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?

 Web 2.0 (as defined by Tim O’Reilly in 2005) is essentially a medium that allows audiences to become producers of media texts. Anyone with a web connection can create and publish text (UGC) it has reduced the duty of gatekeeper, if not removed them completely. The internet has increased pluralism; it has provided the people with a platform to voice their opinions. Another advantage of new and digital media is that it “interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”(John Gilmore) therefore, it allows pluralism to flourish .The views and ideologies of political leaders and governments can now be challenged through the internet, by the internet. As Al Gore called the internet “Exciting and revolutionary” and went further to say it has had a “more profound impact than the printing press.”  Since 1991, from when the first website went online, ¼ of the world is now online and this number is expanding.  As Tim Bernes Lee said ‘let the people be free’ and this is exactly what the internet has provided, freedom. Many everyday things can now be done online for example banking (97% of bank transactions are done online in Estonia). New and digital media has provided the globe with a “New World Currency.” The web collapses distances.

However, with so much freedom there must be flaws.  New and digital media has created a digital divide, the digital haves and the digital have nots.  Lee Sigel, New York writer and cultural critic, called the internet a “double edged sword”.  The web has provoked Al Qaeda & Taliban to use shock tactics as a form of propaganda. 90%of the market is Microsoft who pressurised company's to have computers with windows software preinstalled. This has shown that the online world also has a hierarchy like the real world with websites such as Google and Face Book dominating the online market. The freedom given to the audience has decreased with sites like Wikipedia now having admins to restrict and police what users post up on Wikipedia. The accuracy of information online has also caused a concern; Andrew Keen compares the people posting information on the internet to “a million of monkeys on computers”.   It is difficult to take information off the internet, someone once said… "You can't take something off the Internet - it's like taking pee out of a pool." The growth of new media has caused piracy to increase in both the film and music industry with sites such as Napster playing a major role in the increase.

Web 2.0: Participation or Hegemony

The political: Ian Tomlinson

·         Amateur video posted on the web was the death of Ian Tomlinson, who died after being hit by a policeman during the 2009 G20 summit protests in London. 

·         A New York lawyer sent a video he hadd made of the incident to The Guardianàthis showed that the police version of events was not true. 

·         User-generated video of the event was made available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECMVdl-9SQ).

·         This emphasises how audiences can more readily challenge the official version of events.

·         The policeman Simon Harwood, seen on video attacking Tomlinson, is to be tried for manslaughter next year; without the ‘Web 2.0’ intervention it is unlikely that the case would ever have gone to court.

·         Technology empowers the people, who, oppressed by years of authoritarian rule, will inevitably rebel, mobilizing themselves through text messages, Facebook, Twitter…
Morozov 2011: xiv

·         Morozov explains how countries like China and Iran have successfully controlled the general population’s access to the internet, and so have prevented the free circulation of information. However it has also been argued that social networking sites have facilitated the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings as they enabled protestors to bypass the centralised state media.

·         Politically, then, the internet has given the people a potentially powerful tool to communicate with each other, and so to challenge their rulers. 

·         However, as governments can exert a large degree of control over the internet, ‘We Media’ on its own is not sufficiently strong to allow ‘people power’ to succeed. 

·         The internet has caused official control to loosen, it hasn’t removed it. 

The trivial: zoo visits and laughing babies

·         In their research into YouTube, Jean Burgess and Joshua Green (2009) found that 42% of the clips they analysed were uploaded by fans rather than the traditional media companies themselves. 

·         Last two years this percentage will have increased, as YouTube has become a medium of ‘catch up’ distribution in the UK, for Channels 4 and 5. 

·         Burgess and Green conclude that there are two YouTubes; they argue it is ‘a space where these two categories [traditional media and home video] co-exist and collide, but do not really converge’ (41).

·         Even as we become used to watching television programmes on computers, mobile phones or music players, we still experience it as television.

Co-opting the amateur 

·         YouTube has allowed ‘ordinary’ people to become celebrities, such as ‘Charlie is so cool like!!!’ (http://www.youtube.com/user/charlieissocoollike?blend=1&ob=4), they do not have the same status as celebrities created by traditional media. 

Graeme Turner (2004) argues...

·         Even when ordinary people become celebrities through their own creative efforts, there is no necessary transfer of media power: they remain within the system of celebrity native to, and controlled by, the mass media. (Burgess and Green 2009: 23)

·         Hence without the help of traditional media Charlie McDonnell cannot exercise ‘celebrity power’; he is defined as a celebrity in the terms of traditional media only.

·         The internet does offer a diversity of viewpoints, both ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, it is much more difficult for establishment discourses to structure how meaning is created, and so it is less hegemonic (Driscoll and Gregg, 2008). 

Who’s got the power? 

·         Has Web 2.0 switched power from producers to the audience? No, but the balance has shifted. 

·         Today we can easily produce texts ourselves, even if we seem to be more interested in mimicking traditional media by becoming YouTube celebrities, or watching music videos and/or television programmes by favourite artists.

·         However it is still early days in the development of user-generated content.

·         Over the next few years, net-based audience-produced texts may start having a more distinctive impact upon the internet.

Weekly News

The media toll in Syria continued last week with the deaths of at least seven journalists. Citizen journalist Hozan Abdel Halim Mahmoud was killed while filming clashes between the rebels and a Kurdish militia in the north eastern region of Al-Hasaka on 20 November. Mohammed Al-Khalid, a citizen journalist from Homs, was executed in Aleppo on 18 November for repeatedly criticising the actions of a state militia.Abdullah Hassan Kaake, a citizen journalist, died under torture by military intelligence in Aleppo on 17 November. Two of his brothers – Abdel Ghani, another citizen-journalist, and Ahmed Kaake – were previously killed.Two other citizen journalists were killed. Mohammad Al-Zaher, also known as Abu Nasser Na'imi, was killed during shooting of the Damascus suburb of Al-Buaida on 19 November; Mustafa Kerman was fatally injured during shelling of the Aleppo district of Al-Bustan Al-Qassir on 16 November.

My Opinion: Could citizen journalism have its limits? There’s one thing recording an incident on the tram or bus but it’s completely different when recording an even in a ‘war zone’. Is risking your life really worth it?

Letter to Murdoch

To Mr R Murdoch,

                                I am not one that would question your intelligence and abilities as a businessman and there is not many in the world that could seeing as the empire you have built, yet I was very intrigued to discover that from 2009 consumers were only to read The Times if they pay.This action of yours left me a tad bit confused. I use to think your main motive was for the people being up to date with news but your action clearly states you don’t care about the people; you want as much profit as possible. Where I thought the people were your priority, the truth is that money is your priority. You believe that if you are successful other newspapers will follow you and do the same. Well maybe this could’ve worked when newspapers first went online but since consumers have got the taste of free news and the rapid growth of social network sites have grown it might be to late to implement your idea. There are many flaws in your idea, not all newspapers put up a ‘pay wall’ and the ones that don’t will become more popular. The rapid growth in the popularity of social networks such as Face book and Twitter would allow one subscriber to share the news to hundreds/thousands of people. The impact of citizen journalism has caused edited/mediated news to seem untrue to an extent. Taking all this into account I think you need to utilize what you have got to its maximum potential and use advertising to gain your profits rather than a ‘pay wall’. I believe that you need to sort your priorities out and understand how important the people are after all, what are newspapers without the people?

Thank You

Virtual Revolution 2 (notes)

·         ¼ of the world connected

·         Twitter-2006-San Francisco

·         “We change our tools, and then our tools change us.” - Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon.com)

·         “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”- John Gilmore

·         Iran-Banned Media-Twitter spread the news

·         “More profound impact than the printing press.”- Al Gore

·         Someone once said… "You can't take something off the Internet - it's like taking pee out of a pool."

·         “The Internet is just the world passing around notes in a classroom.”  – Jon Stewart

·         Wiki Leaks-Julian Assange

·         ‘The Great Firewall of China’

·         Iranian crisis- Blocked FB & Twitter- ‘Hackstack’ (software)-Austin Heap

·         “Double edged sword.”-Lee Siegel

·         China- 253 million online

·         ’30,000 police the web (secretly)- BBC & New York Times BLOCKED!

·         ‘50 cent army online’- 300,000…post articles in favour of the government

·         Cencorship – (“One is guiding”)(“One is blocking”)- Yeng

·         “Threaten the culture.”- Hu Yung

·         PayPal(1998)- Peter Thiel- “New World Currency”

·         ‘Darker uses of the internet’

·         Al Qaeda & Taliban- Shock Tactics-Propaganda

·         “Portable Homeland”

·         Estonia- 97% Bank transactions online

·         May 2007(Estonia)- ‘Denial of service’(bombardment of traffic causes lack of access)

·         FB=350million..3^rd largest population country

·         “Cyber-balkanization”

·         “Web collapses distances”