanks to this introduction. So it has benefited News Corp, and the drop in demand that there is likely of to been, hasnt been too bad.

Letter to Mr. Murdoch -.-

Dear Mr. Murdoch

I am writing to inform you of my displeasure at the news that your some news organisations that your news corporation owns are going to charge for news. I understand that the world we live in is driven by money, but is it really necessary to charge for newspapers and then also online? I guess its your decision ultimately but is the customer not always right? I feel that news online should be free because if your going to charge for it someone else is going to provide pretty much the same story for free, and then you loose demand gradually, reduced revenue, lower if any profit levels and eventually news corporation closes. At the end of the day I'm looking out for myself, but in a sense I am also looking out for you. I would be open to coming and meeting you once your done with all of that phone hacking stuff that  you got caught up in. I wouldn't mind getting a job also, you can hit me up on my mobile, its the one that ends in 472. Also is it the best idea to charge for news online just after your firm gets some of the biggest negative publicity in newspaper history?

Yours sincerely

Kanye East

Rodney King article summary

The foundation and building blocks of social networking websites are UGC.

When there are natural disasters happening and the television crews can’t get in they often rely on the citizen journalists to provide insights, footage and something to report on. It is often more hard-hitting and emotional than professionally shot news footage because it provides a true insight into the happenings.

Citizen journalists have been useful during disasters such as the Asian tsunami on 2004 and the July bombings in London 2005.

People have questioned that when citizen journalists are helping to pridce news and broadcast it in dangerous situations are they endangering themselves, and are the producers of the show endangering them further by showing their tweets and footage that they are sending out.

Gate keepers are still there in the mainstream news broadcasting as they decide what makes major news and what gets put on the show and also in what order according to relevance and importance. However in the less mainstream, the underground if you will, there are fewer gatekeepers. For example blogger, if you use this blogging service provided by Google you become a source of news if that’s what you decide you want to use it as. You become a gatekeeper, but you can decide as to what you talk about. The same applies for YouTube and twitter. You can set up accounts based for news, get a following get people to send in news stories and you give them air time. Because of the reduced numbers of gatekeepers on the internet it allows for niche views often of minorities to get a much wider audience than they would in the mainstream.

It is thought that in the future there will be less permanent based journalists, and the news corporations will move in a direction of a coregroup that decides what UGC gets air time and what gets to go on their website. Another view is that the gatekeepers and the mediators will disappear eventually too and we will live in a world where the media is in its purest form, uncensored and unmediated. However this does have negative consequenses if the media does go this way, where people who can shout the loudest win and those with racist views get to put their views across to larger audiences. Could this create more hate groups like the KKK or the Nazis? There are huge risks to an unmediated media, ones that are too big to ignore. 

Weekly Media Story - Week 6

Even though this isn't a Guardian article I still think its important.

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/11/07/twitter-breaks-record-on-us-election-night

My boy from day, Barack Obama, won the US election and is now in the white house as president for a second term. #2Termz!! This epic win for Obama, is significant in both US history and also in twitter history as it is now the most tweeted about political event in the history of twitter, with more than 31 million election related tweets sent. The previous record was only 10 million. Twitter has played a big role in the election, highlighted mainly by the debates which set the twitterverse alight "Twitter brought people closer to almost every aspect of the election this year", Horwitz said. "From breaking news, to sharing the experience of watching the debates, to interacting directly with the candidates, Twitter became a kind of nationwide caucus". Once it was announced that Obama had won Twitter broke out into a frenzy which reached a peak of 327,000 tweets per minute. Obama later took to his official twitter account with this tweet alongside the picture, and it became the most retweeted tweet in the history of twitter. Last night was a night that will go down in the history of both America and Twitter. The electiopn. 

Learner response

WWW: Some confident writing, Elliot (my name is spelt ELLIOTT!), that makes use of some autonomous research and provides a range of examples (on the last page).

EBI: The essay takes too long to get started: Rewrite the introduction and first paragraph to include specific details and explicit reference to institutions/audiences.

New and digital media has seen significant changes over the past 20 years and coming to the forefront of mainstream media, for example the Internet. The Internet is on the news every night, for example the presidential debate causing a personal record of tweets per minute for President Barack Obama.

The media revolution, possibly the biggest cultural change worldwide since the industrial revolution has taken the world by storm. The Internet empowers people all around the world. For example in east Africa, the Arab spring where information released by wiki leaks about the bad government and managed to over through their government.

Newspaper Chart

Traditional Paper-based Form	Online News Site
Has a purchase price.  Is not free	Has predominantly free content
bgvg	Can be accessed anywhere with internet access
Can be easily marked or destroyed	Content remains even if portal of access is destroyed.
Usually target a specific audience base	Can reach a wider target audience non-specific some, and some target a niche audience
Costly to produce; paper, printing etc.	Cheap and often free because it has virtually no cost unless requiring a professional.
Costly to distribute	Cheap to distribute
Limited printing space, a 24 news cycle using news stories from the previous 24 hours. Often original or brand new stories that have been already used by tv news outlets.	Can offer countless news stories at any one time plus the ability to archive stories, although many of these news stories are simply replications or re-workings of main news stories and may be cut and pasted news stories from other mainstream news sites.
Only print version of story available	Avaliable on mobile devices, and desktops.
Cannot be updated immediately and regularly	Can be updated immediately and regularly 21 minutes.
Is not interactive	Can be interactive
Cannot allow audience immediate feedback/ citizen journalism	Allows for audience immediate feedback and citizen journalism.
Can offer in-depth analysis and comment but is limited by space.	Varied options for expansion of topic matter.  In depth editorials and comment.

Audience Gratifications of The Guardian website.

Feature	Audience Gratification
Long-running chat boards	Feels like a contributor and that they are becoming a news maker.
Network of weblogs
Leaving comments on articles	Can make an audience feel powerful by creating the idea that they are challenging the news institution’s values
Readers can access articles online, on mobile devices through RSS feeds or on eBook readers.	Immediacy. They decide what they read and what they view as important to an extent
Varied selection of categories in easy accessible genre areas
Images	Visual pleasures
Podcast	Listen to the news, gives gt
Access to paper-based content
Dating sites/ personals

Weekly Media Story - Week 5

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/06/bskyb-deal-universal-movie-rights

So bSkyb the company that holds the majority stake in the televison and broadband company sky has struck up a deal with Universal films for the exclusive rights to films. This could cause an investigation as to is their enough competition amongst tv subscription broadcasters, and if Sky is becoming too big.

The deal means that Sky will get first dibs at films for their Sky box office pay per-view service which shows the latest films before they come out on dvd.

Half-Term Homework

Arab Spring

• Series of protests, demonstrations and wars against governments
• Mainly North Africa
• Caused by wiki leaks leaking documents about the corruption governments 
• Also causes by the youth being able to see the different democracies around the world and how they had a terrible situation. 
• Tunisia + Egypt the first main rebellions
• News institutions relied on UGC for footage because news crews werent being allowed in some countires.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest-interactive-timeline

Ian Tomlinson

• Died during G20 protests
• Hit and pushed by police officer, suffered a heart attack shortly after
• Police officer ended up getting away with it
• The guardian published footage after the initial post mortum showing the police brutality. Sparking uproar amongst the public. 
• The footage was UGC
• Ian wouldn't of received justice if it wasn't for this UGC

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/19/ian-tomlinson-family-civil-case

Gaddafi & Libya

• Dictator killed and overruled
• Civil war ripped through the country
• Rebels protest against Gaddafi's reign 
• Gaddafi claims that they are linked to Al Quedea

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/12/libyan-attack-fire-cannot-extinguish

Christian Bale Rant

• During the recording of Terminator: Salvation
• Screaming at staff
• Wouldn't of been given the worlwide attention if it wasn't for citizen journalism to an extent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/06/bbc-apology-christian-bale-rant

Bus Driver Uppercut

• On a bus in Cleveland Ohio, America. A young black girl got uppercuted by the bus driver 
• Showed on WSHH
• Covered by most urban news outlet
• Sparked arguments about if its right or wrong
• Trying to get WSHH shut down because of it
• Wouldn't of come to light if not for a citizen journalist shooting the footage and uploading it to WSHH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/worldstarhiphop-bankable-brand-brutality

Weekly News Story - week 4

http://mobile.uk.msn.com/device/news/Blog.aspx?cp-documentid=250299320

The guardian news paper is thinking to stop producing their print newspaper.

I think that this is pretty interesting because this news institution is thinking about changing what has made them successful and ultimately where they are today. This is showing how news firms are moving towards the e-media platform, and moving away from the declining print industry. This is once again showing how the print industry is declining but demand for news isn't declining but the way the audience are consuming it are changing and this shows sort of how audiences have a lot of power over institutions. I think that more print firms are going to move this way not right now but in 3-4 years time I think that newspapers with pretty much die out, to much uproar, and it will be all online, however this will require wi-fi underground.

I think I should be getting credits for this work. Even though I don't want them and think they dont have much use, I still think I deserve some. Good day.

The rise and rise of UGC

Rodney King - Beaten and tasered after a high speed chase by police officers.
Six days of riots followed in LA. Sparked interest in racial profiling and attitudes of police towards African Americans.
George Holiday shot it on his video camera.

With improvements in technology citizen journalists are becoming more common. Gives citizens powers to make and break news. Most news organisations now a way to interact with citizen journalists through many different sources for example, a forum website, chatrooms or message boards.

The foundation and building blocks of social networking websites are UGC.

When there are natural disasters happening and the television crews cant get in the often rely on the citizen journalists to provide insights, footage and something to report on. It is often more hard-hitting and emotional than professionally shot news footage because it provides a true insight into the happenings.

Citizen journalists have been useful during disasters such as the Asian Tusnami in 2004 and the July bombings in London 2005.

People have questioned that when citizen journalists are helping to produce news and broadcast dangerous situations are they endangering themselves and are the producers of the news show endangering them further by showing their tweets and footage that they are sending out.

Gate keepers are still there in the mainstream news broadcasting as they decide what makes major news


1)     The term citizen journalist refers to normal civilians of the community that have no background in journalism, contributing to main stream news. This can be through emailing news, or filming footage for example.
2)     One of the first examples of citizen journalism is the Rodney King situation that I have already talked about previously in the article.
3)      News organisations offer potential citizen journalists oppourtunites to provide them with news stories, through things like fourms, website, comments page, blog or twitter.
4)      Obviously there are going to be differences between proffresionaly shot footage and footage from citizen journalists. For example citizen footage is going to be of a lower quality in terms of the picture, but the footage with have a raw feel to it, have edge and potentially carry a better message of how bad a situation is, because of the rawness of the footage.
5)     A gatekeeper is a person or organisation that decides what gets put in or on the mainstream news, in this case. They decide what we see, in what order and almost how we should feel about it, they do this by choosing the words they say carefully and also the mise-en-scene.
6)     The role of gatekeepers has changed because the internet has emerged significantly allowing people to become their own producer and broadcast their own messages without the need of gatekeepers. The internet allows them to reach a wide target audience without the need for gatekeepers.
7)    Journalists feel that there wont be as much demand for them in the future because citizen journalists are producing as interesting pieces that organisations are using as them, the professionals  This wil have a negative effect on the journalism industry and in the end see them run out of business.

Weekly Media Story - Week 3

The k-pop hit has officially gone worldwide! The crazy song and dance have made it to no.1 in numerous countries, including the billboard hot 100 no. 1 spot. It has now cracked the youtube all time top 10 viewed video. Gangum style video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0&safe=active

Me personally I think that it is kind of stupid having a no.1 song in our country that the majority of people cant and dont understand but it is worlwide, and brings a smile to people all the world around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doDLNrezvjc&safe=active

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-LST3-xCdY&safe=active

Big 10 Companies

Top 10 media companies

1) General Eletrics - Produce tons of different media products, for example dvd players, cd players, computers and other things. I looked into it and didnt find out much else about what GE do regarding the media.

2) Apple - Hardware and software manufacturer that specialise in the tech industry. Reccently been announced as the worlds weathliest company. Unlike most tech companies they produce both the software and hardware for their products, they have produced worlwide favourite products such as the macbook, ipod and the phone that has changed the world iPhone.

3) Walt Disney - A company that produces films, television shows and pretty much everything in between. Also have theme parks in Orlando, Paris, Hong Kong and California. Started off by Walt Disney. One of the biggest and well recognised film studios in hollywood. Own the sports channel ESPN, A+E networks and ABC family.

4) Comcast - A cable operator, home internet service provider and has significant holding in television channels such as: E! entertainment television, NBC sports network, The Golf Channel, Style Network, and G4. Recently bought a major stake in media conglomerate NBC universal. Have been given poor results in customer surveys about their service.

5) Amazon - Online store that sells pretty much anything. Available in most countries. Also own the media information company imbd and the film and television streaming service LoveFilm. Not to forget they have also released their own e-book, and tablet.

6) News Corp - Rupret Murdoch's media empire. A media conglomerate, made up of many littler companies which include: fox news, the wall street journal, 20th century fox, the sun, the times, the sunday times, ITV, and bSkyb. Worlds 2nd biggest media company based on revenue in 2011

7) Google - The worlds most visited search engine. They have also expanded into email services, an internet browser, social networking website, phone, and tablet. They also own the worldwide video sensation site, youtube, and also this little bundle of joy that I'm using to complete my homework, blogger.

8) Time Warner Cable - US baseed cable television provider.

9) CBS - A major American commercial broadcaster.

10) Viacom - Produces a vast number of shows and networks, which include: BET networks, MTV networks, Paramount pictures. Has around roughly 170 media networks, reaching more than 600 million subscribers around the world.

Amazon Case Study

Amazon

Who owns the site?

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who is also the chairman, president and CEO of the company. So its safe to say that he owns the company. 

Do they have any traditional media businesses? 

They do have a modern day media business, that in a couple of years might be seen as traditional. They own the movie, television and game renting and streaming company Lovefilm. Lovefilm is a UK based company which was founded in 2002 and then bought by Amazon fully in 2011. Lovefilm is available on smart televisions, game consoles, and computers. It reaches out to 2million customers. Has become one of the leading dvd rental services in the Uk and Europe through growth and also through acquisitions of companies. Revenue is generated from users paying for subscriptions, and also advertising space.  

Amazon also owns the internet website Imdb, which is the wikipedia for everything media based. It was launched in 1990 and was bought by amazon in 1998. As of August 22nd, IMDb had 2,280,354 films and 4, 780, 533 personalities in their databased. Revenue is raised from advertising . 

What other internet sites do they own?

They own the websites lovefilm and IMDb as preciously stated. They also own the other sites, in the screenshot below. 

What is its revenue? 

Amazon's current revenue is $48.07 billion (US dollars). Which is an increase from the previous year. These financial figures are correct as of the financial year 2011. 

What is its overall worth ?

It depends on what you want to see as the worth of the company, whether its the amount of profit it makes, or the value of its assets. Amazons assets total to $25.27 billion (US dollars). These financial figures are correct as of the 2011 financial year.

Five key facts about the institution. 

• Started out as just an online book store. 
• Sometimes have different prices for the same product 
• Came out with their own video on demand service - amazon unbox
• Have expanded into film production, producing just 1 film. 

Quotes

If you look at our corporate culture, we've always had a customer obsession and we've always been pioneering. - Jeff Bezos

We were hoping to build a small profitable company. And of course, what we've done is made a large, unprofitable company. - Jeff Bezos

Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this phenomenon of software eating a traditional business is the suicide of borders and corresponding rise of Amazon. - Marc Andreessen

Corporate Homepage information 

Amazon info-graphic

Media Stories - Week 1

One of the big stories this past week that affects me is one of the biggest dates in the UK gaming society. The FIFA 13 release date. FIFA 13 is released today in the UK but earlier in the week in America. I found an article about the sales figures in America which shows the global reach of the game, the gaming world and modern technology.
http://www.gaming-age.com/2012/09/fifa-soccer-13-sales-up-42-in-north-america/
This is just in North America. Imagine when the sales figures get released in the UK. Now that would be amazing figures.

On a health related note about gaming, do games like FIFA that are football simulation games, have negative earth affect on the users because they aren't outside playing but inside playing the game without getting any exercise.

Gaming is a huge part of the new media age. Release dates for big title games like FIFA often cause a midnight frenzy to get the game first. Play it first. And be first.

Media Story - Week 2

American news station fox news caused an uproar this past week when they showed live on their station a man committing suicide. The channel was covering a high speed chase, the man left the car to try and flee away from police by feet. Not to soon after leaving the car  he pulled out a gun on himself and shot himself in the head. As soon as he shoots himself the news anchor started shouting at his co-workers to get the images off immediately because they are disturbing and could get the network into trouble. The american people are justifiably upset by it. I have provided a link to the video but if you are grossed out by these kind of things then I advise that you dont watch the clip.


http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhU0AE417D34ZH84Bk

Shortly after the anchor of the news show apologised. The video of the apology is below this and an article describing the whole event is also with it.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/28/161972855/fox-news-smith-apologizes-after-man-commits-suicide-on-air

Virtual Revolution - Notes

4 part BBC series
Aired in 2010

Sir Tim Berners Lee
- Founder of the world wide web
- Takes no financial credit for founding the internet.
- Took part in the Olympic games opening ceremony.
- Knighted in 2004 by the queen
- Was given an honorary doctorate of science degree from Harvard University.

At any 1 given time there are 2,000,000,000 people online at the same time. About 1/3 of the planet
Some people use the internet to challenge authorises but some governments use it to spy on their people.

Bill Gates: "The internet is how people communicate"
Bill Gates
- Founder of Microsoft, the worlds largest computer software manufacturer.
- Worlds wealthiest person from 1995 - 2009.
- Dropped out of Harvard University.
- One of the main contributors as to where the internet is today.
- Created internet explorer, one of the first internet browsers

Internet creates a digitial divide. The digital haves/have nots.
So the people that dont use the internet are left out whilst the other people who dont have internet are left out.

Al Gore former US vice President described the internet as an "empowering tool" and as "exciting and revolutionary".

1/4 of the planet use the internet regularly.

35 million at any time on the British Isles
£1,000,000,000 a week online in the UK alone.
5Million people join dating websites a month
18 million blogs in the UK
40% of men admit to watching online porn
87% of UK internet users use YouTube
28% of UK internet users have access to super fast broadband ( 8+ MB per minute)
46% have access to speeds between 2MB and 8MB
94% of homes in the UK have broadband penetration at home.

The UK internet economy is expected to grow 10% per annum to £174billion or as much as £228billion.
The UK internet economy is worth £100billion, 7.2% of UK GDP.
1 in 5 UK internet users uses the internet to either sell a good or service and make it a business.

Video work

  

• How much information is in circulation on the internet (in gigabytes)?

  According to wikipedia internet data was estimated at close to 500 exabytes. 

• What proportion of the world’s population can now go online?

There are currently 1.2 billion users of the internet. 

• The number of people who could access the internet in 1995?

40 million people had access to the internet in 1995. 

Nature of Communication.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2332339,00.asp

http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/how-has-technology-changed-communication

I think communication has been changed greatly by the internet. People arent sending as many cards as they used to in exchange for sending e-cards. Communication has become less face to face and more screen to face. 

Nature of information

The nature of information has changed greatly because the internet is now the biggest recourse, with millions of books inside it and billions of articles. However people have to be smart about what they think is true because and Tom Dick or Harry could right anything on the internet but people have to be smart enough to think is this true or not. People used to have to go and read books if they wanted all of this information that you are making us find out. 

http://askville.amazon.com/computers-internet-changed-information/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=6098521

http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic55458.html

Privacy

People are having their privacy taking away from them because they are putting too much information up on the internet and people are able to see it and use it. Other people are able to steal card information and other personal details. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/12/what-is-an-internet-troll

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/13/online-privacy-legislation-internet-phone-data

Online safety

Depending on what things people use the internet for, depends on whether they are safe or not. Online safety can be helped by changing the browser settings. People need to use common sense on the internet, and if they aren't smart enough to know that you are the 1,000,000,000,000 visitor today then they shouldn't be allowed on the internet. 

http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/net_safety.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2011/jul/13/guardian-roundtable-online-safety

Business

The internet allows people to be entrapenurs in many different ways. It allows for businesses to cater to customers service needs and allows for quicker direct forms of communication then staying on hold for 22 minutes. However this isnt good for big businesses as they can't compete with the global scale that these businesses compete on. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

http://www.pclink.co.uk/

Culture

The internet has made the world a much smaller place, because of this people are able to learn about other cultures, hence the world becoming more cultured, hopefully. 

http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/mawong/hypertext2/linearhypertext.html

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall01/McGrath/

WiFi Uptake

UK broadband uptake has steadily increased throughout the millenium. In 2010 uptake was 1t 78% in 2011 it dropped down to 77%.  However the superfast broadband that the government is rolling out has not been taken up as it thought it would be, which has only been 0.8%. Compared to other countries the UK has had poor uptake. Superfast broadband is described as >24 Mbps.