Friday 29 April 2016

2 Article Summaries (33)

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/29/soundcloud-go-subscription-streaming-spotify-apple-music

SoundCloud presses Go on its subscription streaming service

SoundCloud Go will compete with Spotify and Apple Music.
Summary:
The new feature, SoundCloud Go, is being launched on Tuesday, and the company hopes a mammoth catalogue of more than 125m tracks – quadruple those of its rivals Spotify and Apple Music – will persuade a chunk of its 175 million subscribers who listen for free to start paying. SoundCloud has been talking about its plans to launch a subscription service for the past two years, during drawn-out licensing negotiations with music rights holders. The company has agreed deals with all three major labels, the indie-label licensing agency Merlin, and various music publishers. These are SoundCloud’s first licensing deals, as its free service has relied on “safe harbour” legislation under which it promised to remove copyrighted tracks if notified by their rightsholders. Although SoundCloud Go is only launching in the US, Wahlforss said the company’s label deals were global in nature, meaning that it only needs to strike publishing-rights agreements with collecting societies elsewhere in the world before expanding. SoundCloud has plenty of catching up to do with its rivals. 

Key Data:
  • The music and audio streaming firm SoundCloud is launching its long-planned subscription service, but for now the $9.99-a-month service will only be available in the US. 
  • The company and its investors will be hoping that SoundCloud Go can boost its financial performance. In its last public set of financial resultsfor 2014, SoundCloud’s revenues grew by 54% to €17.4m, but its losses increased by 69% to €39.1m. SoundCloud has raised £111m in funding since 2009, including a £24.5m round of debt financing in early 2016.
  • Spotify recently reached 30 million paying subscribers, while Apple Music reached 11 million in February. 





Children as young as seven caught sexting at school, study reveals

A teenage girl using a mobile phone
Summary
According to a study by one teaching union, More than half of teachers are aware of incidents of children sexting at their school, including primary-school pupils as young as seven. In one typical incident, a girl pretended to fancy a boy and persuaded him to take a picture of his genitals, which she then shared with others. In another, a year 9 pupil, aged 13 or 14, took explicit selfies of herself for a boy at another school, but classmates got hold of the photo and shared it, thereby distributing child sexual images. A spokesman for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children(NSPCC) said it was worrying that so many children were sharing explicit images. “Many young people see this activity as part of everyday life, despite the severe risks involved.
The NSPCC said: “Children and young people need to understand the risks of sending these images and know what to do to get the support. If a child has lost control of a sexual image, they can get in touch with ChildLine who will work with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to get the image removed. The charity is calling for sexting to be included in age-appropriate sex and relationships education which the charity says “should be on every curriculum as [schools] are at the frontline of child protection”.

Key Data:

  • The counselling service ChildLine dealt with more than 1,200 cases last year of young people worried about indecent images they had shared, or who felt pressured into sexting.
  • Teachers were also targets for pupils and parents on social media. The study, which received responses from 1,300 teachers, found that half had seen adverse comments posted about themselves on social media sites by pupils and parents.
  • In one typical post a parent threatened to come in and “sort that bitch out”; one pupil threatened to rape a teacher; another teacher was branded a paedophile on social media, while another was condemned as a “wife beater”.
  • “Online abuse has a devastating impact on teachers and pupils’ lives and yet no serious action is taken by government to ensure that schools are responding appropriately to this abuse.



(29) (1/04)

NDM question.

New and digital media offers media institutions different ways of reaching audiences. Consider how and why media institutions are using these techniques. 


Due to the development of technology causing an expansion in the digital media means it is now easier for media institutions to reach audiences and are able to gain a greater understanding of what their audience want in order to reach target their audience. New and digital media offer media institutions different ways of reaching the audiences. The case study this essay will be looking at is the news industry and how the news industry has played an important part in allowing the media institutions different ways of reaching the audiences. There are many different ways in which the institutions has reached audiences, for example the internet has allowed a gateway between media institutions and audiences which is allowing them both to engage and know what is happening around the world.

According the Alain De Botton: ‘News guides us – it teaches us what is important. Due to the increase in new and digital media, the newspaper industry has been declining. Originally, news was received through word of mouth. From the 17th century to early 20th century, during the Guttenberg revolution, newspapers were the main source of news. However, as technological changes made advances, newspapers started to decline and digital media became a more convenient form of reaching audiences. According to Briggs and Burke, ‘The internet is the most important medium of the 21st century’. Therefore, media institutions such as Newscorp (owned by Rupert Murdoch) had to adapt and change along with the media to be able to continue their audience readership.

News industries such as the times, the guardian etc. have set up websites on the internet to gain a higher readership and to keep up with audience demand. This has made it harder for institutions to make money as audiences are able to get news easily online. However, some news institutions have set up paywalls (subscriptions) in order to still make money out of their news. For example, the times newspaper has successfully set up a paywall which audiences have subscribed to as a means of getting reliable news. Although the paywalls have not worked for every institution, for example, the sun’s paywall did not succeed as audiences were not willing to pay for news that they are able to gain from every other news website and as a result they had to remove their paywall. This could also be down to the fact that both companies have different types of audiences and therefore have to use different strategies in order to sustain their audience readership. Some companies have to still rely on advertisement to make money from news on websites. However, the increase in digital media is making this more and more difficult for institutions as there are now apps like ‘ad blocker’ on the apple store and play store on mobile phones to block out these ads. Also, as audiences now search through google, advertisement revenues are going straight to google and increasing its power and threat on the existence of the newspaper industry. This supports Parettos law where power has been concentrated in the hands of a few and a minority of media institutions dominate the industry. Institutions such as the independent have already suffered from the decline in newspapers as they have turned to an online only news company and abandoned print. This shows that institutions are using and adapting to these new techniques as a means of survival.

The threat of new and digital media and the internet has led to a decline of newspaper circulation and revenue. This has causes newspaper institutions to turn to desperate measures in order to gain a breaking story to attract readers. Rebecca Brookes and the News of the world phone hacking scandal is an example of the unethical journalist behaviour that had used controversy in order to gain an audience. However it could be argued that this scandal would not have tsken place if the technology to make it happen didn’t exist. This shows that new techniques may need to be used in order to prevent losing readers.

Along with the increase of new and digital media, social networking sites have also been expanding amongst audiences. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat etc. are a platform on which institutions are able to reach a wider target audience and makes it more convenient for both audiences and institutions to deliver and receive news. Newspaper companies are now able to crate accounts of social networks to continue giving audiences news directly and focus on individual stories. From Galtung and Ruge’s news values, the value of immediacy can be applied here as audiences gain access to breaking news faster from social networks before it is even published on newspapers. According to ‘news on the tweet’, twitter is used to gain and connect with younger readers and a different audience much more efficiently and immediately. This element of immediacy allows more readers to engage with the news which is why institutions would use these new techniques.

Social networking sites also allow audiences to interact and participate in the news delivering process. The use of hashtags on twitter allow trends to inform to notify the audiences of a certain breaking story. For example, the use of the hashtag ‘#prayforparis’ allowed audiences to find out and sympathise with the terrorist attacks in Paris. Also, audiences themselves had recorded certain attacks at the time which allowed others to see the severity of the attacks which some journalists could not have gained footage of. The rise of user-generated content (UGC) and citizen journalism has allowed audiences to play an active part in the news industry. According to Paul Lewis, ‘citizen journalism provides a new layer of accountability.’ This is because it has uncovered the other side of many big stories. For example, with the death of Eric Garner, the video was posted by the citizens and uncovered that the police were to blame. Without this proof, the truth would not have been known. Having citizen journalism allows audiences to receive a real, less mediated story due to the absence of gate keeping which could be seen as both a strength and weakness as although it may be providing a true account of something, the story may not be verified. User-generated content such as blogs have allowed audiences to create their own news or publish other news themselves. However, Andrew Keen links webpages and blogposts to the activity of a million monkeys typing nonsense. This means that audiences the produce ugc are not really aware about what they are saying and therefore could be a misleading source of news.

There have been many changes and developments in technology and the new/digital media which has created a new platform for audiences and institutions to adapt to. The new techniques used by institutions have given the audience more power and a place to interact and grow whilst getting the knowledge they need in a much more convenient way. 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 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 bit, ultimately, they did not change the editorial direction of the gatekeepers controlling the newspaper. 

A pluralist perspective would argue that the audience has the ultimate power in terms of production and consumption. This is due to the face that audiences are seen as capable of manipulating the media in many ways according to their needs and having access to. They are able to ‘conform, accommodate, challenge or reject’ (Gurevitch et al). According to pluralists the audience is active and can choose and select the media they want to consume as we have free will and are not controlled. During the Arab spring protests, many people in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya has started uprisings to get what they want, through this they managed to achieve democracy and get their voices heard which shows how important and powerful the audience are. The pluralists see the internet as “the most important medium of the 20st century” (Briggs and Burke) which can be used to find out any information needed in a more convenient way. This fits in with the uses and gratifications theory of surveillance (Blumer and Katz). The use of citizen journalism has created more UGC (user generated content) which has become increasingly common. An example of citizen journalism is the death of Ian Tomlinson which was carried out by a police officer. A member of the public filmed the incident, which The Guardian then released soon after. This created major controversy over the case This has also given us the ability to share our views on more platforms such as on blogs. “The internet has given readers much more power…the world is changing and newspapers have to adapt” (Rupert Murdoch, Newscorp) which shows that newspapers itself are not doing so good as it is the audience who determines the success of these businesses. This has resulted in the “mutualisation of news” (Rushbridger), which tells us that it is not just the gate keepers who produce news but also the audiences as it is mutual and top down.

This shows that even though institutions may be benefitting from the new techniques they are using to reach audiences, they have willingly or unwillingly given a huge amount of control to the audience. However, the control the audience have benefits some institutions and they use these techniques in order to be successful themselves.

Friday 22 April 2016

Ignite Presentation Feedback.

Ashmita, Dhruvina, Sophia - Film industry and Netflix.

WWW
> Good slides - Use of images. 
> Attempts to use pluralism/hegemony etc. 

EBI
> Lacks rehearsal.
> Explain theories better - e.g Marxism. 
> Content on screen - Not questions.

2 Article Summaries (32)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-guardian-to-cut-250-jobs-within-three-years-a6937416.html

The Guardian to cut 250 jobs within three years 'in bid to break even'

51-guardian-office-get.jpg
The Guardian newspaper is planning to cut 250 jobs, including 100 from editorial, as it seeks to balance its books by 2019. The decision on whether the publisher will make compulsory redundancies will follow an eight-week consultation period.

  • In an attempt to staunch heavy losses, which amounted to £58.6 million in the year to the end of March, the publisher will seek to “restructure the less profitable parts of the company in a bed to break even within three years”. 
  • While the 210 people employed outside the UK are not expected to be affected, the UK workforce will be cut by 18 per cent, including positions that remain unfilled – equivalent to 310 jobs. 
  • In total some 100 jobs are earmarked to be cut from the 725-strong editorial workforce and 150 from commercial departments, support functions such as finance and human resources and other parts of the business.


Independent staff asked to take huge pay cuts in online-only move

The Independent is going online-only when the print title closes this weekend.
Independent journalists are being asked to take pay cuts of as much as half their current salaries if they transfer to the digital operation once the daily print title closes this weekend.
More than 100 journalists out of a total of 160 are expected to lose their jobs once the Independent print business is wound up following the closure of the two newspapers and sale of the i.
A spokesperson said: “Despite Johnston Press cutting back on regional and local papers it was still able to find £25m to buy the i. Company shareholders have now approved the sale and jobs are being offered to people at the Independent. The NUJ is seeking assurances that staff pay and terms will be securely protected as people take up the new jobs.”



28 25/03

Wednesday 20 April 2016

Media Conference Notes.

Issues in journalism: Mainstream VS Social Media

Citizen Journalism. 

  • Roles that citizens play in the news gathering. 
  • Reporting, analysis and dissemination. 
  • Has come to involve social media. 
  • Changed the nature of how we read/consume news. 
e.g - The 7/7 attacks 
> Adam Stacey took selfies of the people being evacuated which he then sent to a friend who put it up on a blog. 

e.g - Death of Neda Aghal Sultan (2009)

> The death was recorded and spread. 

e.g - Mobile witnessing: Black lives matter movement. 

e.g - Paris attacks 2015
> Video taken by le monde journalist.

e.g - Arab uprising (2011)
> Key to symbiosis relations between mainstream media and social media. 


Ethical considerations

  1. Invasion of privacy. 
  2. Airing graphic videos goes against public broadcasters definition of good taste and decency. 
  3. Some argue that such footage is dehumanizing to victims.
  4. Terrorist propaganda. 
Pros and cons of relying on UGC
Positive:
  • Gives journalist authority. 
  • Acts as a witness to the truth. 
Negative: 
  • Poor technical quality.
  • May be edited.

Issues of dependence on social media in covering news.
  • Is it authentic footage. 
  • Channel may not mention that the content is not verifiable.
  • Unspecified footage.
  • Dependency on accounts. 



Social media in the newsroom.

Why social media is useful.
  • Smart phones changing shape and speed of news. 
  • Email, Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp etc.. - all sources of news. 
  • Trending hashtags can alert journalists of breaking stories. 
  • Platform to broadcast news. 
  • Opportunity audience interaction. 

"False information spreads just like accurate information" - (Farida vis, Sneffield university research.)

Verifying news and pictures

  • Journalists must take steps to check the source of the story.
  • Google image search - helps to show false images.
  • Verification includes checking who took the pictures, if they own copyright and whether broadcaster has permission to use them. 
  • Check, check and check again. 

Social Media - A Platform for sharing.
  • News habits are changing
  • Fewer people sit down to watch or listen to the news - social media makes individual stories more accessible. 
  • Instant audience feedback - everyone has an opinion. 
  • News organisations - monitoring audience engagement, likes, comments and shares.


5 points to take away
  1. Social media = increasingly part of journalists toolkit.
  2. There are great resources for monitoring content.
  3. Check users' social history, profiles etc. 
  4. Social media takes your story to a different audience. 
  5. What does the future of news look like.

Friday 15 April 2016

2 Article Summaries (31)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/advertising-standards-authority-move-to-ban-junk-food-adverts-from-online-childrens-programmes-a6928726.html

Advertising Standards Authority moves to ban junk food adverts from online children's programmes

ChildrenTV.jpeg
Summary:
Advertisements for junk food on online children’s programmes are set to be banned under new guidelines, it has been reported. Currently, children’s programmes cannot be accompanied by adverts for unhealthy food when shown on television. However, the same adverts can be broadcast next to the same programmes if they are viewed online. The apparent loophole has caused confusion and frustration for parents and campaigners for some time.
Key Data:
  • Figures released by the government’s National Children Measurement Programme for England last year found that one in 10 children is already obese by the time they start primary school. By the time they left primary school, this rose to 1 in 5 children.
  • The study also found that children living in lower-socio economic areas were twice as likely to become obese as those living in more affluent areas. 
  • According to Public Health England, serious physical and psychological effects of childhood obesity include low self-esteem, isolation from peers, anxiety, depression, diabetes, asthma and other respiratory problems, as well as disturbed sleep and fatigue. 

Vice Media attacked for making tobacco adverts for Philip Morris

Edition Worldwide, which is owned by Vice, has been making adverts for tobacco company Philip Morris
Summary:
Vice Media has been condemned as “irresponsible” by campaigners for using its expertise targeting young people to make ads for tobacco company Phillip Morris. The ads will not carry Vice branding and will not run on Vice properties. They won’t be shown to people in the US or UK as both countries have strict rules prohibiting tobacco advertising. Caroline Renzulli from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said the company should not be using its experience targeting young people to help the tobacco industry sell cigarettes.
Key Data:
  • “It is highly irresponsible for Vice to use its expertise to help Philip Morris find new ways to reach young people and sell more of its deadly products, especially in low and middle income countries,” said Renzulli.
  • The company is valued at $4bn following investment from companies including 21st Century Fox and Disney.


27 18/03

Friday 8 April 2016

2 Article Summaries (30)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-sun-argues-queen-statistically-likely-to-back-brexit-amid-calls-for-inquiry-into-contested-a6922561.html

The Sun argues Queen 'statistically likely' to back Brexit amid calls for inquiry into contested report

Queen-Brexit-Sun.jpg
Summary:
The Sun has claimed the Queen is “statistically more likely” to back a Brexit because of her age and education level while defending its controversial report. A front page story claiming the monarch had voiced strong Eurosceptic views during a lunch at Windsor Castle in 2011 has sparked calls for an investigation and a formal complaint to a media watchdog. Buckingham Palace lodged a formal complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation on Wednesday and Mr Clegg called the article “nonsense” but the Sun has stood by its report.
Key Data:
  • “You are going to have to take my word for it that we are completely confident that the Queen's views were expressed exactly as we have outlined them both in the headline and the story.”
  • In its coverage today, the newspaper accused Mr Clegg of attempting to “gag” Brexit campaigners and accused pro-EU figures of attempting to discredit the report because of the effect it could have on undecided voters ahead of the June referendum.


Public trusts BBC more than their family - but doesn’t trust Government with the corporation, poll finds

web-bbc-getty.jpg
Summary:
The British public trust the BBC more than their family - but doesn’t trust the government with the BBC, a poll has found. The BBC topped the poll as the most trusted source for “balanced and unbiased reporting of news stories” on television and radio.
Key Data:
  • The study by commissioned by online campaign site 38 Degrees found that when asked to rank trusted sources of news, people are more than twice as likely to trust the BBC (50 per cent) than family members (18 per cent) for being the most trusted source of news.
  • However the majority of the public (53 per cent) does not trust the government with the future of the BBC, with respondents saying that they do not trust ministers to protect BBC services (such as BBC news, local radio and sporting events) during the current BBC Charter renewal process.
  • 38 Degrees was responsible for encouraging 177,000 responses to the Government’s consultation on the future of the BBC. Those respondents were opposed to any moves to reduce the size and scope of the corporation.


26 11/03