Six questions about Media and Participation

Media Seminar Article Summary

In the age of media six questions about media and participation

Web 2.0 Six Questions

What's New?

• Web 2.0 was an attempt to re-brand the internet business by Tim O'Reily
• By liberating the social media the internet was able to give 'power to the people'
• To remove the power of the governors and big organisations
• It allowed ordinary people to have a voice in society through UGC
• The danger is that the internet could bring about a revolutionary social change

Who's Participating?

• Young women are leading the way in the blogs being produced
• While men tend to dominate video sharing
• young people from wealthier backgrounds do produce more than less financially stable people
• There's still a digital divide
• The most active people in Media 2.0 are the people who are already privileged 

What are they doing?

• The web is dominated by producers of amateur home family videos, celebrations and holidays
• The videos are often not edited at all
• These videos aren't seen as a challenge to Big Media

Who's making the money?

• "Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media élite… now it’s the people who are taking control." Rupert Murdoch
• The two richest global media companies are Google and Facebook
• Youtube to 5 years to first make a profit
• The internet is now a medium for niche marketing and individual consumers

Who's doing the work?

• Much of the marketing on the web is UGC or interactive
• Viral Marketing
• Companies usually create competitions for user generated content to promote their products
• Fan pages have become a negative and a positive
• it allows fans to create their own media 
• But they have issues with copyrighting- e.g J.K Rowling and Warner Bros for Harry Potter

Will media 2.0 save democracy?

• Media 2.0 has created a period of significant change
• Some people are benefiting more from media 2.0 than others. 
• These are usually the big companies