media

• Medium


  A channel of communication - a way of sending and receiving information
• Media


  • Communication with large numbers of people
  • One-to-many communication
  • Impersonal
  • Lacking in immediacy
  • One-way
  • Physically and technologically distant
  • Organised
  • Large-scale and simultaneous
  • Commodified
• New media


  Computer-based technologies with capacity for one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication
• Trends affecting media organisation

  • Cross media ownership
  • Digitalisation
  • Media conglomerates
  • Social media
• Digitalisation


  1. Changing of media from analog to digital form

  2. Magazines and newspapers have online editions

  3. Music can be downloaded or listened to online

  4. Television broadcasting has moved from analog to digital
• Social media


  • Interactive media where people can communicate, share and consume information
  • Examples: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, Line
  • Many-to-many communication
• In August 1995 there were fewer than 20,000 host names, by February 2018 there were 180,998,238 active websites with 214,036,874 unique domain names and 1,838,596,056 host names
• Private ownership


  Media companies run for profit by individuals, families or shareholders
• State ownership


  Government controls and regulations on media content and access
• Owners have the potential to decide what information an audience receives

  This involves censorship that can be direct or indirect
• In a competitive world, consumers exercise a huge (collective) influence over organisational behaviour
• Globalisation has encouraged diversity and competition in the media through a 'new economic shift'
• Differences between traditional and new media

  • New media have reduced costs of production
  • Made entry into media marketplace open to all
  • Given all producers access to a global audience
  • Allow more interactivity and user-generated content
• New technologies have made it possible for different types of media to be consumed on the same device and at the same time


  This changes the way people use media, but media are able to adapt and find new ways to reach audiences
• There has been a significant long-term decline in the percentage of the adult population reading a daily newspaper
• Television viewing has changed with high-definition channels, on-demand and catch up services, digital video recording and the ability to watch on PCs, tablets and phones
• Television has adapted to new technology and new media, but television has lost its role as unifying force for nations
• Diaspora communities


  Members of dispersed communities can often watch television programmes from their countries of origin and in their own language
• Television use in countries like UK and USA

  • Fragmentation of audiences
  • Families less likely to watch television together
  • Many households have more than one television set
  • Individual family members can watch on PCs, phones and so on
  • Greater programming diversity introduced by digital technologies and more channels catering to niche (specialised) audiences
• Television has lost its role as unifying force for nations
• The ways that traditional media have adapted has limited the ability that national governments and private owners used to have to control information
• In the digital age, most populations are no longer restricted to information which they receive passively from the media
• For every fact on the internet, there is an equal and opposite fact
• Social change and development


  How do changes in the media help us understand how society is changing?
• Pluralism covers a range of perspectives on the role of the media that can be loosely characterised by their rejection of Marxist interpretations
• Pluralist perspectives


  • Significance they place on information diversity
  • Even where ownership of old media is highly concentrated, there is still a range of views available
  • Diversity is enhanced through the development of new media
  • Diversity is related to choice - not just in the range of different media and views, but also in terms of consumers
• Diversity and choice


  Media consumers, not producers, are central to the relationship between the media and ideology
• If a producer does not offer the things people want to read, watch or listen to, that company will go out of business
• The discipline of the marketplace - finding ways to give people what they want - is driven by the fact that owners compete to win market share and create profits
• This drive for innovation gives audiences an important position in relation to the media
• Media audiences are not passive, simply buying whatever owners provide, but active
• Pluralist perspectives reverse the traditional Marxist argument that audiences consume whatever owners decide to give them
• Media owners demand that their media provide whatever consumers want
• A diverse range of media exists and people can choose from different sources of information
• Internet access means that people can get information from both national and global sources
• A variety of media reflecting a range of views also means that some sections will represent the interests of 'ordinary people' and the activities of the powerful can be studied, exposed and criticised
• Pluralism overstates the separation of ownership and control in modern media conglomerates
• Major shareholders, such as Rupert Murdoch's family with News Corp, still exert control over a business
• Old media may actually have far larger audiences than most new media
• Old media may also be trusted more as sources of information