Gone Too Far

Gone Too Far

1)

‘Gone Too Far’ a film written by Bola Agbaje and directed by Destiny Okaragha is a comedic yet particularly insightful look into what life in the melting pot that is south London can hold.  Taking place almost wholly across a single day in the area, we follow two teenage brothers who have long been separated from one another – one from London (Yemi), the other from Nigeria (Ikudayisi). Upon returning from Nigeria, their mum sends them on a simple errand to go and buy some okra and this is what spirals into the actual journey that we see take place throughout the movie. While this journey sees the brothers getting caught up with a gang with Yemi admiring the lover of one of the members of it and also things going on within the UK music, it’s the topic of ethnic identity that is tackled by the film that is especially notable as being where the film shines at its best.

One of the ways that this is looked at is with stereotypes. Throughout the film we are presented with a number of different stereotypes, with them being prominent within the gang that we see. With Razer for example we see a young black man who is shown as being uneducated and quite erratic in behaviour, as well as being involved in a gang which works as being quite a dominant representation. However while things like this are present, it’s the conflict that the film portrays of adversity between Caribbeans and Africans in Britain that is quite interesting. It provides social commentary on an issue that is not frequently discussed in the media today and perhaps the production actually undertaking the issue will spark some extensive discussion regarding the issue.

2)

Personally, I am for the motion that films featuring ethnic minorities should only be produced by those who have the ethnic identity presented. A concern that’s often brought up in the media and one that is even shared by me is that people from ethnic minorities don’t seem to be represented that frequently whether it’s within things like film or TV. What does tend to be shown of ethnic minorities when they are portrayed are often just dominant stereotypes that exist within society, if not pure caricatures of what’s actually real. For black people for example, what tends to be often shown, by typically white producers/directors, is them having a criminal background and usually no inclination to provide themselves with knowledge or ascension from the position that they’re in. This has been particularly controversial in recent times with films such as The Lone Ranger having Johnny Depp playing a Native American and even Disney planning to have Mulan played by a white actor – this in specific sparking things like petitions against it. If things changed to where the films were produced by those from that ethnic minority presented though, it’s likely we’d get more an insightful look into certain cultures and not just that but increased representation of ethnic minorities as actors. We see this now currently being embraced with the Black Panther film for example, where 90% of the cast will be African or African-American. With this it can be expected that the film will actually do a better job of actually representing black people, something that can without a doubt be said to not always be the case within the film industry today when it releases in 2018.

Marxism & Pluralism - homework essay

Marxism & Pluralism - homework essay

'The development of new/digital media means the audience is more powerful in terms of consumption and production. Discuss the arguments for and against this view.'

The rise of new and digital media has been so impactful in the sense that it can be argued that it has either empowered or restricted audiences, if not both since the very creation of the Internet. However it's looking at these from both a Marxist and pluralist perspective, which really give a deeper insight into these effects, with the former taking the more cynical approach to things in saying that the Internet is working to just reinforce the status quo and the latter suggesting that things like freedom of speech are promoted through it.

A Marxist perspective would argue that the so-called “information revolution” has done little to benefit audiences or to subvert the established power structures in society. Far from being a “great leveller” (Krotoski, 2012) as many have claimed, it has merely helped to reinforce the status quo by promoting dominant ideologies. The most popular news website in the UK by a considerable margin is the ‘Mail Online’, which receives more than 8 million hits every month and is continuing to expand rapidly – with forecasts that it will make £100 million or more in digital revenues in the next three years. Similar to its tabloid print edition, the website takes a Conservative, right-wing perspective on key issues around gender, sexuality and race and audiences appear to passively accept what the Marxist theorist, Gramsci, called a hegemonic view. When one of their chief columnists, Jan Moir, wrote a homophobic article about the death of Stephen Gately in 2009 there were Twitter and Facebook protests but, ultimately, they did not change the editorial direction of the gatekeepers controlling the newspaper.

A pluralist perspective though, would take up the viewpoint that audiences have been empowered in terms of consumption and production in the sense that citizen journalism has become increasingly more prominent. With this being the the collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public, especially by means of the Internet, we can see that audiences have a good level of things like freedom of speech which they can utilise relating to either 'conforming, accommodating or rejecting' (Gurevitch). We can see this represented through the widespread use of blogs or even social media by audiences but also more importantly, in reporting cases to do with injustice. For example in the case of the death of Ian Tomlinson, without the recording of a stander-by, perhaps no prosecution would have been made to the police officer who struck him down and it's cases like this that make you realise that 'the internet has given readers much more power' (Murdoch). This newfound power is something that can be said that makes the internet the great tool it is today.

Marxists would also suggest that in reality, the internet is just a continuation of newspapers in the sense that the websites that most people access for things like news are from the same 'minority of (media) producers. While the internet does allow for people to create their own news sources, at the end of the day it's still the ones from leading organisations that are going to be gaining the most traffic since 'global media firms will be able to incorporate the internet and related computer networks into their empires' (Herman and McChesney, 1997). This can even be displayed with the top 5% of all websites accounting for almost 75% of user volume (Lin and Webster, 2002), representing that even if users do have the capability of producing their own news content, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be accessed on a mass scale. With this established, these organisations may simply provide audiences with content that is 'dumbed down' to solely generate mass audiences, helping them in achieving their motive of increased profit. Stories like Kim Kardashian being robbed at gunpoint link to this, since they seem to gain more clicks than stories about actual important news, relating to Alain de Botton saying that there is a 'yawning divide between news that is important news that is fun.' These dumbed down articles can also be linked to the hypodermic needle model, in which the media producers 'inject' information into audiences that can have adverse effects on them, like perhaps them not valuing news that actually matters.

However pluralists would rebut this, saying that audiences are more active in receiving news than is often suggested. McQuail said that the relationship between media institutions and audiences is 'generally entered into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms.' Rather than go with what the hypodermic needle model was putting across, that audiences just consume media without any thought behind it, as mentioned before they have the ability to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject' content according to their prior needs and dispositions according to the plural values within society. One of the standout examples of this manipulation by audiences is with the Brexit and Trump victories. More dominant ideologies that exist such as government being more centreground in their nature to please the most amount of people are now being challenged, a plural value. Polarising, more extreme views seem to be what appeal to the public the most and what's particularly interesting is the fact that most newspapers were more on the side of Bremain in the UK. This view wasn't shared with the audience though, and we see this through Brexit's victory which is representative of how audiences aren't these passive receivers that they may be made out to be.

In conclusion, it can definitely be said that new and digital media has empowered audiences in making them a lot more active and allowing them to manipulate the content that they get to their own ideologies. At the same time though, aspects like how media empires will simply incorporate the internet into their empires shine a light on the fact that at the end of the day, they'll still most likely be the more dominant player within the media.

28/11/16 - Facebook doesn't need to ban fake news to fight it (23)

28/11/16 - Facebook doesn't need to ban fake news to fight it (23)

After the alarm the publishing of fake news by Facebook has caused, ranging from death hoaxes about Tiger Woods to lies regarding the US presidential candidates, it's now being put into question whether they should actually be the ones drawing the line as to the news that is being published. This has been brought about with it now being asked whether we'd 'be revolted if one company owned all the newsstands and decided what was proper and improper reading fare.' Problems with these stories on Facebook crop up firstly through the fact that if a friend shares a fake article, it's presented as a standard post with the picture of the person who sent it. This presentation as a 'standard post' entail it having the top image, headline, and sometimes an introductory paragraph. This unified presentation essentially 'average(s) out' the credibility of all stories on the site, which only particularly attentive readers being able to identify giveaways as to them being fake. The 'like, share and comment' buttons all help to make the story circulate even further as the Facebook algorithm values engagement as justification for showing it to more people. All of this has been done in a way that readers are sure to return to the social network and engage with the content on it which inadvertently will lead to them clicking on adverts which helps Facebook as an institution - ad revenue.

• Over the course of the 10 months leading up to the election, the top 20 fake news articles being shared on Facebook skyrocketed from 3 million “shares, reactions, and comments” to nearly 9 million, while mainstream media articles declined from 12 million shares, reactions, and comments in February to just 7.3 million by Election Day

It''s suggested by the writer of this article, that the most effective way for Facebook to deal with this whole situation is 'de-emphasise who shared a story into your timeline, instead branding it with the logo and name of the publication itself, and encourage readers to, well, read, before or instead of liking, sharing and commenting.' This appears to be a particularly useful way of lessening the circulation of fake news that occurs since it means that Facebook don't get the power of as well as presenting users with stories, also determining which ones are 'proper and improper reading.' Regardless of whether Facebook adopt this specific scheme or not, they are going to have to do something to stop the slander it's now being to receive as a social network.

28/11/16 - What the latest sales figures tell us about the state of newsprint (24)

28/11/16 - What the latest sales figures tell us about the state of newsprint (24)

The Audit Bureau of Circulations October print sales figures work only work to confirm the fact that less people are purchasing newspapers. Not only that though, but the statistics work to show how well national daily and Sunday titles are doing in competing against one another. Broadsheet newspapers such as The Times for example, are beginning to see losses in buyers month by month while the Daily Telegraph is actually winning them. With this it can be expected that eventually, The Times will surpass The Telegraph. The losses of The Guardian which have amounted to approximately 5% year-on-year have got questions cropping up about the future of the publication and more specifically, whether this will have it be digital-only, akin to The Independent. When tabloids are concerned, The Daily Mail has been managing to close the gap that there is between it and The Sun, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Headline sales; (bulks); = total without bulks; year-on-year percentage differences

• Daily Telegraph 456,999 (20,901) =436,098 -3.79%
• The Times 437,352 (74,060) =363,292 +10.94%
• i 278,843 (68,501) =210,342 +1.53%
• Financial Times 194,152 (21,562) =172,590 -7.16%
• Guardian 157,778 -5.5%
• Daily Mail 1,510,824 (73,882) =1,436,942 -5.2%
• Daily Express 397,236 -3.4%
• The Sun 1,672,217 (95,272) =1,576,945 -7.38%
• Daily Mirror 756,142 (45,000) =711,142 -10.17%
• Daily Star 462,306 +7%

Personally, I feel that this article just reinstates that the state of newspapers is in the unfortunate position that we've learned it's in. While certain papers may be gaining buyers, a notable amount of publications are losing them. Not only this, but the fact that papers such as The Guardian now could be considering a digital-only future is representative of the fact that the print platform is becoming increasingly unstable.

Marxism & Pluralism: Alain de Botton on the news

Marxism & Pluralism: Alain de Botton on the news

1)

I agree with the view of Alain de Botton in that the point of news is something that society still doesn't totally understand, along with news institutions themselves perhaps not providing us with the information they should be. Presented with an excess of it which tends to be based around sensationalism, particularly with tabloid newspapers, and a quite narrow-minded and limited agenda, current news doesn't make us take up the critical appreciation that we should be. Not only this, but it's getting increasingly difficult to get people to become engrossed in news that is actually important as oppose to news that is fun/entertaining.

2)

Marxism in particular can be linked to de Botton's criticisms of the news since something that tends to be described in the ideology is the concept of media output being 'dumbed down.' Rather than us as an audience receiving news that's important and is also going to be beneficial to us, rather we're provided with news that solely seeks to generate the hugest audience possible. From here we can also link this to the concept of the ruling elite trying to maintain the status quo since we're drip-fed with stories that are essentially just soft news.

3)

Pluralism and new technology can be used to challenge these views mainly in that audiences don't just get these stories and accept them for what they are. As pluralist values state, once audiences have read a story in the media they can then proceed to conform, accommodate, challenge or reject stories, so they're not as passive as they're often made out to be. Not only this but with the rise of new and digital media, audiences are given another way to challenge things they see published on the media through things like social networks.

4)

Supports - Kim Kardashian breaks her social media silence after Paris robbery and likes an Instagram post about ‘not giving up’ – hours after husband Kanye West is admitted to hospital

Challenges - Autumn statement: Hammond to crack down on letting fees

21/11/16 - In the new robopolitics, social media has left newspapers for dead (22)

21/11/16 - In the new robopolitics, social media has left newspapers for dead (22)

Robopolitics - the mechanised reproduction of campaign messages by campaign machines that bypass normal journalistic verification. Internet campaigning is now being deemed as the most effective way of spreading campaign messages with social media campaigns in particular being recognised as key. A campaign director for Leave.EU, Andy Wigmore in an interview with LSE researchers said that social media was the 'cheapest and most effective way we had of communicating a message,' instead of having to spend millions on newspaper advertising. What's particularly interesting here is how exactly it's decided what messages would would be used to get people to vote for a certain side. In focusing solely on increasing votes for a particular side, even messages that were untrue tended to be those that were repeated by campaigns, representative of this new prominence of post-truth politics. Message-targeting as well is something that was adopted by the Brexit campaigns in reaching out to potential voters. This involved the use of artificial intelligence (bots) which would go through a number of processes to see which messages were the most effective in reaching out to audiences while also being cost-effective. Things like this are representative of how newspapers are going to just continue to fail at competing with digital media as while its the transgressive that sells stories, as evident with both Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, robopolitics relies on mainstream media initially before focusing more directly on a certain group.

'Originally we were going to spend £5-10m on [newspaper] advertising.'

This article just shows how another thing that newspapers were once utilised for, spreading campaigns, is now something that new digital media is just able to do better. The complexity involved is robopolitics is of the sort that it really focuses down on a certain audience as oppose to appealing to more populist beliefs. Technology such as artificial intelligence help make these campaigns a lot more cost-efficient for their directors, so it's inevitable that eventually, all campaigns will use technology and not newspaper as a way of promoting campaigns, this being another nail in the coffin for the newspaper industry.

21/11/16 - Facebook announces new push against fake news after Obama comments (21)

21/11/16 - Facebook announces new push against fake news after Obama comments (21)

In wake of allegations that Facebook has been harbouring and displaying fake news to its users, co-founder of the company Mark Zuckerberg has announced some of the measures that will be taken to avoid this transmission of misinformation. Having initially relied on the Facebook community to help understand 'what is fake and what is not' and eventually penalising misinformation in the News Feed to prevent its spread, the company has now chosen to get in contact with 'respected fact-checking organisations' for third-party verification as well as develop technology capable of detecting false stories. Not only this, but the use of 'warning labels' on stories and just the general disruption of the economics of fake news in that people are profiting off of Facebook's ad system, is something that it is going to be focused on by the social network in particular to help prevent this fake news. All this comes after what has been an arguably rocky year for Facebook so far, with them firing their team of curators leading to its algorithm pushing false news and also the controversy regarding their deletion of the Vietnam war photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The alarm regarding Facebook's fake news mainly got about after President Obama referred to it as 'a threat to democracy.'

• Zuckerberg claims 99% of Facebook posts “authentic,” denies fake news there influenced election

Having read about Zuckerberg rejecting the 'crazy idea' that Facebook's publication of fake news influenced the result of the election just last week, it didn't resonate with me that it would become an issue even talked about by the most powerful man in the world. Obama's comments on this issue shows the pure alarm that this misinformation is producing, however what a lot of people need to understand at least in my opinion is that this is a part of new and digital media, whether unsavoury or not. The lack of gatekeepers that exist online means that means that articles that aren't even true can end up circulating around in a way that can't be said for newspapers. It appears that people have got a lot of getting used to to do with this issue.

NDM: Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

NDM: Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

1)

The traditional, hegemonic view in this case would be that the police, as a law enforcement agency, were just doing their best effort of maintaining the order that exists within society and preventing any intolerance of that. New and digital media helps create a different story though in the sense that it can be shown that the police overstepped their mark for their violent interactions with Ian Tomlinson, in some sense bringing injustices to the light of the general public. However the acquittal of the police officer who pushed Tomlinson is representative of how bringing injustices to light may not necessarily help bring victims the justice that they rightly deserve.

2)

The author argues that hegemony is being challenged in that the so-called 'ruling class' don't have the same control that they once did with society on the internet with it being a 'decentralised network' working to empower people 'oppressed by years of authoritarian rule.'

3)

In my opinion, new and digital media is without a doubt providing an avenue for audiences to challenge the ruling class. WikiLeaks particularly is representative of this, with the hacking of Hilary Clinton's emails for one coming to mind. This shows how the power of the oligarchy can often be put into question and be to some extent undermined by those online. However it can be argued that while there are challenges being increasingly made to the ruling class, overall through new and digital media they are simply reinforced further. This is do the fact that we still receive, to some extent, a replication of the news that we get on television and newspaper on e-media through things such as social media which makes us all-the-more accepting of this 'common sense'/dominant ideology.

4)

I believe that these events represent how these dominant ideologies that exist are now being challenged. Rather than a more centreground approach/outlook being adopted by the public, what seems to be more appealing nowadays is more polarising views whether it's from the right side of the political spectrum where we can place Donald Trump or the left where Bernie Sanders can be put in. Perhaps occurrences are simply the public representing their distaste for the middle ground governments across the world have adopted in the past.

14/11/16 - Newspapers big and small are facing an existential crisis (20)

14/11/16 -  Newspapers big and small are facing an existential crisis (20)

'Advertising revenue, is in the process of being destroyed,' and because of it local newspapers in particular are having no choice but to shut down. Eskdale & Liddesdale Advertiser for example, a Cumbrian newspaper, is beginning to lose money and is now seeking a 'community benefactor' to prevent the it from being closed next month after 168 years of publication. However what's particularly noteworthy here is that even much larger publications such as the Wall Street Journal are even facing their own issues having to make workers take voluntary redundancies as well as just more simply, letting staff go. As said by Washington Post writer Pete Vernon and rightly so: 'Print advertising, still the most lucrative revenue source for most newspaper companies, is in a freefall. The cash cow has steadily declined for years, but 2016 has seen an acceleration in the departure of ad dollars.' But what's the reason for this? As we've become more accustomed to it, digital giants are cited as the reason this freefall is occuring, 'threatening journalism itself.'

• By 2 November, with 48 people having already accepted the deal, it emerged that the Journal’s section covering Greater New York was being folded into the paper’s broader coverage of the city. That threatened the jobs of a further 19 staff (Wall Street Journal)
• According to a recent analysis, for the Columbia Journalism Review by Washington Post writer Pete Vernon, national print advertising in the States has fallen by 35.1% over the year
• Between 2010 and 2015, there had been “a relatively stable decline” of print advertising (between 5-8% each year, according to the Pew Research Center)
• A predicted 11% fall in advertising this year “now seems optimistic.”

This article works to reiterate the sentiments and facts that there as to the decline of the newspaper industry. This year particularly has been catastrophic for it, with even major, more renowned papers becoming victims to it too. What will be interesting to see is the move the companies in the industry will take, as in whether they'll migrate to the e-media platform or simply just remain dead, as well as how digital giants like Google and Facebook will have to respond as they are the ones mainly being held accountable for it.

14/11/16 - Mark Zuckerberg rejects 'crazy idea' Facebook influenced US election result (19)

14/11/16 - Mark Zuckerberg rejects 'crazy idea' Facebook influenced US election result (19)

Post the US presidential election on November 8th, Facebook has come under fire for having fake stories which supposedly influenced the vote to encourage more of the electorate to vote for Donald Trump. While Mark Zuckerberg the co-founder of Facebook denied these claims putting votes down to the 'lived experience' of each voter, it's been said that the algorithmic approach that Facebook has to displaying stories is to blame here. A 'filter bubble,' is created in which people only get to see news stories which reflect their same views and ideologies. Zuckerberg though, has responded to this saying that it's not that the social network doesn't show users stories that differ from their views, but rather the users just don't click on them and that there's a 'diversity of information' that exists on Facebook which is something traditional media simply can't replicate.

With all the allegations that there have been regarding the role of Facebook in the election, I believe it really is time for them to change their approach to displaying stories. The algorithmic method began causing controversy a few weeks ago, however it's surprising that it's even being suggested as a contributor the election result. And while it may also be true that audiences just don't click on these stories and create their own filter bubble of news, perhaps these more oppositional news pieces need to be presented in a much clearer manner.

14/11/16 - Support new news providers via a levy on digital giants like Google and Facebook (18)

14/11/16 - Support new news providers via a levy on digital giants like Google and Facebook (18)

This 'siphoning off' of advertising revenue by digital giants such as Google and Facebook, along with some of their other practices has escalated to a level where it's now being suggested that they now pay a 'levy on the operations of the largest digital intermediaries with the resulting funds redistributed to non-profit ventures with a mandate to produce original local or investigative news reporting.' The aim of this scheme is to be able to put at least in some sense, a stop to things like reduction in quality within journalism and combat against the loss of jobs within it. To get this potentially imposed, certain individuals (going from university lecturers to actual news editors themselves) are now backing an amendment going through Parliament to the digital economy bill just to get this cross-subsidy in place.

• 1% levy on the operations of the largest digital intermediaries with the resulting funds redistributed to non-profit ventures with a mandate to produce original local or investigative news reporting

I feel that this proposed amendment could do a good amount of help to the news industry as it is today. Particularly for more regional newspapers it would be of benefit and also investigative journalism which is something that's even deemed as a 'public good.' However before such a thing can actually be established in the first place, Parliament has to agree on it and observing whether they will or not will be particularly interesting. Not only this, but we can also anticipate opposition to this by 'the giants' like Google who will likely point to other factors that are causing the newspaper industry to slowly die out.

14/11/16 - Pressing problems for media old and new (17)

14/11/16 - Pressing problems for media old and new (17) 

This article discusses how the publication and spreading of misinformation within the news is becoming an increasingly huge problem. Amidst claims that one of the factors contributing to the victory of Donald Trump was fake news circulating on Facebook, fake news/'libel' is being viewed as more of an issue. While legislation such as Amendment I in the US constitution say that there should be freedom of the press, tabloid newspapers such as the National Enquirer have been infamous for publishing bogus stories with the Supreme Court failing to rule on these libel cases. With this it's being recommended that a workforce needs to be developed who actually police the publishing and broadcasting industry. At the same time though it's being said that this workforce needs to actually be human as oppose to the robots that most companies of today would look towards for efficiency purposes. This rule of 'if in doubt, don't publish it,' is one that many organisations still have to adopt.

• 38% of UK pupils aged 9 to 19 never questioned the accuracy of online information and only 10% said they were skeptical of it
• 66% of 9 to 19 year olds who went online regularly had not been given any guidance about how to judge the accuracy of online information
• Even a website that is perceived as being trustworthy like Wikipedia can contain serious errors. For example in 2005,Wikipedia incorrectly stated that the journalist John Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassination of the US president John F. Kennedy in 1963

The accuracy of information with the rise of new digital media is something that has to be paid attention to over time. The lack of gatekeepers that exist online only helps misinformation circulate more so this taskforce that is being discussed who police stories is without a doubt needed. However with even print publications such as the National Enquirer being known for its fake stories, perhaps this issue isn't so much of a new problem after all and rather it's just a continuation of what things were like previously.

NDM: News Values

NDM: News Values

1)

Conflict - Dozens feared dead after truck drives into crowd in Nice

Progress - Global 'greening' has slowed rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, study finds

Disaster - Hurricane Matthew: Haiti storm disaster kills hundreds

Consequence - Calais: fears grow for dozens of children amid chaotic camp shutdown

Prominence - Kim Kardashian held at gunpoint in Paris

Novelty - Escaped London Zoo gorilla got through two unlocked doors and downed five litres of undiluted squash in hour of freedom

2)

To illustrate Galtung and Ruge's News Values, the factsheet uses the example of an article from The Guardian titled: 'British servicewoman dies after Afghanistan bomb blast.' The article is noted for having a strong sense of cultural proximity as well as intensity among over values.

3)

Gatekeeping - process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication.

4)

• Bias through selection and omission - editors not only have the choice of what news stories to publish or not, but also the information that gets included within them
• Bias through placement - where stories are whether it be at the front page of the newspaper or the first story reported on TV have an impact on where the audience places its importance
• Bias by headline - can be confusing as the large/bold font can convey a feeling that doesn't match up with the tone of the story
• Bias by photos, captions and camera angles - certain photos for one, can dictate the way the public perceive certain news stories of either people or events
• Bias through use of names and titles - certain labels that the news media give to people, places and events don't all the time, match up to how members of the public may feel them
• Bias by choice of words - the connotations that words have can work to influence the way the public 'digest' a news story

5)

Online sources have changed the way that news is selected and published in that they are more 'raw source(s).' This directly challenges this whole idea of gatekeeping in the sense that information is no longer filtered or mediated, and rather audiences receive news simply as it is whether it be from whisteblower sites such as WikiLeaks or bloggers.

6)

A story from the last 12 months reported due to online technology was the WikiLeaks hacking of Hilary Clinton's emails. This involved the site publishing emails between both Hilary and her campaign chair, John Podesta, from her private email server.

7)

• This passage reveals that Sky view Twitter as being a news source for their own institution. It's clear that stories that they obtain from Twitter often get used and eventually become part of their news agenda.
• It gets across that news nowadays is often produced by the people/the general public themselves before it's passed onto the institutions - citizen journalism
• The audience have the role of determining the stories that make it to the news, to some extent, representative of the power that they have
• This could be a problem for the standards as some of the stories that the public may deem as good news may be what journalists have dedicated their lives to produce particularly with things such as investigative journalism in mind

8)

In my opinion, new digital media hasn't changed Galtung and Ruge's news values that much as the majority of them can still be applied to this such as continuity as well as familiarity. At the same time though, values such as unambiguity can be said to have been impacted in the sense that with news stories coming from citizens themselves, the clarity associated with them is often quite questionable as clear details regarding a story cannot always be gathered from them.

 

9)

• Immediacy - due to the connectivity of mobile devices, the speed at which we're able to get stories at is hugely increased since they're reported by people themselves (as recent as possible) e.g. Facebook Live
• Negativity - negative stories now have more of a hold in stories heard today due to the reaction that they often incite amongst the people
• Unambiguity - since stories tend to now be obtained from the public, their credibility can often be questionable and this is as a result of more people using their mobile devices to report these stories
• Elite nations and people - as opinion leaders, news to do with celebrities and/or just popular figures in our society tend to get about on a more widespread level with the accounts they have on social media
• Amplitude - this has been affected as with things like social media, in relation to the concept of an eco-chamber/eco-bubble, we get the perception that a lot of people are being affected by something when rather as a big event, it's them just reacting to it e.g. election of Donald Trump attracting comments by non-US citizens
• Surprise - unexpected events such as again, the election of Donald Trump or even Brexit, have been proven to become popular on a particularly wide-scale across the public

07/11/16 - Lionel Morrison, a tireless activist for black journalists (16)

07/11/16 - Lionel Morrison, a tireless activist for black journalists (16)

Lionel Morrison, the first black president of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), passed away on October 31st. The activist was cited for his work in the cause of black people becoming more involved in the media. To help in this cause he assisted in the establishment of things like the George Viner Memorial Fund which as a charity trust aids not only black journalism students, but also ones from other ethnic minorities. After having been arrested for treason in 1956 in South Africa (his birthplace) at the age of just 21 and imprisoned for five months in 'The Fort,' the struggles that Morrison has faced could be said to have encouraged his 'when things are wrong, you have got to do something about it' attitude. His work within journalism not just for black people, but the industry as a whole is something that's treasured today.

• He wrote to nearly 100 newspaper and magazine editors without success. Few agreed to see him, and he believed he was rejected because of the colour of his skin

Personally this article was quite enlightening to me since as a black man, I believe that the involvement of ethnic minorities within the media is imperative in allowing for press that's actually reflective of current society. The work of Lionel Morrison after what he had to deal with in South Africa is something that I treasure deeply and value it as something that people from ethnic minorities should take advantage of in trying to get into the journalism world.

07/11/16 - Telegraph paywall initiative is an interesting strategic shift (15)

07/11/16 - Telegraph paywall initiative is an interesting strategic shift (15)

Recently, the Daily Telegraph has announced plans to introduce a premium subscription service for its content. In replacement of the metered system which could easily be circumvented by clearing cookies, this paywall means that 15% of content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph will require payment from the user before being able to be accessed. What will remain free to access though is exclusive news stories to The Telegraph such as the recent FA corruption scandal. This move to a paywall system is said to be being done in order to help treble the digital audience the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) have by the end of 2017 and also help engage more with them.

• 82% of its digital readers access content through mobile devices
• Total of digital readers last year was thought to not be that much more than 50%

Whether or not the move of TMG is something that'll be seen more regularly with newspaper publications is something that'll have to be observed over the next few years. Unlike what can be seen with a paper such as The Independent becoming digital-only helping to reduce costs to some extent and target audiences where they seem to be reading papers now, rather the Telegraph is relying on more ad revenue and increased revenue in general through people 'paying the paywall.'

NDM News: Citizen journalism and hyper-reality

NDM News: Citizen journalism and hyper-reality

Citizen journalism and UGC (user-generated content)

1)

Examples

• 1991 Rodney King beating
• 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
• 7/7 London bombings
• 2007 Virginia Tech shooting
• 2008 Mumbai bombings
• US Airways Flight 1549

Theory (audience reception)

• Surveillance (Uses and Gratifications - Katz and Blumler) - in terms of obtaining information useful for living, we now rely on other people as well as institutions.

Benefits to institutions

• Footage of events that their professionals may not have been able to obtain can be gained for free through social media

Benefits to audience

• They become empowered in that they are not solely consumers of news but also producers of it too
• Access to news that we may not have got without things such as mobile devices
• They have the ability to access this news in places other than in the products of the institutions (e.g newspapers)

Wider issues and debates

• Potential job losses in the future for trained staff
• Influx of unmoderated content
• 'Monetarising' UGC content
• The existence of gatekeepers

SHEP

• Social - The UGC is able to bring to light injustices that we'd perhaps be unaware about without it
• Historical - As early as 1991 with the recording of the Rodney King beating, UGC has been becoming more prominent 
• Economical - It's cheaper for news corporations to obtain footage that's been user-generated but at the same time, there could be less profit for them since less trained journalists will be likely to be employed (crowd sourcing)
• Political - The rawness of UGC in comparison to connent from institutions can be said to make it less susceptible to political bias

2)

Citizen journalism - the collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public, especially by means of the Internet.

3)

One of the first examples of citizen journalism was with the Rodney King beatings in 1991. George Holliday, from his apartment window, filmed the beating from his video camera resulting not only in four of the police officers that were in the video being charged with use of excessive force and assault, but also in six days of riots where 53 people died.

4)

• Comments sections
• Polls
• Chatrooms
• Social network accounts

5)

One of the main differences between professionally shot footage and UGC is that the latter of the 2 captures events essentially exactly as they happen. Professionally shot footage on the other hand, goes through processes (mediation) which make it 'appropriate' for consumption by mass audiences which detracts from this idea of rawness that UGC has.

6)

Gatekeeping - process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication.

7)

The role of a gatekeeper has changed in that stories can now be posted without an institution having to be behind it. While in the past news publishers were required for a story to become quite notable, things like social networks render gatekeepers less influential then they once were.

8)

One of the primary concerns held by journalists is that the need for trained staff at news organisations is decreasing. The idea of crowd sourcing is becoming more prominent where a small amount of staff 'gatekeep' content from citizen journalists which reduces the need for having large number of actual trained journalists.

9)

• News stories - new/digital media is making it so that news stories also cover events that are chronicled through citizen journalism from a local standpoint. Not only this, but videos relating to popular events recorded by citizen journalists may be used to form parts of stories too e.g. police brutality in the USA
• The news agenda - I believe that the stories that make up the news, as a result of citizen journalism, will perhaps become more hard-hitting and impactful on audiences
• The role of professionals in news - this is without a doubt going to be consistently on the decrease as not only will news corporations be cutting down on their amount of workers, but just in general audiences are becoming producers of news on a larger than ever seen before scale

Hyper-reality and the digital renaissance

1)

Examples

• Cinema
• Television
• Internet
• Social networks
• Skype

Theories

• Baudrillard: state of hyperreality exists, where our reality is based upon the reality presented to us through the media.

Positive aspects of new technology (or 'digital renaissance')

• It's effective in reinforcing traditional structures of society and culture regardless of the hyperreality that's been created

Negative aspects of new technology on audiences and society

• 'Society alienated from itself'
• With the increasing prominence of the internet, both humanity and morality are losing their places in society

Wider issues and debates

• Postmodern culture
• Moral stance

2)

• Twitter
• Snapchat
• Instagram

3)

They fit in, in that they again like social networks will change the way that we think about society an culture. It could be perceived as a force for good in that they allow people to report on notable things live as they happen with a key highlight of this being the shooting of Philando Castile. They could be said though, to only contribute to blurring the lines of reality which is something that be seen as recently as last month where a live stream was shown of the battle for Mosul in which emojis could be seen 'flashing across a warzone.'

4)

Personally, I believe that citizen journalism is contributing to help news depict a more accurate version of reality. The only way hyperreality could begin to crop up from it is if processes of mediation began being applied to it.