New and Digital Media: end of unit question

Pros - Easy access to global news stories. It's allowed greater communication between countries and people, allows the sharing of users information, photos and videos to each other and therefore allows users to be updated and connected to each other. Businesses can now use the internet to look at competitors and their pricing as well as using the internet as a source of research. More freedom (can be on pros and cons) A lot of user generated content can be found especially on sites such as YouTube and Blogger, this can therefore lead to a more unbiased news report or even a quicker reporting of the news e.g. many crimes committed during London Riots were filmed and uploaded on YouTube.

Cons - However, the internet is difficult to control. There are billions of websites with false information which many users end up spreading across the internet and possibly leading to a 'dumbing down' of society. Due to the internet being difficult to control, many users can easily come across many dangerous and explicit; harmful material which can easily influence any young user. Paedophilia and internet safety as always been an issue, many users may not portray themselves as who they truly are. Cyber-bullying has been created due to the improvement of technology.

Theories: 
- Pareto's law: follows a similar idea as the 80/20 rule. The majority of the ownership of the media we consume is produced by a minority of media businesses.

- Copy-cat theory: the copy cat theory can be linked to the internet as the information and videos we consume online could possibly lead to influencing many users. E.g. London riots was heavily reported over twitter and created large groups of teenagers wanting to copy what is going on around London, in their local area.

- Sherry Turkle: "Alone together" author, states that we communicate with each other but not in traditional ways. We communicate over the internet instead of in person which therefore can be quite a worrying concern for society in both physical health and mentality.

- Briggs and Burke: "The internet is the most important medium"

- Castells: "An application that will usher in the information age"

- Andrew Keen: The author of  'The Cult of the Amateur - How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture' states in his book that the activity and creation of webpages and blogs is similar to a million monkeys just typing nonsense

- Lin and Webster: State that the 5% of all websites accounted for almost 75% of user volume.

New and Digital Media Stories: 

- MySpace: MySpace founder believes that Rupert Murdoch destroyed his site after he bought it.

- Funeral selfie: Obama's selfie with David Cameron and the Danish Prime Minister was seen as disrespectful as it was at the funeral/tribute ceremony celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela.

- Twitter: A Guardian journalist replies to an article published in The Australian who states that the use of internet and social media such as twitter is destroying a journalists job. The Guardian journalist disagreed with this statement and believes that twitter is a useful tool. News can easily spread across the internet, it allows users/readers of the newspaper to contact journalists easily and give them the news quicker than anyone who doesn't use social media sites. It also allowed journalist in certain countries to pass on information to other journalist across the world. Sometimes when a big event or war is going on within a country and journalist find it difficult to land their helicopters, they can contact a journalist who is already in the country to provide them with up to the minute news.

- London Riots: The riots were heavily reported over Twitter allowing journalist to gather information from their followers all over London, it also allowed a video of helpless people being beaten and robbed during the riot to go viral. Negative uses of twitter was that some users used it as a way to communicate on when or where to attack certain stores.

- Occupy Wall Street: Videos went viral all over YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. and allowed protesters to communicate with each other easily.

- G8 Riots: The G8 riots saw the death of a male at the hands of policemen. A man named Ian Tomlinson was pushed hit by a police baton on his legs and then pushed to the floor and died shortly after. A video of this went viral after the man recording the video found out about the death. It was stated that the police officers did not take responsibility of Ian's death and did not tell the truth of the whole story until the UGC video was released and went viral.

Pareto's Law

1) What is Pareto's Law? Sum it up in a paragraph.

Pareto's Law (Lin Webster 2002) States a minority of media producers always serve a majority of consumers. Which links to the 80/20 rule

2) What other industries or examples can you apply the 80/20 rule to?

80% of the population is served by 20 of businesses 
80% of the market share is owned by 20% of the companies
80% of complaints come from 20% of the customers
80% of value is achieved with the first 20% of effort80% of work is completed by 20% of your team80% of software problems are caused by 20% of bugs80% of customers only use 20% of software features 80% of wealth is owned by 20% of people 

3) List three arguments in FAVOUR of Pareto's Law applying to the internet:

• google own 127 sites from Feb 12th 2009 - June 11th 2013 including Youtube, Doubleclick, Feedburner, Salesforce, google adsense, picasa, google maps, panoramio, Gmail, Google Earth, blogger.

•  top 5% of all websites accounted for almost 75% of user volume.
  
• 80% of searches on the internet are searched on 20% of search engines

4) List three arguments AGAINST Pareto's Law applying to the internet:

• Sites such as twitter don't own what is produced or tweeted as that's user generated.
• Blogger is owned by Google but doesn't produce the blogs, there is a variety of people and opinions, the majority are the producers.
•  The above also applies to tumblr posts and instagram pics

5) Even if Pareto's Law applies to internet ownership, does it still apply to the content we read online?

Internet ownership applies to Pareto's law as the above arguments in favour show e.g. Google owning 127 sites. But doesn't apply to content as big companies such as twitter don't control what is poster however, when it comes back to audiences Pareto's law could apply again e.g. 80% of tweets come from 20% of tweeters.

New and Digital Media Article 1: So Twitter is ruining journalism? Really?

So Twitter is ruining journalism? Really?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/13/so-twitter-is-ruining-journalism-really

This article published by the Guardian by Bronwen Clune and is a reply to what was published by 'The Australian' newspaper was stating that Twitter will ruin journalists. Clune states that the argument made in the article seems to say that Twitter exists as some sort of "alternative media universe" run by narcissists with no hardcore news values. Clune obviously wrote this article disagreeing with what was said in 'The Australian' article as she believes Twitter is a powerful journalistic tool. Clune then goes onto giving examples of when Twitter has been a useful tool e.g. during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt and the middle east many journalist including US based Andy Carvin from NPR and Australian based Jess Hill formerly at ABC used twitter to gain reliable sources about what was going on when many media organisations were unable to get many reporters on the ground. Another example was the 2011 London Riots where many citizens worked alongside journalist to report news all over London, Twitter allowed the voice of the public be heard with the help of journalists. One of the major news stories like Bin Laden's death in May 2011 was reported on twitter by Keith Urbahn.

I agree with Bronwen Clune, Twitter is powerful. Twitter could potentially be the replacement of many newspapers as it is quick and instant and allows journalist to summarise a whole article in 140 characters. It can also help connect journalist to many citizen journalist. The internet is one of the fastest way news is spread and twitter is used by billions of people around the world and therefore can make any story viral within minutes, it gives journalist the advantage of being first to report viral news to a mass audience rather than it slowly (in internet time) making its way around to everyone.