Black Mirror: The National Anthem

The message of Black Mirror: The National Anthem is that news is now able to spread much faster then expected due to the increase of people using and relying on the internet and social networking. Sites such as twitter allow us to access a form of rolling/24 hour news other than the conventional news channels such as BBC News or Sky News. It also highlights a lack of censorship and privacy as it allows people to freely be interactive with one another and share their opinions, this in turn leads to the desensitization of society.

The Impact of New & Digital Media Case Study | Step 3

My case study will involve theimpact of new and digital media on smartphones.

I have chosen this topic because it is a very current issue due to the rapid growth and dependency society has on smartphones. I will be able to explore convergence, economic consequences and the continuing and constant development in its technology.

Also: Apps, usage, rivalry/competition, software -  ios, android, windows, blackberry, UGC

3 media texts

1.       “No one can afford to ignore the smartphone revolution” (Article) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/telegraph-view/9838190/No-one-can-afford-to-ignore-the-smartphone-revolution.html

E media

30 Jan 2013

2.       Smartphone shipments reach 671m in Q4 2012: Juniper Research

http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipad-iphone/news/?newsid=3423357&pagtype=allchandate

E-Media

30 Jan 2013

3.       CES 2013 preview: Smart phones (Clip)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhsGe1liaKY

E-media

31 Dec 2012

Theories:

UGC

Multi Media Experience

Digital haves/have nots

Capitalism

Mobility

4G

Communication

Hegemony

Cover Work | Articles

Will the internet end up controlled by big business and politicians?

·         The talk is always about "governance" or "regulation", but really it's about control

·         the big question has been whether the most disruptive communications technology since print would be captured by the established power structures

·         In Dubai, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

o   a venerable UN body employing nice-but-politically-dim engineers and run by international bureaucrats of average incompetence, staged the grandly named World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12)

·         But because the ITU is a UN body on which every member country has a vote, some regimes construed the conference as an opportunity for enabling governments to begin getting a grip on controlling the net

·         some countries saw revised IT regulations as a way of enabling them to levy charges on the giant western companies that currently dominate the net

·         others saw them as a chance to control content flowing electronically across their frontiers

·         few saw them as a way of loosening the grip that western countries (particularly the US) currently has on the organisations that are critical to the technical management of the internet.

·         The underlying reality was that most western countries simply refused to buy into the agendas of the authoritarian and/or developing countries who sought to use the conference as a means to the ends that they desired

·         WCIT-12 was a significant event in the evolution of the internet

o   it demonstrated that the war to control the network not only goes on, but is increasing in intensity.

·         Instagram, a photo-sharing service that Facebook recently acquired for an unconscionable sum, abruptly changed its terms and conditions.

o    hapless users of the service were required to agree that Instagram could use any or all of their photographs for advertising and other purposes, at its sole discretion.

§  caused such a storm that the company rowed back

·         people saw this as just another illustration of the old internet adage

o   if the service is free then you are the product.

·         Others saw it as evidence that Facebook is determined to "monetise" its billion-plus users in any way it can.

·         it demonstrates the extent to which giant internet corporations will try to control their users.

·         Tim Berners-Lee,  "There are probably 200 million people now who think that Facebook is the internet."

·         As WCIT-12 showed, they may be having trouble getting a grip on the net, but they won't give up on the project.

·         What Barlow didn't reckon with, however, was that another gang of control freaks would also get in on the act – the Facebooks, Googles, Amazons and Apples of this world

o   they're making more progress than governments at the moment.

·         Each of these started out as gloriously anarchic, creative, open and vibrant technologies

o   but eventually each industry was "captured" by a charismatic entrepreneur who offered consumers a more dependable, consistent proposition.

Why power has two meanings on the internet

·         The 80/20 split = the Pareto Principle.

·         normal distribution is rare.

·          In its place, we see the distribution of which Pareto's Principle is a special example: a small number of people/sites/words/etc account for most of the action, with a "long tail" getting very little of it.

·         instead of most websites having an "average" number of inbound links, a very small number of sites (the Googles, Facebooks and Amazons of this world) have colossal numbers of links, while millions of sites have to make do with only a few.

o   call this a "power law" distribution

·         Everywhere you look on the internet, you find power laws

o   the Guardian's online comment forums; 20% of comments are provided by 0.0037 per cent of the paper's monthly online audience

·         there are millions of blogs out there, a relatively small number of them attract most of the readership

·         Clay Shirky : "In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution".

·         relentless consolidation of mass-media ownership into the hands of giant conglomerates means public sphere had been steadily shrinking in the postwar era

o   this has worrying implications for liberal democracy.

·         How can we overcome the tyranny of power laws

Lessons the tech world learned in 2012

LESSON 1 Tweet in haste, repent at leisure

·         Lord McAlpine has become a leading innovator in internet law

·         The allegations saying he was a child abuser has changed the began landscape in the UK

·         The smart move was to discriminate between different classes of users

o   Those with 500 or fewer followers could get in touch with McAlpine's lawyers and, upon payment of a small fee to charity, escape with a pardon

o   More substantial tweeters were required to pay heftier damages or face the full force of m'learned friends in court.

·         It could be said that the unruly internet beast is being tamed.

·         if a broadcasting network such as the BBC can be held responsible for what it transmits, surely Twitterers should be too?

LESSON 2 Valuing technology companies remains an inexact science

·         Facebook shares fell 24% in the first three days of open trading

·         Another example:

o   October 2011, HP bought the Cambridge-based company for $11.7bn. Last month, HP announced that it was taking an $8.8bn write-off because it had realised that Autonomy was not worth anything like its purchase price. HP claimed that $5.5bn of the write-off was explained by the discovery of "accounting irregularities"

LESSON 3 Raspberries come in unexpected flavours

Newsweek unveils final print edition

·         80-year-old US current affairs magazine Newsweek has revealed the image that will grace the cover of its last-ever print edition.

·         The death of the print edition was caused by falling advertising revenues, as audiences moved online.

·         From the new year, Newsweek will be a digital-only publication.

·         Editor Tina Brown described it as "a new chapter" for the magazine

·         Newsweek's first edition was published on 17 February, 1933

·         At its height, it had a circulation of 3 million, but declining readership and advertising revenue saw it fall into losses.

·         The move to a digital edition will allow Newsweek to cut costs such as printing, postage and distribution

·         it will lose money from print advertisers, who traditionally pay more than their online counterparts

Why US newspaper publishers favour paywalls

·         becoming increasingly prevalent at newspaper websites across the United States

·         Eleven of the country's largest-selling 20 newspapers are either charging for access or have announced plans to do so

o   include America's top four titles: the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

·         The Globe & Mail article also says that more than 35% of US newspaper readers are regularly discovering some restrictions in their online surfing

o   though most papers allow visitors to access several articles for free before hitting a wall. This so-called "metered model" is the most popular form of charging.

The Writing is on the paywall – but the end of the print is not quite nigh

·         Everybody knows that print newspaper sales are plummeting while unique visits to the same papers' websites go soaring on

·         The Telegraph, the Guardian and many of the rest are down overall between 8% and 10% year-on-year: but their websites – with the Mail breaking 7 million unique browsers a day

·         As for news and current affairs magazines – which you'd expect to find in the eye of the digital storm – they had a 5.4% increase to report. In short, on both sides of the Atlantic, although some magazine areas went down, many, even in an economic blizzard, showed vibrant growth.

·         And you can discover a similar phenomenon at work when it comes to reading books

·         Already 360 US papers – including most of the biggest and best – have built paywalls around their products

Notes | How Facebook Changed the World (BBC)

TUNISIA

·         The internet allowed events to be recorded hour by hour

·         The Arab Spring – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya

·         December 2010; The suicide of a fruit seller in Sidi Bouzid sparked uprising

o   He, plus other, continued supporting taunting from higher people

·         The internet revolution tipped balance of power

·         The day after he committed suicide, 100’s of people gathered where he set himself alight

·         This ultimately became a street war between the police and people who were sticking up for him.

·         Tunisian State TV reported nothing that was going on#

o   The press is highly censored.

·         However, citizens captured it on their phones

o   They had to avoid being arrested/shot

·         People shared the footage though Facebook

o   1 in 5 (2 million) Tunisians have Facebook

§  Many people thought it was trivial hence why they don’t have it.

·         (Assad, the PM of Syria) (Banali – PM of Tunisia)

·         2 normal every day citizen bloggers blogged about it.

o   ¼ had broadband

o   90% had mobile phones

·         Benali had censored all political websites

·         From them 2 people sharing their footage through Facebook, they spread virally, rapidly

o   They were picked up by Al Jazera

·         They had also set up software on their mobile phones to set up a live stream.

·         Benali fled to Saudi Arabia

·         It only took 28 days from the 1^st protest to the collapse of the regime

o   Copycat demonstration

§  Theory – audiences influenced by what they see

·         New and digital media allowed the protest to speed up pace.

EGYPT

·         Cairo, political activists watched with awe

o   Tunisia made them aware of what they could accomplish

·         However, Mubarak, the PM of Egypt would be harder to crack

·         Activists found the internet the safest way to communicate with one another

·         Khaled Syeed – Martyr – was beaten by police as he exposed the corrupt nature of the government

o   This rallied support for a revolution

·         5 million facebook users

·         Protests were planned by activists

o   These were inspired by events in Tunisia

·         20% of Egyptians had access to interent

o   Therefore, they used taxi drivers to spread their message

·         25^th January 2011 – Beginnings of uprising

·         Obama supported Mubarak

o   This made many Egyptians angry

o   They felt content for Obama

o   These were reasons for  a more active protest

·         The government switched off communication – internet and mobile networks

o   People cut off from each other. 25^th Feb

·         However, they didn’t really need it for their plan

o   Only used it to deceive police of where the demonstrations were going to be.

·         As people didn’t know what was happening, the actually went outside to see.

·         The internet later went back on

o   People received many patriotic messages from the government but they did not care

·         The army, strongest institution in Egypt

o   Paid 1.3 billion to empower it.

·         As they finally sided with the protestors – Mubarak had no other choice but to step down  

Media News | Infographic: The Tech Savy Kids of 2013

This shows the impact of the rapid growth and expansion of technology (new and digital technology). This shows the extent of technology being engrained into our everyday lives that even now babies as young as 6 months have access and "use" their parents devices. This also suggest how technology will develop in the future, also suggesting that the younger generations will not be able to live without it and will be a necessity in everyday life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/jan/09/infographic-children-tech-exposure-2013

Media Story | Irish newspapers and the battle to control online content

Irish newspapers created quite a stir when they demanded a fee for incoming links to their content. Controversy erupted on 30 December, when an attorney from the Irish law firm McGarr solicitors exposed the case of one of its clients. Women's Aid organisation, being asked to pay a fee to Irish newspapers for each link they send to them.the twitter sphere, the blogosphere and, by and large, every self-proclaimed cyber moral authority, reacted in anger to Irish newspapers' demands that go against common sense as well as against the most basic business judgment.

But on closer examination, the position of the Irish dead tree media is just the tip of the iceberg for an industry facing issues that go well beyond its reluctance to embrace the culture of web links.As for the Irish newspapers, despite their dumb rate card for links, they claimed to be open to "arrangements" Having said that, such posturing reflects a key fact: traditional media, newspapers or broadcast media, send contradictory messages when it comes to links, which are simply not part of their original culture.

This shows how traditional media institutions are trying to rein in on money making through online news, despite the fact it may be seen as too harsh. This is probably due to the fact that they foresee the decline of newspapers inevitable and need to continue a means of gaining revenue.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/07/irish-newspapers-control-online-content