Has new and digital media had an impact upon ownership and control of the media institution(s) involved in your case study area? Explain in detail any impact and what exactly has changed.
Twitter started in march 2006 by Jack Dorsely, it was launched not longer after in June, and during the 6 years of twitter, it has so far been a constant success, it has become new outlets for several media institutions for example the news. New and digital media has had a big impact on how the media institution are controlled , the news has lost its traditional purpose of being first to broadcast a story. Now with social networking sites like 'Twitter', we have news worthy stories being written on peoples timelines which eventually goes viral and end up being on the news with the news being second to find out. The news are now used to make it official that the source from twitter is reliable. Stories like the Hudson River air plane crash was first heard on Twitter from someone tweeting a picture of the aeroplane on the river, which eventually hit the news. Other media institutions like magazines have now created a twitter account and started posting their celebrity stories from there, most of the institutional twitter accounts are verified meaning they have a substantial amount of followers that follow their tweets.
User Generated Content (UGC) with the increase of cameras on phones like the I-phone which has the ability to record and upload a video straight to UGC sites like You tube and Tumblr which then gets to a much wider audience via twitter when people start tweeting about it.Twitter is like a source to get people talking about a potential newsworthy story, for example the artist PSY who composed Gangnam Style tweeted his video and it went absolutely crazy worldwide. Citizen Journalists have taken the role of being news providers, the consumers are now the producers , does this mean that media institutions are less worthy now?With all media institutions like YouTube Facebook and Twitter being the main social sites, normal people now have the opportunity to become successful through these institution's. For example twitter allows a business to grow with promoting themselves through tweets, or a new musician can promote their music via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook whereas a few years ago that was only possible via record labels leaving the record label business a bit more useless.
What impact has there been on the way in which the audience now consume the media products/ texts involved in your case study? How does it differ from what went before? Consider (SHEP)
Twitter gives the ability for anyone who is on the twitter to tweet anyone else who is on twitter, there are some privacy settings which enable someone to protect their tweets so other random users cant see what their tweeting about unless requested too. You are still able to view a display picture of the protected accounts, looking back at Facebook which had high privacy settings we can tell Facebook was a more protected social networking site than twitter, you had the choice to set your own privacy settings to your own standards. This doesn't necessarily mean twitter is bad for its lack of security, as it allows people to contact people directly with celebrities or big media institutions and the audience are more interactive giving them a voice to be heard. An example of this would be the news, if a story is being aired people now tweet to have their say on the topic this happens quite a lot now during the news reports, for example during the credit crunch period, people were asked to tweet to BBC using the hash tag "BBCBudget".
On the other side, people who work in industries like the news need to be careful what they tweet, people even journalists or the institutions themselves tweet about a story and get themselves into trouble a good example of this would be the Lord McAlpine story. False accusations were made about McAlpine by 'News Night' of him being a child abuser, which caused great up raw within institutions and involved both sides taking the case to court.
Twitters user have grown significantly since the beginning in 2006, reaching to 500 million active users daily from 1.3 million users in 2008 March, looking at the image shown below, we can see how the amount of users have increased significantly during the past 7 years of existence and what type of users are active.
What impact has there been on how the media institution now have to produce the texts and the way in which the texts/ products are distributed and exhibited? This should involve a detailed textual analysis of at least 3 texts to demonstrate the point.
Because new and digital media has made such a huge change on how we all use things and how everything is being distributed many institutions like the music industry have moved to internet sites to distribute music, an example of this would be Spotify. Spotify enables the user to download any music , from the search engine for £10 a month with the first month of use free. Looking back at history the only way the audience could purchase music was with CD's which have completely lost its value. The main reason why Spotify started was because of the over-use of illegal downloading from YouTube and YouTube converter website which was making the music industry almost useless. Many artists like Rihanna, who has 28.5 million followers on twitter would distribute her new videos or advertise her tours via twitter, because this way fans can get instant access to the latest releases. The old way would be to put up billboard posters of new albums or tours, now most of the advertisement is done on twitter.
News like Sunday Times have created twitter to advertise any new sale offers of the newspaper, and also to keep up with the change to new and digital media. A lot of news providers now have an application for I-Phones and Andriods, which allow the user to read with a subscription to be paid, but a lot of people decide to use the free option which is to follow the news provider via twitter.
Films like "Django Unchained" have twitter account to help distribute information like this tweet on their twitter reading " WATCH the #DJangoUnchained writing featurette on Dealine : bit.ly/XVNIUA RT so your friends can watch it too! pic.twitter.com/zr6firOO " .This is an effective way of getting the latest on the movie and probably now the only way to get the latest on the movie, unless it is via Django film website. The hash tag " #DjangoUnchained" will help people communicate with each other, anyone with the hash tag can look up tweets with that same hash tag and be able to discuss or watch new releases or written features. The command to RT means to ( Retweet) that means it gets distributed to different followers depending on how many people retweet it and the picture gives insight to what the feature is about and make the audience interested.
Is the size of the audience any different now than before the impact of new and digital media (or has the pattern of usage changed)?
The size of the audience has drastically become different to how it use to be and new and digital media is the big influence on that. Consider the impact of new and digital media on Print. There has been a huge reduction of sales from the statistics shown below. This is around the same time technology became more advanced, Newspaper's started launching online websites first in 2001 which became more developed over the time as web 2.0 was launched in 2002 which began the acceleration of technology. The first I-Phone came out June 29th 2007. Sales in newspapers have started to decrease significantly especially in 2012, as most news outlets produced applications for I-Phones, Ipad's and Androids and these are subscription application's which require a fee charge per month. This is very useful for the consumers who bought the printed newspapers, as its instant its at hand, its always available, everything is automatic and instant.
As mentioned before, social networking sites, are the a place where news travels fast and gets people talking about whats happening. Almost every newspaper has a twitter, example of these would be The Guardian with ' 582,166' Followers, The Sunday Time "17,279" followers and The sun with "258,063" followers. The traditional newspaper is becoming extinct and had already turned to new and digital technology. Why would the consumers pay news they can get for free on the internet. There is no excuse for questioning reliability when the twitter accounts are verified and legitimate, all newspapers feed the same stories at what is produced in there newspapers. The only way, newspapers will make money now is with advertisers , which will decrease because as more of the traditional become in tune with the technological change, the less worth of advertising to a small advertising. The new newspaper starts with a www.
Who are the primary target audience now and has this changed? Who was it before and how do you know?
When twitter began , the social networking was targeted at young people, mainly students aged around 16-24. Social classed around E and D. When it first started, people used it for normally tweeting about either their every day lives, their business, humor and for personal communication. The first celebrity to have twitter was ' Katy Perry'. As twitter has grown throughout the years, they have had to adapt to the change in audience, as it was initially aimed at the younger generation. The way people use people use twitter now , is much different to how it use to be it has branched out even more to what it started now the president of the United States has a twitter, which widens twitters audience to the politicians out there and people who love politics, celebrities have twitter again widening the audience because it is likely their fans will follow and that becomes a way to keep instant and have access to a fave celeb. When the twitter I-phone application came out this again widened the audience and allowed everyone to become more active News reporters have twitters, given immediate feeds for free, so twitter's audience is branched out to everyone. Today they have 500 million users on twitter, active everyday, twitter is a part of peoples lives.
How have the audience responded to the changes? Is there more customer choice? Is there evidence of a more pluralistic model? What evidence do you have to support this?
The audience response to changes in new and digital technology is positive, the audience access the same things more instantly and more frequently. Considering twitter, this is where you hear news first, its where businesses start, you can distribute music around to different people because of how easily communicated you are to different people all over the world. Twitter has gained a wide audience within the change of technology, which benefits the consumer and benefits twitter as a business.
The way Twitter is set up is to allow anyone to follow anybody, usually without security.There are some security setting provided on twitter, but compared to other social networking sites like Facebook, and their privacy settings which are much more advanced, twitter is more free and open. Consumers follow people they idolize as well as friends to communicate with for example celebrities, news providers, presidents, prime ministers and from all of these they get instant access into the lives of elite people and also have the chance to communicate with them directly.
Twitter allows pluralism, consumers have say on matters which can cause harm and can increase pluralism within a country. An example of this would be the London Riots, as shown in the image about, people can speak clearly what they think and by tweeting these tweets with the hashtag like for example "woodgreen" "tottenham" in the tweets shown above. At this time everyone was hashtagging where the riots were happening and this is how everyone stayed connected. People has their say and the news will see what people had to say, because with the increase of new and digital technology they knew that that is how people will find out about it. People went to the extreme of using twitter to set up potential riots, they would tweet a place to meet. From the tweets shown below we can see twitter was the use of communication and the news provider for what was really going on , during London that time. The news was the second provider.
What concerns/ considerations are there (if any) for the media institutions involved in your case study as a result of the impact of new and digital media? (e.g. deskilling or multi-skilling of the workforce/ decline in workforce etc)
Since Twitter is used as much a big media outlet, for all types of institutions like news, music , film etc. It defeats some traditional purpose within the institution for example; It is possible that the need for Journalists will decrease meaning a decline in work, with the use of UGC , there in comes an increase of citizen journalism, where news worthy stories are captured at first hand. Looking at other social networking sites like Twitter, we can see Twitter is preferred for first hand news as it can be more widespread than any other social networking site like Facebook which requires a friend request or a like page and people to like it.
The news has lost its traditional value as mentioned before of being first to get news across the world, now it can start with a picture posted on twitter , with a caption and it becomes instantly newsworthy and this is how the news finds out first about the stories now.
Also with the increase in more advanced technology , the less of professionalism we need in order for somethings to be considered right. . Usually with the new technology out there everyone adapts the skill to learn how to use it quickly nobody really needs a qualification for example a camera man would usually require a degree in Arts & Photography. Looking at MTV's new program 'Catfish' we can see they use a little digital camera to catch little edits, this is something we as consumers use everyday for everyday pictures to be now used for a television program. The producers are at battle with the consumers, making their job a little less of an effort with the adaptation to new and digital technology we find less need for professionals.
What are the political and social implications of the new technologies and the methods of their consumption? E.g. moral panics etc?
An example where a moral panic was created by the new technologies on twitter would be suring the London Riots, people were tweeting about where to meet and tweeting pictures of buildings which were destroyed, there was a tweet about a Mosque being burnt down , which caused outrage within the Islamic community. The social implication was shown on twitter and not only creates even more of a riot than there already was, but makes people uneasy and scared which creates a moral panic.
The political implications would be during Barack Obama's re-election. The United States of America, does have his own twitter. During the re-election it was the most talked topic on Twitter, when Obama finally won the election he tweeted a picture him and his wife hugging with the caption ' Four more years'. This was retweeted over half a million times and broke twitters record as it was being mentioned about '327,452' times a minute. News spread around the world fast on twitter, it is involved socially and also politically.
Consider the effects so far, and possible effects in the future, on media institutions involved in your case study (media production).
If media institutions do not adapt quick enough to the new virtual idea, then they will fail. Everything is now digital, how we shop to how we online bank, everything is now at our fingertips or with a click of the mouse. Considering Twitter as one of the main reasons for change in media institutions is because everything happens on twitter, the news about Obamas re-election, Celebrity news like Rihanna and Chris brown getting back together, people hear about tradegies first on twitter, like the Hudson River Crash. It is a big new outlet and will continue to grow with its audience and its services.
With also the increase in UGC , broadcasting news from a news station will soon be seen as void if they already havent used UGC. Nobody really wants to hear a story on what they have seen already, for example the war in Syria, it is all over twitter and other social networking sites,the news may help give a deeper understanding on it but with the use of twitter as a distribution source people have more of a say on the topic and which goes to a more wider audience. Consumers always prefer the truth to any story, the news is always seen to cover the truth about a subject or not deliver the whole story. Discussions and hash tagging tweets from twitter delivers a whole story with the help of UGC as well. Traditional news is in decline and will be with the growth of new and digital technology.
What issues may there be regarding media effects and /or regulation/ censorship as a result of changes due to new and digital media?
Media effects focus;s on how people think and behave , due to the change of new and digital technology. People always want to keep up to date with the world around them and want to be involved socially. Regarding Twitter there is no real censorship , as it is a free way to broadcast your views on anything. You are not given an options to report anything like 'Facebook' so for example if a story comes out about someone an example would be the girl that ate her tampon. You cannot stop the flow of the news being tweeted worldwide. This doesn't protect the users privacy and can cause trouble .
Another example would be BBC news reporters and journalists now have a twitter account, making it possible to tweets about certain stories regarding the news. This can cause and has caused many problems, for example the Mc Alpine Story. News night falsely accused him of sexual abuse via a tweet and this was handled very harshly within the institution eventually shutting them down. Because of the lack of censorship on twitter, the social networking sites have the ability to track down information and allow anything to be posted to the world.
Are there any cross-cultural factors and /or effects of globalisation involved in the impact of new technology on your case study? E.g. the internet has been said to be ‘globalising culture’ through its promotion of the English language.
Globalisation is where regional economies, societies, and cultures are being integrated through a network of communication, transportation, and trade. Twitter has become the main networks for social media, not only for advertising and social advantages, but also for global news.
This is why advertisers use sites like twitter to get a range of different audiences to buy whatever they are advertising. Twitter isan effective way to advertise and promote businesses, depending on your followers. Celebrities use this especially to promote their new music videos and so on.
Consider theoretical perspectives in relation to the impact of new/ digital media in your case study. E.g. Representation of certain groups as a result of changes, Marxism & Hegemony, Liberal Pluralism, colonialism, audience theories etc.
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