Moral Panic

Facebook announced their Instant Articles feature last week with little fanfare. However, this is fairly significant to newspaper publishers who may see their own new media content threatened by Facebook's move to corner the market in publication distribution.

In the past if Facebook users shared content this would lead outside of Facebook to the original publishers website. This would lead to delays in access times and with the nature of modern browsing habits some users (particularly mobile users) would be unwilling to wait for pages to load. Facebook propose to host the content within their infrastructure with Facebook Instant Articles. They will publish the article, images and advertisements directly within Facebook decreasing load times, which is especially important to mobile users. Facebook have presented this innovation as a win-win solution for all parties involved. Facebook retain the users attention. The user is able to rapidly access content and the publisher is ostensibly able to retain 100% of their advertising revenue and 70% of Facebook's inline advertising revenue. Perhaps even more attractive is the access to the elusive younger demographic that will be gained by tapping into Facebook's social stream.

This demonstrates what may be seen as a logical shift as publishers can no longer rely on their content being a magnet to the user. Instead the publishers need to get their content directly to the user wherever they are on the web. This technology promises to provide the data to give increasingly relevant content served directly to the user adding more value and therefore generating greater engagement and loyalty from the user base.

Facebook will as a result be able distribute content from across the web whilst retaining a captive audience that it will be able to subject to increasingly targeted advertising.

The power of Facebook's algorithm as a curator of content will increase Facebook's ability to act as gatekeeper to its users viewing habits. This could create an ever increasing news bubble by which the algorithm promotes content that Facebook presumes we are interested in based on our likes, browsing habits and search history. So this is not necessarily the perfect solution for users that is being promoted.

Publishers would also be wise to be wary of Facebook's motives. Publishers have already seen the power of the social media giant as in the past few months some publishers have seen their traffic drop by 30% as Facebook tweaked its algorithm to deal with clickbait. Those that join have the prospect of gaining new markets and the possibility of having their content promoted to the top of the stream. However for paywall content providers this is a less attractive solution unless Facebook builds in the ability to discern existing subscribers.

Ultimately what Facebook is presenting as a technology to improve user experience is in actual fact a financially motivated plan to gain access to lucrative content and advertising revenues whilst simultaneously retaining users within its own ecosystem.

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Interactive Digital Technology: The technology that allows audiences to participate in the narrative of media output.

Convergence: The availability of a range of media forms on one platform.

Web 1.0: Static websites as a one way form of communication.

Web 2.0: Interactive online content e.g. blogs and social networking.

Web 3.0: The possibilities of taking the internet into a new era where heightened focus is given to more precise searches processed by machines that can almost read sites as readily as humans. Mythology and uncertainty surround Web 3.0 with dramatic descriptions including “the internet will swallow television" and “the convergence of the virtual and physical world".

Conglomerate: A large company whose business interests are developed in a wide range of media.

Global Village: Instant interaction with culture from around the world at the click of a mouse button – metaphorically a ‘shrunk world’.

Proliferation: Where media has extended into a range of forms and sites of distribution and exchange.

Primary Audience Reception: When an audience has clear, concentrated focus on a piece of media e.g. a film in a cinema.

Prosumer: The audience is both consumer and producer of media texts, thus blurring traditional boundaries.

Long tail: Niche media products that are sold over a long period of time and the opposite to an immediate return on investment e.g. obscure independent films (long tail) v blockbuster films (immediate ROI).

Niche Products: Media products with small, more specific audiences.

Cultural Phenomenon: Something that is so iconic that it becomes part of the accepted culture of society – many YouTube users cannot imagine life without YouTube.

Peer to Peer: Shared media

Digital Ethnography: The way new media has changed the way we communicate and interact with each other in society, as groups and as individuals.

Moral Panic: An issue that is exaggerated by the media and turned into anxious debate, often leading to fierce criticism. Traditional media like print tabloids and tabloid broadcast news are major proponents or moral panics.

Technopanic- where adults create a panic about something on the Internet.

Crowdsourcing: Obtaining needed contributions from large groups of people, often as part of an online community. In film for example, this can be fundraising through social media amplification and letting fans participate in the creative process.

Meme: is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.

Vine- 6 second video

Rich Media: A range of links to media forms e.g. on a website (convergent links often lead users to rich media).

Viral: a marketing strategy that focuses on spreading information and opinions about a product or service from person to person, especially by using unconventional means such as the Internet or email

UGC: User generated content produced and uploaded by a non-professional media practitioner (see Prosumer).

Citizen Journalism: Non-professional journalists reporting on news stories and uploading photographs through blogs and social networking sites and increasingly sites dedicated to accepting this type of content.

Multi-Platform Release: Where a film, for example is released at the same time in a number of different media.

Horizontal Integration: One company that buys/acquires another company whose business interests are in the same sector.

Synergy: Two compatible products that help to sell each other e.g. a film and a computer game.

Brand Identity: A media product that has distinct identity via sometimes audio and visual recognition.

Liberal pluralism- is the dominant perspective linked to capitalism-supports competition in the mass media. Defends wealthy organisations. Promotes freedom of expression.

Marxists could counter this and argue that capitalist society creates class domination and a media monopoly with little regulation or competition. They argue that capitalist societies support the elite institutions.

High production values

Mediation. Choosing which stories/media to release and which content to include.

Dominant ideology- A commonly accepted set of beliefs/values in the media

Western ideology- the set of values and beliefs commonly held by the western world.

Distribution- releasing media products to the world

Globalisation- increased global interconnections

We Media- media texts produced by the audience. The consumption habits of the media.

Cross Cultural factors and New Media- cultural impacts of NDM

Democracy and New Media

Active and Passive audiences

Cultural imperialism- The impact that American ideologies have and how they dominant and dictate content.

Privacy, regulation and censorship

Public Sphere- the public forums created by the internet.

Oligopoly- limited competition- often retained by large media institutions eg Time Warner

Self Scheduling- the audience being allowed to access media when they choose to.

David Gauntlett – opposes media censorship and the vulnerability stereotype sees youth as active and literate compared to vulnerable and needing protection.

Henry Jenkins – video game effects research suggests instead of audiences being passive they are active and engaged in multiple communications.

Richard Berger – Ofcom will subsume the BBFC and become one, large regulatory body.

David Gauntlett – the prosumer creates a world of independent media producers.

Andrew Keen – the prosumer creates a world of ‘amateurs’.

Daniel Chandler – online genre proliferation: new media has increasingly led to the questioning of the boundaries and conventions of genre as traditionally studied.

Michael Wesch – YouTube as cultural phenomenon: here the value of YouTube is being acknowledged with the availability and access to resources it provides being taken for granted despite it origination in recent history, 2006.

Charlie Brooker – blurred boundaries, representation of ‘the real’. Brooker is suggesting that many texts and their availability on a number of interactive platforms has made people question what is real as what is not.

Dan Gillmor – makes key points about the relationship between technology and ‘We Media’

Stuart Price – critical of global media and ownership

Noam Chomsky – Marxist readings on media ownership

Nick Lacey – on synergy, ownership and institution referencing the concepts of synergy and convergence as crucial to modern media.

David Gauntlett: a media theorist who has written extensively on digital and social media and who has explored the concept of the Prosumer – the blurring of boundaries between audiences who consume media, e.g. audiences watching a film and those who produce a fim and upload it onto their YouTube channel or Vimeo or Flickr for example (Vimeo and Flickr have a stronger filmmaking ‘community’). Gauntlett argued in ‘Making is Connecting’ there is a shift from a “sit back and be told" culture to a “making and doing" culture.

Andrew Keen: provides an alternative argument to Gauntlett suggesting that this ‘long tail’ of independent projects simply creates ‘a world of amateurs’ where the quality of media production is undermined by the prosumer.

Chris Anderson: popularised the theory of the long tail which when mapped onto online media consumption suggests there is profit in selling “small volumes of hard to find items". Niche products e.g. independent films have an enormous untapped audience which can now be reached digitally through Web 2.0. As a business model Amazon is a good example of this and can also apply to social networks and viral marketing.

Michael Wesch: describes YouTube as a cultural phenomenon and explores how peer-to-peer sharing has transformed media consumption but also identity and self-identity. He is interested in ‘digital ethnography’, the study of the effect of new media on human interaction. See ‘Web 2.0…The Machine is Using Us’.

Henry Jenkins: disputes a dominant reading (see Stuart Hall) that internet communication has reduced social skills by stating that instead, through interacting with media production and consumption through Web 2.0 users develop more skills through active participation and multiple communications and as result are more media literate. In his book, Convergence Culture Jenkins looks at how the convergence of media forms should be understood less in terms of technology and more in terms of what people are doing with them. This can be cross referenced with Gauntlett’s theory that the media effects debate is less relevant now and younger media consumers and much more active and media literate and are less likely to be victims of passive consumption. Online media presents two distinct arguments in this regard.

David Buckingham: is interested in the use of technology in everyday life, access to this technology and the consequences for individuals and social groups. One of Buckingham’s areas of concern is children and media access and use, particularly in terms of identity – internet identity through online media consumption is an ideal opportunity for students to discuss their own examples and experiences.

Martin Barker: explores the notion and that online digital media and its effects is the new moral panic (this argument can be used in conjunction with Jenkins and Gauntlett).

Clay Shirky: theories work well in conjunction with Chris Anderson – he writes on the social and economic effects of internet technologies and is a proponent of crowdsourcing and online collaboration. He argues all forms of media are migrating online.

Baudrillard(1983) links postmodernism with globalization- reality has been replaced by a “media-generated, hyper-reality". Consumption here is seen to play the critical role in defining peoples’ identities and consciousness, superseding the old class-consciousness

Del Sol Poole (1977)- Utopian perspective of NDM. Suggests new media will facilitate a positive media world

A wider range of media texts can be produced that meet the needs of many more groups in society. Provides individual citizens with the capacity to produce/publicise texts themselves. This facilitates the growth of different media representations.

Habermas (1991) Argues that media texts should provide a space for citizens to debate and criticise government actions & form public opinion.

Suggests new media outlets produce similar sorts of representations that focus primarily on celebrity and trivia. New media has created a dumbing down culture.

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