Week 1: 1.1 Introduction: How does the media engage you? How do you engage with media?

Posted in convergence, new media, old media By Yvette 0 comments

Reading Material:

Jenkins,H. (2006). ''Worship at the altar of convergence'': A new paradigm for understanding media change. In H.Jenkins, Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide (pp 1-24). New York: New York University Press.

Summary: -

Convergence culture, where old and new media collide,...where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways
Convergence

the flow of content across multiple media platforms
the cooperation between multiple media industries
the migratory behaviour of media audiences
a word that manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural, and social changes
Example: Bert is Evil
a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices
represent cultural shift
an old concept taking on new meanings
refers to a process, not an end point
alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres and audiences
involves both a change in the way media is produced and a change in the way media is consumed
will be a kind of kludge rather than a fully integrated system
both a top-down corporate driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process
requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media
represents a risk since most of these media fear a fragmentation or erosion of their markets

Participatory culture - see producers and consumers as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules
Corporations still exert greater power than any individual consumer
Consumption – collective intelligence (Pierre Levy) – alternative source of media power
Central mobiles have become to the process of media convergence
Industry leaders were acknowledging the importance of the role that ordinary consumer can play not just in accepting convergence, but actually in driving the process
Example: Sony and Microsoft had the technology to bring about convergence, but they hadn’t figured out why anyone would want it
Video games vs. traditional media
Movie moguls saw games not as simple as stamping the franchise logo but expanding the storytelling experience
Filmmakers wanted to use games to explore ideas that couldn’t fit within two-hour films
A movie land agent explained, such collaborations meant taking everyone out of their ‘comfort zones’.
‘Freedom is fostered when the means of communication are dispersed…Central control is more likely when the means of communication are concentrated, monopolized, and scarce, as are great networks.’ (Ithiel de Sola Pool, 1983)
New media technologies enabled the same content to flow through many different channels and assume many different forms at the point of reception
Digitization set the conditions for convergence; corporate conglomerates created its imperative
‘Convergence does not mean ultimate stability or unity…There is no immutable law of growing convergence; the process of change is more complicated than that.’ (Ithiel de Sola Pool, 1983)
How we maintain the potential of participatory culture in the wake of growing media concentration
The author goal’s is to helped ordinary people grasp how convergence impacting the media they consume and, at the same time, to help industry leaders and policymakers understand consumer perspectives on these changes
History teaches us that old media never die – and they don’t even necessarily fade away
Delivery technologies – the tools we use to access media content
Historian Lisa Gitelman define media works on two levels: first, a medium is a technology that enables communication; second, a medium is a set of associated ‘protocols’ or social and practices
Delivery system are only technologies; media are also cultural systems
A medium’s content may shift, its audience may change, and its social status may rise or fall
Each old medium was forced to coexist with the emerging media
Old media are not being displaced, rather, their functions and status are shifted by the introduction of new technologies
Protocols express a huge variety of social, economic, and material relationships
Cheskin Research (2002) explained, ‘The old idea of convergence was that all devices would converge into one central device that did everything for you’
We are entering an era where media will be everywhere
We are already living within a convergence culture
Corporate convergence coexists with grassroots convergence
Corporate and grassroots convergence reinforce each other
Sometimes, these two forces are at war
Extension, synergy and franchising are pushing media industries to embrace convergence
Relations between producers and consumers are breaking down as consumers seek to act upon the invitation to participate in the life of the franchises
Expanding participation necessarily sparks further change

View: Did You Know 4.0

Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Music by DoKashiteru, "Home Tonight." Design and development by XPLANE
September 14, 2009 — This is another official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

Summary:

It is actually a statistic for media convergence
New media has growing unexpectedly fast and old media demand is decreasing obviously
''So what used to fit in a building, now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.'' - Ray Kurzweil
It's easier than ever to reach a large audience but harder than ever to really connect with it

Course Theme:
1. What are major changes in the move from old to media?

What is old media?

Newspapers, magazines, direct mail advertising, radio and television
Geographically limited
One way communication
Provider control the content
Presentation is more important than content
Content and presentation cannot be separated
“The medium is the message” (Marshall McLuhan)

What is new media?

World Wide Web
The assumptions are opposite with the old media
World wide
Two way communication
Provider do not and cannot control the content
Content is more important than presentation
Content and presentation are separate
The medium is provided by the viewer; the message is provided by the creator.

From analog to digital
There are many writers and editors switch their job from old media (The New York Times,BusinessWeek, USAToday and etc) and create their own startup and join the new media organisation (deadline.com, Yahoo, TMZ.com and etc)

The major changes in the move from traditional media to new media is the information processing. The information of new media is rapidly changing day to day. It is always connected and updated to real time. For example, Demand Media produces 4,000 pieces of content a day. All studies show that the usage of internet is rising. However,a high percentage of newspaper organization was declined in circulation. Figure 1.1 shows the top 15 daily newspaper circulation in 2008 and 2009.

Name of Newspaper	2008 Circulation	2009 Circulation	Percent Change
Wall Street Journal	2,011,999	2,024,269	0.6%
USA Today	2,293,310	1,900,116	-17.1
New York Times	1,000,665	927,851	-7.3
Los Angeles Times	739,147	657,468	-11.1
New York Daily News	632,595	544,167	-14.0
New York Post	625,421	608,042	-18.8
Washington Post	622,714	582,844	-6.4
Chicago Tribune	516,032	465,892	-9.7
Houston Chronicle	448,271	384,437	-14.2
Philadelphia Inquirer*	300,675	361,480	20.2*
Newsday (NY)	377,517	357,124	-5.4
Arizona Republic	361,333	316,874	-12.3
Minneapolis Star Tribune	322,360	304,543	-5.5
San Francisco Chronicle	339,440	251,782	-25.8
Dallas Morning News	338,933	263,810	-22.2

Figure 1.1

Note: Circulation numbers from Audit Bureau of Circulations publishers' statements for the 26 weeks ending September.
*The jump is attributable to the inclusion, for the first time, of the Daily News, which is co-owned and now treated as an edition of the Inquirer. It is not an increase in the circulation of the Inquirer alone.

Only 13% of the newspaper organisations listed in the chart has increased in their circulation. There are less people willing to read the printed newspaper. Some of the main reasons for this trend is because the old media is more costly than the new media and readers want to choose the content they want to read. Figure 1.2 is a video from The Daily Show. It interviewed The New York Times, which its sales fall by 10.6% on weekdays and 7.6% on Sunday in the six month ended on September 2009.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

End Times

www.thedailyshow.com

June 10, 2009

End Times

Jason Jones visits the the New York Times' offices to find out why the last of a dying breed prefers aged news to real news.

The main point Jason Jones emphasized is ' why is aged news better than real news?' He think that newspaper is a content that only old generation will read and he try to convince the approaching to the real time news is important yet the newspaper cannot achieve.

''Show me one thing that is happened today,'' requested Jason Jones.

What are their impacts?

July 30, 2009 — Social Media Revolution: Is social media a fad?
A video produced by the author of Socialnomics.

New Media vs Old Media

From the video above, we notice that how the new media develop rapidly and the statistic also enable us to understand more clearly about the development of the new media. Everyone can access to the internet, there is no place that is further than any place. We can reach wherever internet coverage we want as long as we can access the internet. The access is world wide. However, the access of the old media is limited. It can be local or furthest is near the country. We hardly can access the media text from a far away country. Maybe we can post the media text to other countries but still it might become the 'aged' media text.

The audience in new media can always choose the content they want. They interact with the media. They participate actively in the media. It is also believed that the audience is the main impact of the development of media. Although we can see that the audience is mostly the young generation, old generation also started to participate in the new media in order to closer their relationship with the young generation. Some supporters of new media are saying that the old media force their audience to read the content. It doesn't mean that the old media force their audience to buy their media text but in terms of reading some content that their audience might not want to read. In brief, the old media control the content. In this argument, although the old media control fully in the content, the newspaper started to include readers' opinion in the publication. They try to approach a two way communication to build up the relationship with their audience. Furthermore, although the new media audience is larger than the old media, the audience are still learning on how to distinguish fact from rumor among all the new information sources, and in the meantime, they still rely on established newspapers and broadcasting.

References
Agincourt Computing (1999), Old Media, New Media Retrieved April 7 from
http://www.aginc.net/media.htm

B. Hongcharu, Somkiat E. (2009), A Comparative Study on Traditional Mass Media, The Internet and Mobile Phones For Integrated Marketing Communications, Journal of Business and Economics Research; Dec 2009, 7(12), pg 31

Lauren Hatch (2010), Meet 25 Media Stars Who Leaped From Old Media To New Media Retrieved April 14 from

http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-25-media-stars-who-leaped-from-old-media-to-new-media-2010-4

Matt Weiser (2003), The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment, American Studies International, Feb 2003, 41, 1/2 Retrieved April 10 from Academic Research Library

The State of The News Media, An Annual Report on American Journalism Retrieved April 14 from

http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/

William Reilly (2010), Content vs. Presentation Retrieved April 10 from

http://www.reilly2001.info/xml-2-html/ch01s02.html

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