!!New News!!

-Lecture 2

Imagine a world where families had to sit around listening to the radio to hear of local happening or only receiving breaking news via newspaper weeks later…If one were to take a step back and look, they would find that this, was our world not too long ago.

New News (web 2.0) in the form of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have taken the world by storm, creating a paradigm shift in the way today’s society views their media.

This new media form is creating a hybrid species of human, which journalists and social networking companies alike so loving call PROD-USERS (Producers/consumers). The term is used to differentiate a passive consumer with an active consumer which is more involved in the process of the customization of an end product. For Example when an HTML tag is seen with the words, “Tell us what you think” or “How could we improve your online experience” the consumer would inadvertently and somewhat serendipitously become a producer, contributing towards the improving of the end product.

Now, with the way that media is progressing into the future the Focus has moved from the News companies to the social groups and now is settling upon the individual.

Web 3.0 also known as the Semantic Web (essentially the study of the relationships between signifiers, words, phrases, symbols etc and what the readers interpret  them to mean) is taking the html tagging to new heights through Meta Tagging. Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are already making use of such meta tagging when building their indices, in which keywords represent various page’s content.

The ability of the search engines to access content so readily allows for the ‘hyperlocalisation’ of information which denies the consumers ability to plead ignorance or lack of knowledge towards certain topics. 

For an overview of Hyperlocalisation- Click here

As the entirety of online media has been so enthusiastically spread throughout the world, consumers have developed the ethos that they are entitled to free media. The question has therefore arisen as to whether entitlement will be the death of journalism as a whole.

Newspapers are no longer making money because why would a consumer pay for something they are entitled to get for free?

ENTER RUPERT MURDOCH . . .

The Australian born Media Mogul Murdoch, is now trying to initiate a monetising strategy in order to save the classic ideal of Journalism. However many online surveys have suggest that a large percentile of the pubic would never pay for such media. Research looking at the trends among different ages, social classes or regions, found that statistical information points towards Murdoch’s monetising scheme being a perpetual flop.

Graphs Showing Paywall Surveys:

For More Paywall based surveys and Graphs- Click Here

Online Media Gurus however, are declaring exclusive access to élite media for subscribers in order to tempt the shunning consumers. If value is added, will consumers put up with the Paywall in order to receive quality journalism? In regards to this question the jury is still out but only time will tell if the Paywall scheme will succeed or fail.