Brief overview of lecture 2: basically about old media versus new media, and online news and the issue of entitlement.
Old media is about the traditional news mediums like newspapers and radio (which is basically mass communication). New media is made up of 3 components – Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Web 1.0 refers to the Information Web where the focus is on companies due to it being advertising friendly and resulting in brochure ware (in which companies essentially just transferred their brochures online). Web 2.0 refers to the Social Web where the focus was on social groups. Web 2.0 is made up of the various social networks and tools like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube. Under Web 2.0, the term prod-users is coined. Prod-user basically means producer and user, where the producers of a content were the users as well. Web 3.0 refers to the Semantic Web where the focus is on individuals. It involves metatagging via asking multi-layered questions.
Linking Web 3.0 to news, we ask the question: What does Web 3.0 mean for news? Through Web 3.0, individuals can customize their own news. For example, if I do not like reading about politics, I have the option of not reading about it online – specialized news content. Also, I can get advertisements catered to me (i.e. I won’t get any advertisments about cars if I’m not interestd in them.) The downside about this is that people will not be exposed to other type of news (dumbs down their general knowledge). There is also the issue of hyperlocalisation.
The next issue brought up at lecture was entitlement and online news. Used to illustrate this point was jellybeans. Jellybeans were handed out around the lecture theatre and we had barely eaten one when we were told to return them all. Naturally, all of us protested. It was then that Dr Redman brought up the issue of entitlement. Because we have been entitled to free online news the past years, are we willing to pay for online news as some go behind the paywall? In this essence, is entitlement the death of journalism? Will people to pay for news they believe they are entitled to for free? Rupert Murdoch came up with a monetizing strategy where he made subscriptions to online newspaper value-added (i.e. stuff like members-only discounts).
But still, the question as to whether people are willing to pay up as online newspapers are going behind the paywall is prevalent. Should people decide not to pay for online news, newspaper companies will definitely be losing money as bulk of the income (from advertising, i.e. classifieds) have been decreasing due to the cheaper alternative of advertising and selling online (i.e. ebay).
I think using the jellybeans to illustrate this point was ingenious (although it may be just because I love jelly beans) as it made it easier for me to understand this concept as it resonated closer to home and it was something I could identify with.
As I said in the previous post, JOUR1111 has been really fun and interesting (for now) and well, I hope I continue to feel that way and not lose my momentum throughout the semester.
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