Media institutions

Media institutions

Media institutions - large organisations that own, produce or regulate different kinds of media content

Institutional bias task

• The headlines on Fox News
• The front page of The Sun
• An editorial in The Guardian
• A parliamentary report on BBC News 24
• A police/crime documentary on ITV1
• A typical British 'social realist' drama film (e.g. Ill Manors)
• A typical Hollywood action film
• An episode of Big Brother on C5

• There is less censorship and a lack of control of online information in comparison to traditional ‘mass media’ therefore it has become associated with what Castells describes as a “technological blossoming of the culture of freedom, individual innovation and entrepreneurialism” (Castells, 1996, 5).
• The existence of this ‘anti-establishment culture’ has led some people to question the power that traditional institutions have over the internet. Negroponte writes that ‘the monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries’ (1997, 106).

Current descriptions of the Internet:

• Less censorship - pornography, extreme politics, conspiracy theories
• More freedom - blogs, forums, global
• Supporting innovation and entrepreneurialism - internet startups, social networks 
• Anti-establishment - G8 protests, file sharing such as with Edward Snowden
• Cottage industry - eBay, Gumtree

Herman and McChesney (1997) were not convinced that the power of traditional institutions will be relinquished so easily:

The internet and the digital revolution do not pose an immediate or even foreseeable threat to the market power of the media giants. In the current political climate, moreover, it is likely that the global media firms will be able to incorporate the internet and related computer networks into their empires, while the egalitarian potential of the technology is minimised

Internet empires:

• Google
• Facebook
• Viacom
• Microsoft
• News Corp

Online corporate power can be said to be on the rise since less companies control the global media wealth and rather there are just a select few that do this and dominate theoverall media:

• Comcast (€48 billion) NBC, Universal Studios…
• Google (€45 billion)
• Disney (€33 billion)
• News Corp (€27 billion)
• DirecTV (€23 billion)
• Time Warner (€22 billion) HBO, Warner Bros…
• Viacom (€21 billion) MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount…
• Sony (€17 billion)

Somebody’s watching you: Social media and surveillance

Somebody’s watching you: Social media and surveillance

1.

The article talks about how social media can often be effective in blurring the lines between different 'life spheres' and not bringing about a sense of separation between 'different worlds.' Things like this mainly come about due to social networks being quite business-oriented and data being something that is worth quite a lot nowadays in a time where data mining is becoming more and more used. Government surveillance is also something that is looked upon quite warily since while they may claim to seeking total surveillance for the protecting freedom against terrorists, the breach of freedom for citizens it entails is quite a huge sacrifice.

2.

While the protection of citizens is something I believe the government should do their best to do, I do believe that a line has to be drawn between them actually defending against national threats and plain snooping on its citizens. Issues like this have arisen in the media with stories such as the NSA phone tapping scandal and also more locally, the News of the World phone hacking case where phones were being hacked for information to be used by the media. All things like this make you realise that perhaps it's quite a big price that we pay for protection by the executive.

Introduction to NDM: reading and blog task

Introduction to NDM: reading and blog task

1.

The 'Living and learning and digital age' article detailed the link between both life at home and school, with aspects of the media such as social networks being the main thing taken into account. One of the primary things that the article discusses is the way in which although media is encouraged to be used in school to help in terms of things like effective management, things like mobile phones that could have their use implemented to better learning and teaching are completely forbidden there. Not only this but also how some of the happenings that take place on social media have to be tackled by teachers in school is talked about, since they have a sense of responsibility to solve these problems.

The Periscope article mainly talks about how with the app being a 'live video streaming platform,' both privacy and in fact piracy can prove to have quite huge implications. Privacy in the sense that the video can provide people as to your location data without you even granting it that kind of permission and piracy since people can re-transmit what's supposed to be paid-for content. This has been seen with the likes of the Mayweather v Pacquaio fight and the Game of Thrones season 5 premiere. Despite this though, the app can still be said to have potential with the opportunity it provides to do things like provide people with an avenue for citizen journalism.

2.

• The first part of the essay is spent briefly discussing what the case study actually is, including what as a brand its aim is 
• Throughout the essay evaluation points are made signified by the word 'however'. This is done not only with the various arguments but also when thinking about why users of the service may use it in a certain way
• Additionally example are used not only with names of artists but also figures and dates

3.

Digital media has changed my life in a positive sense over the past 5 years in that it's offered a unified, single platform for me to access educational resources and sources of leisure. Whether this has been from websites such as BBC Bitesize or YouTube, digital media has always provided an avenue to obtain information from which I go on to use in things like homework. However a more negative thing is that information from the internet cannot always be 100% regarded as reliable or even truthful, particularly when education is considered, and additionally there's the increasing distraction that digital media provides to the students with the sheer amount of things that it offers.

Task 1

• Text documents 
• Photographs - Instagram, Tumblr and Flickr
• Video - YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion
• Movies - Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and Hulu
• Videogames - Gamespot, Polygon and IGN
• Audio recordings - Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Tidal

Task 2

The internet has been called:

— “the most important medium of the twentieth century” (Briggs and Burke 2005, 244) and:

— “an application that will usher in The Information Age” (Castells 1996, 328)

I do agree with Briggs and Burke in that the internet has been established as somewhat the lead platform of the current times. Other platforms such as print have been on a steep decline and eventually we may happen to see a complete death of them altogether. 

By the Information Age, Castells talks about the current age in which humans have (increased) access to information and also a sense of control over it. 

Task 3

• Privacy
• Communication
• Business
• Nature of information
• Community
• Culture
• Copyright
• Online safety