Media Magazine: In the Age of Media - six questions about media and participation

Main parts of article: 

• The world of Big Media - in which the media were owned and controlled by large commercial corporations - is no more. In the age of Media 2.0, ordinary people are no longer mere consumers of media, but also producers.
• Thus, blogs and online forums provide opportunities for ordinary people to have their say, and to speak back to those in power; wikis enable us to to collaborate and share knowledge in ways that challenge elites and experts; on social networking sites, we represent ourselves and connect with other people in new ways; while online sharing sites like YouTube allow people to distribute their own media content to global audiences. 

1. What's new? 

• The term 'Web 2.0' seems to have been coined by the digital marketing entrepreneur Tim O'Reilly back in 2001.  
• The kinds of claims that are being made about the liberating possibilities of social media echo those that were made in earlier times about the impact of cable TV, portable video, radio and even the printing press. All these things were apparently going to bring 'power to the people' - to undermine the power of political elites and big corporations, create new forms of collaboration, and allow ordinary people to express themselves and have their voices heard. 
• In terms of media theory, there's a danger of a kind of technological determinism here - the idea that technology will bring about revolutionary social change, in and of itself. 

2. Who's participating?

• While there are some gender differences - young women are leading the way in areas like blogging, while young men tend to dominate video-sharing - the most remarkable differences are in terms of social class. 
• At least in the US, it is young people from high-income families who are most likely to be posting or sharing online. While people in disadvantaged communities do increasingly have computers at home, they are less likely to have the multimedia capabilities and bandwidth that are needed for more sophisticated content creation and sharing. 
• Young people from wealthy, middle-class families are also more likely to have books at home, to use the educational dimensions of the internet and to participate in creative or arts-related activities offline. To a large extent, the most active participants in the creative world of Media 2.0 are the 'usual suspects' - people who are already privileged in other areas of their lives. 
• The same is true of mobile communications; while the micro-blogging service Twitter is largely dominated by middle-aged people. Young people are sometimes the 'early adopters', but the idea that  they are uniquely 'digital generation' - and that there is a kind of technological generation gap - is rapidly becoming outdated. 

3. What are they doing? 

• In fact, only a very small proportion of users are generating original content: most are simply 'consuming' it as they always have done. 
• However, people rarely see it as having anything to do with what they watch in mainstream media - let alone as a challenge to the power of Big Media. 

4. Who's making money? 

• View on Media 2.0; "Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite ... now it's the people who are taking control." - Rupert Murdoch (in an interview in 2006); and it should alert us to the fact that there are large commercial interests at stake in these developments. 
• The richest and most profitable global media corporations are now Google and Facebook. Both are increasingly diversifying from their initial business - as a search engine and a social networking site - into a whole range of other media and branded products and services. Indeed, the apparent explosion of democratic participation in the media could also be seen as a matter of the growing concentration of power in the hands of a small number of global companies. 
• For example, YouTube (now owned by Google) took five years from its launch before it finally came into profit, despite being the second most frequently visited site online. 
• Even so, it's clear that the internet is an exceptionally efficient medium for niche marketing and for targeting individual consumers. 

5. Who's doing the work?

• Much of this marketing is itself 'user generated' and 'interactive'. This is most obvious in the case of viral marketing, where consumers are effectively recruited to distribute commercial messages on behalf of companies. 
• There have been some instances where copyright owners - like J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers, who own the Harry Potter franchise - have taken legal action against fans who have used and reworked their materials in making fan fiction, video mashups, and so on. Yet one could argue that, in the end, these fans are just promoting the brand - they may be using Harry Potter to express their own ideas, but they are doing so in a way that contributes to the success and the continuing profitability of the big companies. 

6. Will Media 2.0 save democracy?

• Despite the claims of some of the enthusiasts, digital media are not likely to result in a society of creative media producers, any more than the printing press resulted in a society of published authors. 
• Just like 'old' media, these new media are driven by commercial imperatives - and that means that some people are bound to benefit from these developments much more than others. 

British newspaper front pages on the London/UK riots:

iPads and Kindles force newspapers further away from print - article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/25/ipad-kindle-newspapers-digital-print

Key points/facts from article:

• A million iPads and Kindles may have been unwrapped on Sunday – according to tentative analyst estimates – an influx of portable technology that is expected to hasten a decline in the already faltering sales of printed newspapers, adding pressure on traditional business models that have traditionally supported so many titles around the country.
• Publishers, preparing for the handheld arrivals, took the chance to break with a tradition that dates back to 1912, when publishers agreed not to produce Christmas Day papers to give paperboys, among others, a day off. 
• For the first time in its 190-year history the Sunday Times published a digital-only edition on 25 December – with the normally paid for product given away in the hope of luring sought after digital subscribers.
• Fifty years ago two national dailies – the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express – sold more than 4m copies each; today the bestselling Sun sells 2.6m. 
• In the last year alone, printed sales declined by 10% for daily broadsheets and by 5% for daily tabloids – and when the News of the World stopped printing last July 600,000 copy sales simply disappeared.
• The knock-on impact of the decline has been a push for digital readers that have seen newspapers like the Daily Mail win 5m unique visitors a day – compared with its printed sale of 2m – but struggle to generate revenues to match. The Mail generated £16m from its website last year, out of £608m overall.
• Some specialist titles, such as the Financial Times, are managing the transition well – it has 260,000 digital subscribers – up 40% this year – compared with 337,000 buyers of the printed product, where sales are down by 12%. Digital subscribers generate £180 a year and the paper, priced at £2.50 on the newsstand on a weekday, is profitable.
• During a typical week the number of people signing on digitally is "five to 10 times" what it was a year earlier, as the newspaper looks to a future beyond print.
• Daily titles in Birmingham and Bath have also gone the same way in recent years – while pre-tax profits at Johnston Press, the owner of the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, fell from £131.5m five years ago to £16m last year.
•  Although the tabloid media have faced criticism at the Leveson inquiry, not least from the likes of Hugh Grant or Steve Coogan, popular titles remain in fair commercial health. 
•  Trinity Mirror's stable of nationals – the Daily and Sunday Mirror, the People, and the Record titles in Scotland – will earn about £70m this year, although they made £86m the year before. The profit margin at the Daily Mail hovers at around 10%.
• The Guardian may generate £40m in digital revenues from its largely free offerings, but some of that comes from its dating sites. The Times titles have gone for a low price subscription model, which has attracted 111,000 takers, but which generates £11m a year against an editorial budget estimated at £100m.

Media predictions for 2012: media business and advertising - article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/30/media-predictions-2012-business-advertising

Key points/facts from article: 


Businesses: 

• The failure of Shameless maker All3Media and Dutch firm Eyeworks, maker of Test the Nation and The Biggest Loser, to find buyers in 2011 is indicative of how tough the market is shaping up to be next year.
• All eyes are on Big Brother maker Endemol, which if it can finally agree the protracted restructuring of its €2.8bn debt, which is widely expected to be put up for sale next year.
• ITV will be debt free by the end of the year and has access to £1bn, or more, with chief executive Adam Crozier finally likely to make a major acquisition to boost its production arm.
• Facebook's highly-anticipated IPO, which could well dwarf Google's effort in 2004, will send the tech stock buzz back into overdrive after the failure of Netflix, Groupon and Zynga to set investors alight.
• However the biggest potential development of the year is whether Rupert Murdoch will be forced by his board into looking to sell off some, or all, of his newspaper titles.
• A forced sale attracts bargain-hunting predators and top of the list is Richard Desmond, owner of Express Newspapers and Channel 5, who has form here, having offered £1bn for the Sun in 2009.

Advertising: 

• Sir Martin Sorrell's Group M reckons that the 3% growth it has factored in for 2012 would be lucky to be flat, at best, if not for the Olympics.
• By this he means that comparisons with the uplift in ad revenue seen in other host countries, where the Olympics airs on commercial TV, are misguided because in the UK it airs on the BBC
• Morgan said that investors should not have "expectations of a significant lift'; Daintith added that the event is "not the answer" and that the market "shouldn't be thinking about huge numbers from the Olympics for our titles". DMGT reckons it will see an uplift of about £5m.
• The big winner will be the outdoor advertising market - Group M reckons it will be up 6%, the most of any media bar digital advertising - with the £746m ad take pencilled the highest since 2008.
• National newspaper advertising is forecast to be down 3.1% and the regional market down 7.8%.

Rupert Murdoch joins Twitter article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/01/rupert-murdoch-twitter-account

Key points/facts from article:

• Within hours, the media tycoon had amassed more than 14,000 followers and was giving them his views on everything from the US presidential election to his family holiday in the Caribbean.
• A cursory glance at his output reveals that he considers Steve Jobs's biography to be "interesting but unfair", that thoughts are best kept private in St Barths ("like London!"), and that George Clooney deserves an Oscar for his performance in The Descendants (whose distributor is News Corp-owned Fox Searchlight Pictures).
• But the former deputy prime minister John Prescott captured the reaction of many when he made indirect reference to the phone-hacking scandal which saw Murdoch come under huge pressure in 2011. "Welcome to Twitter … @rupertmurdoch," he wrote. "I've left you a Happy New Year message on my voicemail!"

Recent Examples of UGC in the news

1:  The Arab Spring -


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/jan/25/egypt-protest-president-murabak-video?INTCMP=SRCH

2: Gaddafi's death


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/20/libyan-reaction-muammar-gaddafi-death?INTCMP=SRCH

3: London Riots


4:

What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?
When the citizens have been producing news stories or have recorded new stories. e.g. 9/11 footage.

What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?
It could be argued that the JFK assassination was one of the earliest examples of news being generated by 'ordinary people' as the footage from that was used in the news and as evidence of the event.

List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.
On new organisations websites - forums, comment sections, e-mail, vote, uploading images and videos.
Through a mobile phone people can vote, text and send images & videos.

What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?
Professionally shot footage is always shot within a proper shot, clearer quality. Whereas a UGC footage has poorer quality (however with the new technology available it is improving) and the shots are shaky.

What is a gatekeeper?
A gatekeeper is a person who decides what content to air on a television channel or radio station.

How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?
Gatekeepers are not valued as much as people can now use to internet to release their own content e.g. songs.

What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?
That professional journalism will not be taken seriously and the public, who do not understand journalism, will publish unnecessary content which will not benefit anyone at all.