Wednesday 28 November 2012

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 

Tuesday 27 November 2012

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.

Thursday 22 November 2012

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 

Tuesday 20 November 2012

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

Wednesday 7 November 2012

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

Tuesday 6 November 2012

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.

Sunday 4 November 2012

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