Past questions

Your answer must refer to

• at least two media areas (e.g. TV, film, news, advertising…)
• historical, contemporary and future media
• specific examples
• media theory

2013 Jan
8 How significant has the internet been to media audiences.
9 Discuss the extent to which the internet has transformed media production.

2012 June
8 “The online age has significantly changed consumer behaviour and audience reception, compared with the offline age.” Discuss.
9 Evaluate the ways in which media producers have taken advantage of convergence.

2012 Jan
8 The online age has led to competing theories of cultural change. Which do you consider the most relevant to the media, and why?
9 Evaluate the ways in which media audiences have benefited from online media.

2011 June
8 “This is the age of the prosumer – where the consumer becomes the producer.” Discuss.
9 Discuss the extent to which the behaviour of media audiences has been transformed by the internet.

2011 Jan 
8 “The impact of the internet on the media is exaggerated.” Discuss.
9 Evaluate the opportunities and the threats offered to media producers by the internet.

2010 June
8 “For media audiences the internet has changed everything.” Discuss.
9 Explain the extent to which online media exist alongside older methods of distribution in 2010.

2010 Jan
8 “The impact of the internet on the media is revolutionary.” Discuss.
9 Discuss the extent to which the distribution and consumption of media have been transformed by the internet.

Section B answer structure

mark scheme for Section B

Link to this Google document

Web 3.0 - The Future?

The first web page

25 years after Tim Berners Lee published the idea that became the Internet, what do we think could be its future?

Technologies




wikipedia - Google Glass

Livescience - the internet of things


Issues

Wired magazine features on the web at 25

wikipedia Web2.0 Web3.0


Theory / Critical Approaches

for these you may need the user name: mediamagazine11 and password qp726zr

media magazine - Participation, Web2, hegemony an article by Nick Lacey

media magazine - six questions about media and participation an article by David Buckingham

Lesson 7. Music in an Online Age

  Read the following article http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albinis-keynote-address-at-face-the-music-in-full


Note down key points and issues of debate that are made. It may help to structure your points as follows:

Past issues in the music industry
Present issues that are brought about because of the internet 1) Positives 2) Negatives
The future of the industry

You can refer and quote Steve Albini in your essays

Some key points the articles makes:

• According to the music business body the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Britons streamed 14.8bn tracks last year, almost double the 7.5bn of 2013, as internet connectivity improves and becomes pervasive.
• This year Apple is expected to muscle in on the scene using the Beats brand it bought for $3bn (£2bn) in May 2014, as is Google’s YouTube, which last November launched a paid-for, ad-free music and video streaming service, YouTube Music Key.
• Snapchat is supposedly launching a music feature - A partnership with the music video service Vevo could be incorporated into future versions
• But unlike downloads, musicians do not universally love streaming.
• Change in the use of radio play as advertising - Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé and Coldplay are offering CDs and digital downloads for sale before putting them on streaming services – the opposite of the way radio has been used for promotion for decades.
• Yet streaming revenues are rising fast, according to the BPI’s figures: they have zoomed from zero in 2007 to £76.7m in 2013

Read this article and make notes http://www.recordingconnection.com/reference-library/recording-entrepreneurs/how-the-internet-changed-music/

Another http://www.socialnomics.net/2014/07/23/how-has-the-internet-and-social-media-changed-the-music-industry/

How can you map theorists onto your findings?

Collaborative journalism & citizen journalism

Online New: Part 2

CREATE A CASE STUDY

Choose a story or issue that you're interested in and create a case study that addresses the following;

1. How was the internet used, by the traditional press, in the reporting of the issue?
2. Is there evidence of audience participation (Jenkins)?
3. Is there evidence of a global conversation taking place? (Gilmor & Citizen Journalism, Gauntlett and Leadbeater sharing of ideas)

Find a range of examples on the same issue/story that cover everything that we have looked at so far. 

News in an Online Age: Part 1

TV in an Online Age

An easy follow up read http://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand/2016/11/21/how-netflix-changed-the-way-we-watch/

Ze Frank

http://www.zefrank.com/

Ze has been exploring online collaborative creativity for several years. It began in March 2001 when he sent an online invitation to his birthday party, asking people to send it on to others. Within days it had been viewed thousands of times. How to Dance Properly.

In 2006 Ze became (one of) the first vloggers, uploading an episode of The Show every day for a year. Many more familiar vloggers regard him as their inspiration: see A Brief History of Ze Frank.

One episode featured an audio file sent as a MySpace message, that Ze and his audience turned into a series of remixes: read the story here http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/whipass/ . The original audio file is track 28 on https://soundcloud.com/zefrank/sets/whipass_remixes, where you can also hear the remixes.

He is now president of Buzzfeed Motion Pictures. Its products receive billions of views a year.

He has delivered a number of TED talks and other presentations on what is happening with online media / consumption / creativity:









How is Ze Frank relevant to our topic of Media in the Online Age?

His first TED talk discusses what people do when online. Does what he described there and what you did when let loose on his site demonstrate that we do distract / entertain ourselves with online activities when we are meant to be working and in our leisure time? That those online activities do not come from the traditional media institutions? That maybe some of us do it a lot? That we maybe do this sort of stuff when previously we may have been engaging with mass media in traditional ways?

How do his collaborative online activities (which ones) support Henry Jenkins's ideas about participatory culture?

How do they support David Gauntlett's ideas about creativity in the online age?

How do they support Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory if we think about what people do when they are online and where we find our entertainment? Ze Frank's participating audience is just a niche, but does all the activity in all such creative niches (all those fandoms, all those tribute videos on YouTube...) in the long tail of online activity add up to as much as the tall head of online activity consumption of mass media products?

And perhaps most importantly - VLOGGING. A phenomenon of the online age. Coinciding with the emergence of social media / video hosting sites, the availability of low-cost videoing technologies has enabled a form of media that could not have existed before. Henry Jenkins discusses people's creation of low-cost printed media products in the past, but there was no way they could reach such large audiences as today's vloggers. Ze was a pioneer with The Show.

... See vlogging post ...


Worked hard? Hungry? Make yourself a sandwich.

Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory

How would you apply Anderson's theory to film / cinema?
How much do we watch mainstream, blockbusting film (on whatever platform / in whatever place)? Look back at the BFI Statistical Yearbook 2016 and other years for evidence.
How much do we watch niche film?
We can find mainstream film in a wide variety of places. Where can we find niche film? Does your local multiplex screen any? Local cinema? Where would you have to go in order to see a niche film in a cinema?

Anderson's theory was about online shops (Amazon etc.). What titles are in Amazon UK's best sellers? Do major studios productions dominate the chart? Any independent productions? To back up Anderson's theory, what niche films can you find on Amazon?

Does the same apply to Amazon Prime, as it does to the shop?

What about streaming services? Netflix? Sky Movies? Other film apps on your phone / tablet / computer / TV?

An easy read https://tombobadoodle.wordpress.com/step-2-examples-of-the-long-tail-theory/

http://www.therobinreport.com/the-long-tail-theory/

Some interesting reads, ideas and alternative perspectives;

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/christopher-goodfellow/netflixs-long-tail-is-for_b_4716228.html

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/will-the-long-tail-work-for-hollywood

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/rethinking-the-long-tail-theory-how-to-define-hits-and-niches/

https://techcrunch.com/2008/07/02/poking-holes-in-the-long-tail-theory/

Secret Cinema / Pop-up Cinema

MediaMagazine has several relevant articles on film / cinema / online age.
Here are two to get you started.
You may need to log in to MediaMagazine - user name mediamagazine123, password media123

https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/media-magazine/articles/16900

Pop-Up Cinema: Independent Distribution

https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/media-magazine/articles/16899

Secrets, Hidden Identities and the Village Movie

Lesson 5. High Challenge and Extension

Exemplar essays available to read over the weekend! Make sure you pop into 009 and pick yours up!

This is a really good watch too!

We have the paperback in the classroom as well if you want to read more on this.

Lesson 4. High Challenge and Extension

Watch and make notes from the following videos.
Consider how you can incorporate some of these more complex ideas into our study of the impact of the internet on media areas. What are the advantages and disadvantages for both audience and institution?





This last one (below) is about film and cinema in terms of audiences, the past, the present and the future. (Remember you have to cover all 3 in your answer, so this is ideal). Here Jenkins argues that film / cinema has always been a participatory medium - that what we see in today's fans is not really new.


According to HJ (from 18:00 onwards)

The future of cinema :

• a trans-media phenomenon, as it has been in the past
• with story-telling extending across every available platform

The future of film-going (audience consumption of film):

• film will be experienced in multiple venues
• as an event, and as an everyday activity
• film will be something we participate in and help create, as well as simply something we watch
• film will be trans-media: a driver of the entertainment experiences we have across media platforms

Lesson 4. Fandom + Henry Jenkins

Lesson 3. Film in an Online Age

Lesson 2. Ideas of Gauntlett

Web 2.0 Lesson from nicolanais

Extension Activity - Challenge yourself

What can you find out about web 3.0? What do academics say about it? Can you find any examples of it? How could you map Gauntlett's ideas onto the concept of web 3.0?

http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/10/todays-web-30-nonsense-blogsto.html

Extension Videos to watch following lesson 1: Web 1.0. Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Web 4.0

The Past, The Present and The Future!



WEB 4.0?

Lesson 1. Introduction

Media? What media?

Consumption?

video 1

video 2



This video suggests, in 1969, what the internet might look like! Despite some rampant sexism it does predict today's web (or some elements of it) quite accurately! Note online shopping and banking, plus the ability to spy on people (a combination of webcam and CCTV).


These videos from Corning Glass in 2011 and 2012 show how connected they think their products will make us (or are making us):
A Day Made of Glass
A Day Made of Glass 2
This version has more explanation of the technology: The Story Behind A Day Made of Glass

Two historically interesting webpages:
The World Wide Web 1991-2
Wikipedia 2001
YouTube 2005
What do these tell us about what has changed and how much it has changed?

Online Age: introductory powerpoint from nicolanais