Nearly half the public have less trust in BBC since Jimmy Savile scandal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/18/public-trust-bbc-jimmy-savile



What is it about?

Nearly half the public have less trust in the BBC since the Jimmy Savile scandal began, according to an opinion poll produced on behalf of MediaGuardian 

What do I think?

I saw this coming to be honest. The Jimmy Savile case was big so I found it difficult how the public would have less trust in the BBC

13C Cover Work 12/12/12

News Corp's publishing arm to focus on losses at Times and Sunday Times

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/07/news-corp-slashing-losses-times

What is it about?

Slashing losses at the Times and Sunday Times, running at an estimated £1m a week, is to be a priority for News Corporation's soon-to-be separated publishing division – although any efforts to tighten integration between the two titles is likely to require a loosening of the undertakings given by Rupert Murdoch when he bought the newspapers.

What do I think?

I think that newspaper are going into decline as there are many losses and having to cut editor's jobs etc... I thought this day would happen but not with the big name newspapers, Sunday times is a prime example. It just shows that New and Digital media is taking over 

Sunday Times's circulation falls below 900,000 for the first time

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/07/sunday-times-circulation-falls

What is it about?

Sunday Times' circulation has fell by 1% month on month from November and now they are below the 900,000 sales mark for the first time. This article discusses the statistics of Guardian, Sunday Times and others about their losses. The Sunday Times has been giving free newspapers in order to help the circulation of sales.

What do I think?

I feel the same about the first article. I still find it shocking that these newspapers are going into decline. It's all becoming very desperate as these are people jobs, that are at jeopardy and it's already hard to get jobs these days.

UK newspaper advertising facing bleak forecast for 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/11/uk-newspaper-advertising-bleak-forecast-2013

What is it about?

The ailing UK newspaper advertising market is set to get even worse next year with national titles forecast to face an almost 9% decline that will see display revenue fall below £1bn for the first time. The market is set to get worse, with *Group M's prediction back in the summer of a 5% year on year fall in 2013 now downgraded to an 8.6% decline. So basically, all newspapers are coming into a decline and it's going to get worse in 2013.

*Group M is WPP's media buying division.

What do I think?

I think that it's unlucky that newspapers are coming to a decline. But I knew this would happen as EVERYTHING is turning digital. Even BOOKS are turning digital... So that's when I knew newspapers have no chance. Not many people are going to buy newspapers on-line  through subscriptions. Reasons because there are free on-line sources available, mostly through social networks. Also there's still news on television that people can refer to. 

The ups, downs and ups of BBC News online

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20678217

What is it about?

This chart shows how global traffic to BBC News online has grown, alongside some key technological milestones.

What do I think?

 

Why can't Newsnight take youth culture seriously?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/06/newsnight-youth-culture

Newsnight have been talking to the youth lately but nothing serious, mostly comic things and taking a cringe-worthy approach. Stephen Smith has become the 'youth speaker' as he is the one interviewing them. As he's seen as 'down-with-the-kids' uncle at Christmas. Earlier in the year Smith was sent to interview rappers Odd Future where his role as "stuffy British bloke on a cultural voyage" played out in predictable fashion. Why does Newsnight have to take a kiddish apporoach when interviewing the youth? This approach ignores the fact that viewers might genuinely be interested, might want to know about trends and new developments, and might not want to be talked to as if they were all out of touch and proud of it. 

Participation Debates – The media and democracy

Morag Davis is a Lecturer in Film and Media at Nelson and Colne College.

So, what is ‘democracy’?

• democracy is a form of government in which all eligible people have an equal say in decision-making.
• ‘one person one vote’ to the modern media landscape
• The great thing is when you start seeing it in places like China and Afghanistan. It’s democracy. We’ve kind of given democracy back to the world. - Simon Cowell
• In the pre-digital era, there were very few ways in which audiences could make their voices heard.
• the digital revolution and Web 2.0 have given users (i.e. us – because we are no longer just audiences) the opportunity to communicate ideas globally through the use of social networking.
• in the countries now experiencing this ‘Arab Spring’, access to mobile technology and the internet is still limited to a relatively small elite, so perhaps we have not yet seen true democracy through the media.
• If information is power, then the internet has empowered its users by giving them unparalleled instant and almost unmediated access to unfolding news stories from a variety of sources, bypassing the hegemonic institutions that control the dominant media discourses in society. 
• Blogging is another way that the media are becoming more democratic. 
• the iconic video footage of the attack on the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001; the first hand reports from the Iran uprising – increasingly we are reporting and recording the news.
• citizen journalism can do is provide eyewitness accounts and subjective angles on stories to complement the work of professional news organisations
• 
  

In the Age of Media Six Questions about Media and Participation

David Buckingham, Professor of Media and Communications at Loughborough University, considers some of the revolutionary claims made for participatory media and 2.0, and makes a case for cautious optimism rather than whole-hearted celebration.

• In the last ten years, we have moved into a new age of participatory media.
• The world of Big Media – in which the media were owned and controlled by large commercial corporations – is no more.
• blogs and online forums provide opportunities for ordinary people to have their say, and to speak back to those in power
• wikis enable us to collaborate and share knowledge in ways that challenge elites and experts
• social networking sites, we can represent ourselves and connect with other people in new ways
• while online sharing sites like YouTube allow people to distribute their own media content to global audiences
•  All these services appear to be free and open and these things are leading in turn to fundamental shifts in the operations of ‘old’ media like television, newspapers and even books: there is much talk of ‘user-generated content’, ‘citizen journalism’ and the empowerment of consumers.

1. What’s new?

• The term ‘Web 2.0’ seems to have been coined by the digital marketing entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly back in 2001.
• Tim Berners-Lee, widely identified as the inventor of the World Wide Web, has argued that the basic technological infrastructure (structures) and many of the forms of Web 2.0 have been around since the beginning of the internet.
• There’s a long history of utopian fantasies about new media and technology.
• The kinds of claims that are being made about the liberating possibilities of social media echo those that were made in earlier times about the impact of cable TV, portable video, radio and even the printing press.
• All these things were apparently going to bring ‘power to the people’
• the ultimate effects of these new technologies were much less revolutionary and much more complicated
• the idea that technology will bring about revolutionary social change, in and of itself.
• their impact is always dependent on how they are used, by whom, and for what purposes

2. Who’s participating?

• those produced by the Pew Foundation in the United States – produce very high estimates of the numbers of young people who ‘share content’ online
• the market research agency Hitwise – suggest that the number of active participants is very low: less than 0.5% of YouTube users, for example, actually upload material, and very little of that material is originally produced, rather than pirated clips from commercial media
• While there are some gender differences – young women are leading the way in areas like blogging, while young men tend to dominate video-sharing
• most remarkable differences are in terms of social class
• Digital divides’ are still apparent here, therefore – and they largely coincide with other differences.
• the most active participants in the creative world of Media 2.0 are the ‘usual suspects’ – people who are already privileged in other areas of their lives. 
• older people are now the fastest-growing group of subscribers; the micro-blogging service Twitter is largely dominated by middle-aged people;  Young people are sometimes the ‘early adopters’

3. What are they doing?

•  it’s often assumed that participation is necessarily a Good Thing in itself
• a real problem in defining what counts as participation, or as ‘creating content’.
• There’s a big difference between posting an occasional comment on an online forum or a social networking profile, and filming, editing and posting a video
• although in surveys all these things tend to be seen as evidence of high levels of participation. In fact, only a very small proportion of users are generating original content: most are simply ‘consuming’ it as they always have done.
• This is not to say that it is trivial or worthless: on the contrary, home video (like the family photo album) can play a very important role in terms of memory and family relationships.
• However, people rarely see it as having anything to do with what they watch in the mainstream media – let alone as a challenge to the power of Big Media.

4. Who’s making money?

• Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media élite… now it’s the people who are taking control.
• The two richest and most profitable global media corporations are now Google and Facebook.
• YouTube (now owned by Google) took five years from its launch before it finally came into profit, despite being the second most frequently visited site online
• Many well-known services have struggled to find ways of ‘monetising’ what they do
• the internet is an exceptionally efficient medium for niche marketing and for targeting individual consumers.
• ‘cookies’ that are planted on the hard drive of our computers. This information is used to ensure that advertising and marketing are targeted only at those people who are most likely to be interested in it
• through a practice known as ‘data mining’, the data can be aggregated and then sold on to other companies.

5. Who’s doing the work?

• Much of this marketing is itself ‘user-generated’ and ‘interactive’
• Other companies (such as the mobile phone provider Orange) have picked up on the idea of ‘user-generated content’ by running competitions for consumers to create videos to promote their products.
• This results in what the media critic Soren Peterson has called ‘loser-generated content’
• What they produce effectively becomes proprietary information, owned by the company: Mark Zuckerberg owns the copyright of all the content posted on Facebook, and can do what he likes with it.
• Some argue that fan websites are about consumers taking back control of the media, making their own meanings from existing media texts, and leading towards a more democratic media environment

6. Will Media 2.0 save democracy?

• does this amount to a democratic revolution in communications? Is it really liberating or empowering ordinary people to take control of the media?
•  digital media are not likely to result in a society of creative media producers, any more than the printing press resulted in a society of published authors.
• Just like ‘old’ media, these new media are driven by commercial imperatives – and that means that some people are bound to benefit from these developments much more than others
•