Wednesday 4 May 2016

Second Section A Improvements

Question 1

Media Product 1 is more focused on the grabbing the general public's attention. This is due to the audience they are reaching is going to have a shorter attention span in comparison to the audience that the Media Product 2 is going to have. For Media Product 1 is on YouTube which has a bigger youth demographic (16 - 34) than any cable network therefore it's the case that younger people will be watching the video and have shorter attention which is the reason why the content is only 30 seconds long. In comparison to Media Product 2 in which it's the case that they will have an established repeat customers who are going to be older in comparison to the general age for YouTube users. I believe that is links with Uses and Gratifications more specifically Personal Relationships. With Media Product 1 every video they are trying to establish a relationship between the viewer and themselves to earn an subscription which is what iHave30 want a relationship between themselves and the view. In comparison to Media Product 2 in which they already have a personal relationship with the general public and also have personal identity to further boost they status because trust Sky News through it's brand, image and reliability.

Question 2

Media Product 1 showcases how New and Digital Media has started a new way of getting a message to a world of people. iHave30's video is biased to the protesters dominantly focusing on their point of view and showing how the government is being unfair in how they are treating the people they are meant to protect. iHave30 are trying to spark interest in the subject at hand to try to offer an alternative point of view in which may lead to a campaign supporting their cause. This is similar to the Ferguson in which the campaign mainly started through citizen journalism and how they were posting videos of police brutality in Ferguson in which started a campaign with #BlackLivesMatter and in general started a worldwide phenomenon highlighting the worst of what the police also with the have to offer and it all stems from social media.

Question 3

I believe that the media is run via a Marxism point of view in which the population is victims of Hegemony via people being controlled through passive aggressive techniques that the media uses in order to maintain control of the public. This is highlighted in Media Product 2 in which we just accept every word that was in the broadcast to be true with
  

Friday 18 March 2016

18/03/16 News Stories

Pop, rock, rap, whatever: who killed the music genre?

David Guetta, Ryan Adams, Rostam Batmanglij, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Kevin Parker, Skrillex, Matty Healy, Carly Rae Jepson and Justin Bieber.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/17/pop-rock-rap-whatever-who-killed-the-music-genre

Pitchfork, widely viewed as the world’s leading alternative music website, relaunched this week. Along with a rather pleasant new look, it announced “a significant new feature”, the ability to view the site according to genre. The 1975 have just scored a transatlantic No 1 with an album whose influences range from Yazoo to David Bowie. If you look at everynoise.com and key in, say, Lana Del Rey, you’ll find her listed under “pop, indie R&B, indietronica, chamber pop, synthpop”; she’s all of those, a bit, but at the same time not completely any of those. All are representative of a strain of artists who are post-genre. They now straddle, or exist beyond, genres that seemed set in concrete as little as 10 years ago. They represent a cross-pollination that makes it harder than ever to definitively state that you like or dislike one genre or another.

Broadcasting’s misogyny reaches further than the BBC Breakfast sofa

Dan Walker and Louise Minchin on BBC Breakfast


There has been a surprising upset this week over the male and female seating arrangements on the BBC Breakfast sofa. Apparently the new arrangement flies in the face of hierarchical norms, and the elders on the programme are not getting the respect they deserve. As a former BBC Breakfast broadcaster I love the fact that this is being talked about at all. Most viewers never clock the left-right seating, since the usual arrangement is a greyish haired authority figure next to a much younger co-presenter in a dress. Not always, but quite often the case. This sofa row questions the older man/younger woman pairing tradition that we’re so used to, and since things don’t change that often in TV, any challenge to the old ways gets a big fat tick from me. When I presented the business news on the show, I was desperate to disrupt the bouffant hair, trowelled on makeup and body-con dress situation, but was given little wriggle room. I know – what a maverick!

Friday 11 March 2016

11/03/16 News Stories

The Secret Actress: who’d have thought Netflix would usher in gender equality​?

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/11/the-secret-actress-netflix-gender-equality-hollywood-pay-gap?CMP=twt_gu


‘The future of the entertainment industry lies in streaming. There won’t be any arguing with the amount the public loves THEIR people and THEIR shows and THEIR movies. This will not just affect women, but people of color, gender-identity, and age.’

So, getting paid in Hollywood: this is a bit of a thing right now. Oh wait – if you’re a woman anywhere, it has always been a thing. In my industry and in many others across the world, women get paid less. A lot less. Fifty years after the US passed the equal pay act, women across the world still only get 77% of what men do. Jennifer Lawrence is in the wonderful and deserved position to be able to call the patriarchy out. Most female actors are not. I could tell you about four women I know – not giant stars, but you’d recognize them in the supermarket – who have been quietly blacklisted for having made a stink about not getting paid a commensurate amount to their male counterparts.

Apple co-founder criticises company over Apple Watch

Steve Wozniak in 2011 at Britain’s IP Expo.


The Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said he no longer recognises the company he built, thanks to creations such as the Apple Watch. He wrote in an interview on Reddit: “I love my Apple Watch, but - it’s taken us into a jewellery market where you’re going to buy a watch between $500 or $1,100 based on how important you think you are as a person. The only difference is the band in all those watches. Twenty watches from $500 to $1,100. The band’s the only difference? Well this isn't the company that Apple was originally, or the company that really changed the world a lot.”

Monday 7 March 2016

Notes and Quotes MEST 3 Case Study

Notes and Quotes

Media Magazine

MM39

Variously known as the symbol for pound (as in weight) or denoting a numeral, the humble hashtag has proved to be a very versatile little fellow.

Television has never been more fragmented. There are more channels than ever before, and there’s more ways than ever to access them.

These days, we’re not just time-shifting, we’re platform shifting. Missed Misfits? Don’t fret. Watch on it 4OD. Buy yourself a series pass on iTunes and plonk your iPad on your lap. Or watch it on your phone as the bus rumbles through the rush-hour traffic and you make your way to college.

With the audience scattering across so many platforms, TV’s cultural function as provider of shared experiences is put ever more at risk.

TV loves a good watercooler moment. As a media student, you’ll be familiar with the concept of uses and gratifications. You know that audiences crave social interaction, and that TV is a supreme provider of it. Alan Sugar leaving the entrails of another hapless would-be Apprentice dripping all over the boardroom carpet. Another jaw dropping (for the right reasons or the wrong ones) X Factor auditionee. The latest improbable plot-twist on Waterloo Road.

Twitter – and other social networks like Facebook – give you a chance to gather round and, via the exchange of banter and barbs with friends, fulfil that particular gratification.

Of course ultimately TV executives are just happy if we’re watching at all – as long as we’re doing it through legitimate channels rather than streaming Glee seconds after it’s aired in America, or downloading the torrent of the latest HBO extravaganza in the gap before it makes the crossing to Sky Atlantic.

Like virtually all media industries, TV has been caught up in what has been described as a perfect storm that has seen advertising revenues plummet.

From one direction, a recession that has seen consumers tighten their belts, consequently leaving many companies with reduced marketing budgets.

From another direction, changing viewing habits. With so many viewing options available, how do you predict with accuracy that you can deliver to advertisers the same number of hungry eyes that you did in the past?

Then there’s the Google factor. If you’re an advertiser why chance that your message will get through when you could take it straight to Google and reach people as they are already reaching – through the power of search – for you?

From now on, you need never watch anything alone. If you want company, you’re only ever a hashtag away.

The rush to pronounce, often in hyperbolic, borderline hysterical terms, is one of the side-effects of empowering the audience with the means to provide such instant feedback.

Cultivating an audience that is interactive means building a sense of community and fostering the brand loyalty that all media institutions crave. If you interact with a show, then you invest far more emotionally than if you are just lolling on the sofa.

Initially rather ad hoc and impromptu, many shows are now actively encouraging their audience to congregate around their hashtag. Have I Got News For You helpfully abbreviates to #HIGNFY, leaving you as many of your 140 characters as possible in which to prove you can by just as sharp-witted as Paul Merton, Ian Hislop and co.

MM45 – Reading Broadchurch

The killer of Danny Latimer was being kept under wraps: only 29 people – cast and crew and some executives – knew the identity of the murderer before the final programme. No wonder thousands of people took to Twitter and other online forums to speculate, prompting a massive surge of interest in the show.

At the end of the episode, Twitter and Facebook fans were offered the chance to see an exclusive scene and, ultimately, we were promised another series next year.

MM47

Like Educating Essex, Educating Yorkshire has attempted to exploit social media and other technologies in order to engage with its audience, but, rather than simply go for a simple ‘North vs South: here’s-the-difference-comparison’, the more recent series has sought to be rather more thoughtful and reflective.

Since the 1950s, the youth market has grown significantly: it is now worth approximately $200 billion a year in the US alone.

Spending on online marketing overtook that for TV marketing in the UK back in 2009. The recent flotation of Twitter generated billions, despite the fact that the company has yet to make a profit: yet you can be sure it won’t be long before it (along with other apparently ‘free’ services like Instagram and Snapchat) is being used to generate marketing revenue.

Marketers are also very active on Facebook and other social networking sites, not just with their own branded profiles, but also in circulating applications, competitions and other messages about what’s currently ‘cool’.

For marketers, social networking is the modern version of word of mouth: it’s a very effective way to embed marketing messages into the dynamics of young people’s friendship groups.
Youth marketing strategies are participatory: they aim to get us involved in a dialogue, to enable us to create and distribute our own messages, to feel as though we are the ones in charge.

This is also the case with viral marketing, where messages are distributed from person to person, often using mobile technology. Cadbury’s ‘gorilla’ campaign from 2007 was a very successful example of viral marketing: while the ads were occasionally on TV, they were mainly viewed on YouTube and similar platforms, on the basis of personal recommendation.
The next step on from this is user- generated marketing, where consumers actually create the advertising messages.

According to Doritos, this is all about ‘sharing talent and creativity’; but of course it ensures that consumers (both the ad-makers and those who vote for them, in an X-Factor-style competition) will ‘buy in’ to their product.

Finally, co-creation is a fairly new approach, in which consumers are invited (and paid) to work with market researchers to develop new product ideas. They attend focus group workshops in which new ideas are brainstormed and developed – ideas which the researchers then take back (and sell) to the companies.

In different ways, these techniques all display aspects of my three ‘Ps’: they are pervasive, personalised and participatory. According to marketers, they are all about empowering young consumers.

On the other hand, we could argue that these kinds of techniques are much more subtle and manipulative – and much less visible and obvious – than traditional advertising. They are harder to identify, and perhaps harder to resist. They illustrate how commercial marketing has become much more deeply embedded in our private lives and our personal relationships.

Megaupload.com was a huge file-hosting site which was ostensibly a means for internet users to store and share files, much like YouTube or Dropbox. In reality it was a notorious host of copyrighted media, which appeared in almost any search on video stream aggregators such as Primewire.

MM53 - Catfished

In an age dominated by social media and online relationships, Catfish: The TV Show seems an obvious spin-off.

Broadcast in the UK on MTV and Five*, it premiered on MTV on November 12, 2012, and is currently in its fourth season. (Target Audiences)

The show has been hugely successful, particularly with the young 15-to-34 media-savvy audience which defines MTV’s core demographic.

It also offers an interesting, if sometimes disturbing, examination of the perils of engaging in online relationships.

Shot with a small Canon Powershot S110 in a ‘Gonzo verite’ style (Cheap / Easy to make)

The audience become privy to the intimate details of some online relationships. Together with the conflict and ultimately the ‘confession’ at the end of the show when the Catfish is revealed and the deceit is clearly evident, this serves only to further pleasure the audience.
The show raises some interesting debates about identity and representation, often skilfully exploring these in terms of class, gender and sexuality.

This show exposes the desperate, lonely, individual seeking solace in adopting the persona of someone who doesn’t really exist in order to validate their own existence.

There has for some time been growing concern about the dangers of using the internet and social media sites.

Both the Catfish documentary and TV show have heightened this sense of fear and moral panic by exposing the potential reality for users – that the online world is not what it seems.
It reinforces the ugly truth that the internet allows people to deceive each other.

Whilst the narrative of the text unfolds, the audience are all too aware that the online love is not what he/she professes to be – particularly when the relationship has spanned some time with no physical meet-up or use of Skype.

It also reinforces a disturbing message: the anonymity of social media provides us with a sophisticated toolkit to create a whole new persona: a world in which we can change our age, gender, marital status, job – in essence, our whole life. And if this wasn’t disturbing enough – it highlights the fact that the internet is plagued with people willing and able to utilise this toolkit and that others are desperate enough to fall for it.

Friday 4 March 2016

04/02/16 News Stories

Top Gear: Netflix could air new series in global battle with Amazon's Clarkson

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/03/top-gear-netflix-amazon-jeremy-clarkson-bbc

Netflix could be set to stream Top Gear episodes featuring the new lineup of Rory Reid, Chris Evans, Matt LeBlanc, Sabine Schmitz and Chris Harris.
Netflix is in talks with the BBC to air the revamped Top Gear in a deal that could see the show go head to head globally with Jeremy Clarkson’s new Amazon Prime show. Driven by Chris Evans, with co-hosts including Matt Le Blanc and Eddie Jordan,the BBC show is understood to have gone down well with overseas buyers when a clip was aired at a showcase in Liverpool last month. Netflix’s interest is likely to cause some concern at rival Amazon, which spent a reported £160m hiring the original Top Gear trio of Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May and their executive producer Andy Wilman to make a new car show. At the time Netflix’s chief product officer Neil Hunt told Digital Spy that his rivals had paid too much: “We have past episodes of Top Gear, so we have a pretty good gauge of what audiences like. Our buying decisions tend to be somewhat data-driven. We have a lot of data to get the deals we want, so there we go.


Microsoft wants to monopolise games development on PC. We must fight it



The Gears of War cover

With its new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) initiative, Microsoft has built a closed platform-within-a-platform into Windows 10, as the first apparent step towards locking down the consumer PC ecosystem and monopolising app distribution and commerce. Microsoft has launched new PC Windows features exclusively in UWP, and is effectively telling developers you can use these Windows features only if you submit to the control of our locked-down UWP ecosystem. They’re curtailing users’ freedom to install full-featured PC software, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers.

Thursday 25 February 2016

26/02/16 News Stories

The damaging effect watching television has on our view of the female body

http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/the-damaging-effect-watching-television-has-on-our-view-of-the-female-body--bJMMEZa0wCl



Claiming to have proved a direct link between television and female body ideals, researchers said they were able to isolate the effects of media exposure from other cultural and ecological factors. The research, published in the British Journal of Psychology, found that the highest body mass index (BMI) preferences were found in the village with the least media access, while those living in urban areas preferred thinner female bodies. "The differences in television access allowed us to explore how media exposure affects the size and shape women aspire to be."

It's The New Day - first look at Trinity Mirror's new newspaper


A dummy issue of The New Day, an ‘upbeat, optimistic, impartial’ title.


Calling it “the first standalone national daily newspaper for 30 years”, the company will launch the Monday-to-Friday title on Monday, 29 February. According to a press release issued early Monday morning, it “will report with an upbeat, optimistic approach and will be politically neutral.” The New Day, with a turquoise masthead, will run to 40 stapled pages every day on thicker-than-normal newsprint. It will be available free from over 40,000 retailers on launch day, and will be priced at 25p for the following two weeks before selling at 50p after that. And Trinity Mirror’s chief executive, Simon Fox, said: “Over a million people have stopped buying a newspaper in the past two years but we believe a large number of them can be tempted back with the right product.