Music - downloading and sharing online

The future’s bright the future’s virtual – music and the internet

Instant, no risk, legal music on your desktop? Gavin Luhrs suggests that together music and the Internet have a bright future.

Case study
For OCR’s New Media Technologies 2732 unit you need to prepare a case study. Ideally you will cover more than one technology, and get a balance of material relating to both audiences and institutions. The important thing to bear in mind, which may well reassure you, is that you won’t need to have detailed knowledge of the technology itself.

At first, ‘The Internet’ may seem like an excellent topic for your research – but you’ll quickly realise that there’s too much of it. If asked to research the geography of a particular place you wouldn’t choose ‘The World’ – which is practically what would be involved in doing ‘The Internet’. This article attempts to offer some starting points for your research into ‘Music and the Internet’. I stress the starting point: you’ll soon see that while music provides a narrower focus, there’s still a lot to consider.

File ‘sharing’
A few years ago, a software program called Napster was created and then closed down for allowing the illegal sharing of copyrighted material, mostly music files. An exploration of theNapster case has filled whole books, so further research on your part is needed. It may now be out of date in the rapidly shifting world of New Media Technologies, but it still serves as a useful illustration of why the future of music distribution is digital. Conservative estimates put the number of Napster users at 40 million only 18 months after it was created and having used no conventional advertising. Okay, Napster was allowing access to music for free, much of it months before it was available in the shops; but such a high figure, gained before significant broadband rollout, does indicate a keen appetite for a new way of accessing music. And the fact that media giant BMG effectively bought Napster for a reported $55 million (whilst involved with the prosecution of the service for copyright infringement!) suggests that even the ‘suits’ see the potential.

Napster may have been stopped but other services persist: Audio Galaxy, Morpheus, Grokster and KaZaA are just four examples. A recent survey by the British Phonographic Industry Ltd (BPI) suggests that around five million people in the UK download over one billion tracks a year using peer-to-peer file sharing programs, creating 126 million CDs using computer CD writers. Despite such huge figures, the exchanging of music files allowed by these programs is actually illegal. Some suggest that the lack of legitimate music online has forced people to use alternative sources.

Buying music online
However, this year there have been signs that the music industry is beginning to catch up with the rest of the world. In April EMI was the first of the big five record companies to make the majority of its music available online (90% or around 140,000 tracks). As the number of broadband connections rises, we may see a new way of purchasing music become the accepted standard. Legitimate downloads are now tracked to create a weekly chart, a sign of growing acceptance. It is predicted that almost 20% of all music sales will be in digital format within 10 years. At the moment there are two ways of buying and downloading music from the Internet:subscription and pay-as-you-go.

Subscription vs. Pay-As-You-Go
Subscription based services offering many of the features of Napster-type programmes – with the difference that they are completely legal, even if they are not free – are now widely available from the likes of MSN, Freeserve, HMV, BT and many others. The most common pricing structure is 500 credits for a £4.99 monthly fee. With these credits users have a choice: you can stream tracks at a cost of one credit each, download tracks for 10 credits each, or burn to CD for 100 credits. As you can see, the pricing encourages users not to create physical copies of the music, but instead access them on demand. The tracks downloaded using subscription services are encrypted so they can’t be played by others or by non-subscribers. This process is referred to as Digital Rights Management (or DRM).

This last point is a vital shift: if these services prove popular, in the future you won’t buy music, but instead will rent it. On Demand Distribution (OD2), the company providing the infrastructure and management of many of these services, acknowledges that for older consumers this is an unfamiliar concept. Younger users aren’t put off, according to OD2; as the market matures, so acceptance of ‘renting’ will grow. The issue for many music lovers, however, is the commitment to a perpetual subscription, as the downloaded tracks become useless once your subscription to a service ends (it doesn’t have to be the same service, but you do need to subscribe to one of them). On a per track basis, these services are certainly cheaper, but their success depends on a shift in consumer thinking.

Some providers, most notably Apple, offer songs for download on a pay-as-you-go basis (PAYG). Launched at the end of April, and only available to US Mac users, the Apple iTunesshop sold over one million tracks in its first week of operation. By the end of 2003 a Windows version is expected. Whilst still employing DRM technology, Apple’s approach is more relaxed, and it appears more popular. PAYG services have the advantage that they don’t require such a huge shift in consumer behaviour; the tracks become the permanent (digital) property of the consumer, and aren’t dependent on long term commitment.

Whilst it is still unclear which method will prevail, what is certain is that buying and downloading music from the Internet is here to stay. It will change the way audiences think about buying music, and it will lead to changes in the home: media servers delivering content to wirelessly networked stereos doesn’t sound as far-fetched as it did just a few years ago.

Discovering music online
Part of the reason buying music online is potentially so popular is the interconnected nature of the Internet. It is possible – indeed increasingly common – for someone to see a new band mentioned (perhaps on the message board on the site of another band), visit the official site, read reviews from the music press (www.nme.com or www.q4music.com for example) and by fans (at places like www.amazon.co.uk), download previews and then buy a CD or download tracks from an online retailer. All of this is legal, and could happen in a very short space of time without leaving home. With the Internet no music purchase has to be a risk, and can be virtually instant.

For institutions, this type of integration is invaluable. Not only can official websites encourage fans to buy music, but they can also direct audiences to outlets of the music at the click of a mouse. By using legal online distribution services record companies can significantly reduce costs – and help to reduce the number of illegal downloads.

For audiences, the Internet has all but replaced the ‘fanzine’ (underground music ‘magazines’ usually devoted to particular bands and sold at gigs). Rather than selling poorly photocopied material, now anyone can produce a slick looking ‘fanzine’, sharing with the world their thoughts on a band or genre of music. The creators of such sites are also contributing to a shift in the behaviour of music-buying audiences. In many ways, such sites are more valuable than official sites in that they are often lovingly created with no thought of payment, just the desire to encourage more people to buy the music. And that’s the point to remember: the technology and the competing business models will always be secondary to the music itself. MM

Glossary
Broadband – High speed Internet access.
Encryption – The ‘locking’ of computer data so that only users with an authorised ‘key’ can access it.
Peer-to-peer file-sharing – A peer-to-peer network directly connects users to each other, allowing the sharing of data, most commonly music and video files. As peer-to-peer networks don’t have to use a central server, newer file sharing programs cannot be stopped as easily as Napster, which did rely on a central server.
Server – A computer that delivers data to connected devices, for example a web page to another computer.
Stream – Accessing music and video ‘on demand’, viewing it as it downloads rather than after the whole file is on your computer. When streaming a file no copy remains on your computer once it has finished playing.

Gavin Luhrs

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 5, September 2003

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TV On Demand - a guide

Just press the red button

a student’s guide to interactive television

What is interactive television, and how is it changing the way we watch? And how are institutions adapting to these changes? Elizabeth Vickers investigates.

Television has changed. Once we were assumed to be passively entertained by that magic box in the corner of the living room, fed a steady diet of sitcoms and soaps and expected to be grateful for it. However, slowly but surely those little red dots have started creeping on to our screens, almost begging to be pressed...

How technology has made it possible
The basic reason why interactive television (iTV) has become more prevalent in recent years is simple: it’s only possible with digital television. Digital television can be broadcast by cable, satellite or received, like analogue, through a normal rooftop aerial. The main difference to analogue is that the signals are compressed, which means much more information can be transmitted in the same amount of bandwidth. The immediate consequence of this has been the remarkable explosion of channels – Freeview has meant that even households which had previously been reluctant to pay for television can now enjoy a range of free-to-air channels undreamt of a few years ago. Freeview, cable and digital satellite viewers can all access interactive television content, meaning it is now available to well over half of all households. The number should grow, as there are plans to ‘switch off’ analogue transmitters by 2010 at the latest.
Some digital television boxes are connected to a telephone line, enabling a two-way transfer of information, similar to an internet connection. This has meant that Internet services such as banking and email have become available even to people without computers in their homes.

What is currently available?
In the last few years, interactive television has become more and more widespread, with many channels offering some sort of interactive content. At present, this content ranges from the very basic to the highly sophisticated, and it is constantly evolving.

The simplest interactive television is simply an update of the outdated analogue text services such as Teletext and Oracle. Channel 4’s text service is generally of this type, with a familiar roster of lottery numbers, weather and cheap holidays. However, once a year Channel 4 makes better use of its interactive capabilities when it enters its annual Big Brother frenzy. What exactly they provide has varied from year to year but during various series viewers could choose camera angles, read about recent events in the house, and vote online through their set-top box. On E4, their entertainment-focused channel, Big Brother coverage is available all day, every day by pressing the red button, an indispensable service for those viewers who are worried they might miss an argument about which of the housemates should do the washing-up!

ITV is another broadcaster which has recognised the opportunities provided by reality television. Although latecomers to the interactive arena, their red button content offers viewers the chance to vote on popular shows such as I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! and The X-Factor. In addition, viewers can play games linked to the shows, read behind-the-scenes gossip and enter competitions. Interactive television gives broadcasters the chance to keep viewers interested 24 hours a day – a key weapon in the fight to keep hold of the fickle youth audience. Broadcasters are also linking more content with their websites and looking to mobile phone networks to help them widen their audiences. Channel 4 are offering mobile phone-only mini-episodes of Hollyoaks for download for 50p each. This could be a money-maker and a way of keeping one of their brands at the forefront of people’s minds.

Commercially, iTV has proven to be a revenue-generator for some institutions. Pay-per-play games are part of nearly all interactive television services apart from BBCi, and the UK’s rather relaxed gambling laws have meant gaming companies have been quick to exploit the possibilities of interactive television. A number of digital channels now offer ‘real money’ gambling, with virtual slot machines, poker games and horse racing just some of the games available. In these cases the channels themselves act as little more than portals to the more profitable interactive content, with the programmes themselves being low-quality time fillers.

Advertisers, too, have recognised the potential, with the red dot appearing in the corner of more and more advertising slots. These offer the chance to enter competitions, read more about the product, get a free sample or test drive, or even watch an extended version of the advert itself. Volvo used a recent advertising campaign as a trailer for a documentary about its cars, and we can expect to see more of this sort of thing as the technology develops. In addition, the interactive portals themselves often carry banner ads or embedded advertisements in much the same way as web pages do – so if you thought you could switch to the interactive content to avoid advert breaks, forget it – they’re way ahead of you. The blurring of the lines between entertainment and advertisement has been predicted for a long time, and this is one way that it could happen.

Pushing the boundaries – 2 case studies
In the UK the main institutions pioneering the use of interactive television are the BBC and Sky. Their different remits mean they have made very different use of the technology, demonstrating the true versatility of iTV.

1. The BBC
As a public service broadcaster, the BBC has a responsibility to provide services to the widest audience possible, including those minorities which may find they are not adequately catered for by commercial television. Their iTV system is known as BBCi, and has largely replaced the Ceefax system on analogue television.

The BBC’s system of page numbering on its interactive content means users can easily find the page they want by inputting a number using their remote control. This has superseded their previous system, which involved an often lengthy and frustrating search through a series of menus. The slow response of the BBCi pages to the remote control meant casual browsers were discouraged from investigating further and, in some cases, stopped using it altogether. However, it has now been subject to a series of improvements and users have reported that they are much happier with the service.

To date, BBCi encompasses a wide range of content, from ‘added-value’ content that provides extra information about BBC programmes, to stand-alone content. The added-value pages cover the same things as Ceefax, for example recipes from cookery shows or the names and addresses of organisations mentioned in factual programming. It moves beyond the limited capabilities of Ceefax, though, to include things such as games for children based on their favourite Tweenies and Balamory characters.

For sporting events such as the Olympic Games and Wimbledon, BBCi has had great success with running multiple games or events concurrently on BBCi. In 2005, the number of people watching Wimbledon via BBCi went up by 30% – demonstrating that viewers respond positively to true choice.

The BBC have also been exploring ways to add interactive content to shows that have traditionally inspired some level of interactivity from home audiences – even if that used to take the form of shouting at the screen! Their Test the Nation quizzes offer the audience the chance to take part, by answering the questions shown on screen and comparing theirscores against those of the studio audience. This tactic is not only an enjoyable experience, it also encourages viewer loyalty, as you need to watch the whole programme in order to get the most out of it.

In keeping with its public service remit, BBCi has also begun to offer viewers the chance to have their own say, putting viewer-generated content on BBCi. Previously this has only been possible through public access television, rare in the UK, and could be a real chance to make television production truly interactive.

2. Sky
Sky Television, on the other hand, is a purely commercial business which has no public service obligations, and is free to exploit the new interactive technologies for profit. It is significant that Sky’s most lavish interactive services have been aimed at the demographic with the greatest amount of disposable income – young men. Or, to be more specific, young football-watching men.

Sky Sports, a series of ‘premium’ subscriber-only channels that come only with Sky’s most expensive packages, is aimed overwhelmingly at men and, due to the cost, attracts a self-selecting group of viewers who are very attractive to advertisers. This provides a powerful incentive for Sky to use iTV facilities as a USP to make Sky Sports indispensable for sports fans.

On days where more than one match is being played simultaneously, such as Champions League heats, the interactive button takes you to a selection of screens where the viewer can watch one, four or even eight matches at once. During Premiership matches, the sports fan can choose the commentary they wish to accompany the match, from the professional Sky commentators to the Fanzone, where supporters of each team provide their own, often very entertaining, view of the game. Alternatively, they can use ‘Playercam’, where one footballer is tracked for ten minutes of the match.

Sky has also exploited interactive technology for another set of premium channels – the movie channels, where the most prestigious film premieres are available as Multi-Start movies. By pressing the red button, the viewer is given the choice of starting the movie every ten minutes between two certain times. Not quite the much-anticipated ‘video on demand’ that has been ‘around the corner’ for many years now, but certainly a useful service.

As with BBCi, Sky also offers extensive interactive news content, with channels devoted to headlines, other news, politics, sport and entertainment.

This gives the main Sky News channels the freedom to drop scheduled programming when major news stories break, such as the 7 July London bombings, while continuing to cover stories of lesser importance that will nevertheless be of interest to some viewers.

What does this mean?
One side effect of the rise of iTV is the potential that has arisen for fictional programming to become truly interactive. Channel 4 have been one of the first broadcasters to explore this, producing an urban drama aimed at young people called Dubplate Drama. Broadcast in December 2005, episodes were available to view not just on Channel 4, but on MTV, E4, and available to download from the PSP website and on 3 mobile phones. The BBC has also begin to look at interactive drama, with viewers of an episode of Holby City having a choice of two characters to kill off.

However, these programmes exemplify the limited ‘choose one of two alternative endings’ format which, up to now, has been the extent of interactive fictional programming. One of the attractive features of iTV is that it offers instant feedback. Imagine a scenario in which the interactive content offers viewers four choices at each key point in the narrative, selectable by using the four coloured keys on the remote control. The number of choices effectively means the viewer is choosing their own programme from one of dozens or even hundreds of potential programmes.

This raises some interesting subjects for debate. First, the cost of producing such a programme would be much higher than one that followed a normal script – how would such a venture be commercially viable?

Secondly, do audiences really want choice? Part of the appeal of television it that it delivers narrative to its audience with little or no effort demanded on their part. Maybe a television viewer wouldn’t enjoy making narrative decisions, seeing it more as a burden or a chore.

However, the trend in recent years has been towards personalisation, with iPods and PVRs letting consumers create, respectively, their own radio stations and television channels. The Internet is awash with re-interpretations of popular texts, such as re-cut edits of Star Wars, re-written versions of Harry Potter and even Lord of the Rings re-created in Lego! Perhaps this shows that young, tech-savvy media consumers would welcome a legitimate arena for such creativity.

Another area for concern is the question of advertising. If embedded advertising in interactive content becomes the norm (and it certainly appears to be), and we see more blurring of the boundaries between programming and interactive content, will we eventually end up with some sort of advertising on screen at all times? PVRs (Personal Video Recorders) such as Sky+ have already worried advertisers, as they drastically cut down the amount of time people spend watching advertising. As more and more people adopt new technologies, institutions will be forced to find ways to make up for the loss in revenue, and this may mean exploiting iTV more. Ofcom will be keeping a close eye on developments, but there is little doubt that things will change.

Thinking points for students
When studying interactive television, perhaps the best way to start is to keep an eye on how different generations approach new technology. Are the younger members of your household more comfortable with interactive television, or does it tend to be older people who use it more often, finding it less intimidating than the Internet? What would encourage you to use iTV more often, and for what services would you be prepared to pay?

Watch out for news stories about iTV and how it is being used in conjunction with programming, especially in programmes aimed at teenagers. Youth programmes often give broadcasters a chance to experiment with new technologies, knowing that their target audience will be comfortable with the interfaces and concepts involved. Take note of the ways people you know interact with television programmes – do they text to vote for winners of reality shows, for example?

Think about whether the technology is driving the changes, or whether it is just keeping up with the new demands institutions are making. Do you think we have reached the limit of what can be achieved using the technology available, or should institutions be doing more with it?
To find out you’ll need to keep pressing the red button!

Elizabeth Vickers

This article was first published in MediaMagazine 15.

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New Media Technologies - what opportunities does it present for audiences?

You and your media

New media technologies and audience consumption

The most exciting aspects of learning about New Media Technologies relate to the immediate impact they have on our everyday lives and on our experiences and choices as consumers. In the first of two linked articles, Struan Bates explores how NMTs have transformed their audiences; and regular MM NMT expert Gavin Luhrs homes in on the red button to explore the impact of digital and interactive TV.

When you are logging-on to the Internet at home or watching a DVD with friends, have you ever considered yourself as part of an expanding New Media audience?

If you haven’t, it’s maybe because these experiences often occur alone, or with a few other people, rather than a larger ‘audience’. But aren’t thousands of others having similar experiences in different places? Thinking about the experiences of New Media audiences gives an insight into how work and leisure time is being changed by new technology. As a user of New Media your choices are important to the institutions that provide products and services. But have you ever wondered how advances in the technology itself are dictating how audiences form and interact?

Individual New Media Technologies are often complicated and evolving things. Don’t worry too much if you don’t know the difference between XML and HTML or what MP3 compression rates are; to understand the component technologies behind things like DVD, IMAX cinema or digital television often requires a high level of technical knowledge. It is more relevant to your course to understand the ways in which Audiences and Institutions have been changed by these technologies, and to be able to talk broadly about the future implications that New Media Technology may have for them.

More choice
New Media audiences can choose between a bewildering number of media products, but how does choice begin to affect the composition of audiences themselves? Digital technology, for instance, has given audiences in Britain access to hundreds of new digital television channels from around the world, giving audiences many more viewing options than the usual five terrestrial channels. The ‘digital revolution’ has also affected the way in which audiences consume music, with the Internet allowing listeners to access MP3 technology and download music tracks to play through their home PCs. This freedom of choice, though, has not continued unabated: legal challenges have been mounted by music companies who feel that consumers should not be able to listen to their artists without paying for the privilege first. Digital technology has therefore given users the ability to select media according to their interests, while simultaneously creating more diverse audiences.
Making life easier for consumers
New Media Technology has also facilitated a greater degree of choice for audiences and consumers of many ‘off-line’ products and services. For example, the appearance of Internet banks over the past five years has allowed consumers to open accounts more easily, without the requirement to fill in a number of forms or make a series of trips to their local branch. If customers have the Internet at home they have access to information such as latest interest rates and banking service reviews; this makes them more powerful as consumers as they can more easily make informed choices. Consumers of products such as clothes or cars can also make more informed choices by surfing the Internet for the best deals. These may often be abroad, though the World Wide Web allows barriers such as language and currency to be transcended; transactions can be carried out simply using the customer’s credit card details.

Consumers of New Media Technologies are therefore transformed from being a passive‘audience’ of technologies like the Internet into active participators, making choices and exploiting the media for their own requirements. The Internet, as one of the most accessible New Media Technologies, has offered the biggest array of choice to the largest audience by virtue of its ease of use. The possibilities to audiences and consumers increase on a daily basis as the web expands and a greater number of people have access to online technology.

Access for all?
‘Narrowcasting’ is when media texts are aimed at very small special-interest groups. TheInternet has allowed events to be ‘narrowcast’ to a niche audience whose interests are not shared by the majority of the population. This form of accessibility has begun to change the composition of media audiences in radical and unpredictable ways. For instance, whereas a fan of a rock group may have once gone to watch the band at a concert, they may now choose to watch a live web-cast in the comfort of their own bedroom. The Internet can also enable audiences to converge where previously they might not have existed: special interest or ‘fan-sites’ allow media communities to appear whose breadth is not restricted by distance or space. For example, fans of ‘cult’ television such as Doctor Who may live in various countries across the world, and without the aid of New Media Technology they may never meet. The Internet allows them to interact with each other as an audience community and share their interests online. To uncover these changes, the media researcher could use an ‘ethnographic’ model to ask questions about particular groups:

• What technologies are being used?
• How sophisticated are the users in accessing the media?
• In what contexts is the media being accessed?

This raises questions about the ways in which technology is changing the shape of audiences and the b that are associated with media consumption. New Media Technologies, however easy to access, are not wholly democratic. Some sections of society are partly excluded from experiencing them; one major factor is the cost of the devices and products available.

Cost and privilege
There is a misconception that some New Media Technologies (the Internet, for instance) allow audiences to access a wealth of media products and services cheaply. This is not always the case; the affordability of New Media products for audiences changes as different technologies become available. For example, a greater audience can now access the Internet more cheaply than they could five years ago, since cheaper computer hardware and ISP charges have allowed more of the population to use services like email and the World Wide Web. Another example would be games consoles (such as PS2 and X-Box), where the price of the hardware (the console itself) has come down in price significantly over the past five years, mainly due to increased mass production of the units and the cheaper availability of the component parts. Whether this form of New Media Technology is really cheaper for consumers, however, is questionable: the price of software (the games themselves) has roughly stayed the same, and for a number of formats it has increased.

On the other hand, digital television is a technology waiting to be fully successful. The promise of this technology has not wholly been realised due to the failure of institutions like ITV Digital, and the relatively high cost of the hardware involved. Up until fairly recently, someone who wished to install digital television at home would have to pay a lot of money for the privilege. Hence, the Internet has a greater audience, while digital television has failed to reach the mass audience that its promoters had envisaged. Different technologies may therefore attract different audiences by virtue of their affordability.

Quality of experience
This is an area where New Media have significant advantages over older technologies. Whiledigital technology in particular has given audiences images of greater quality, it has also opened new avenues for sharing and distribution: images can be attached to emails or displayed in websites. The quality of graphics and sound displayed by games consoles such as PS2 and N64 has improved significantly on the previous generation, and online gaming provides players with a quality of experience that extends beyond their bedrooms. The greater audience available to the online gaming industry helps to create an online community that can experience a product in a way that exploits its potential to its fullest. Whether the game is sophisticated graphically or otherwise is perhaps of less importance than the ability to interact with other gamers. Theinstitutions that provide these experiences know that the quality of experience in this expanding arena will also help to sell ‘units’ of software in the lucrative home market.

Existing forms of media can also be presented in different and exciting ways for audiences. The development of IMAX cinema has provided a whole new cinematic experience, which supersedes the style of film presentation that most filmgoers are familiar with. For the viewer who wishes to stay at home, the increasing affordability of DVDs has meant that their old VHS tapes have been replaced by an item of superior quality that comes with a host of added ‘extras’ such as directors’ cuts, interviews with the cast, and trailers. These all add to the quality ofexperience for the audience, extending their familiarity with the media product beyond a simple viewing. The development of a film as a New Media product therefore has an implication for the quality of experience as well as the quality of product.

But does this greater quality always mean a more desirable product for audiences? Many professional photographers dislike the pixel-perfect quality of digital cameras and prefer to use older techniques of developing rolls of film to achieve a result that provides a greater ‘realism’. Also, the greater number of television channels facilitated by digital television has meant that many broadcasters have paid less attention to the quality of their programming than thequantity of viewers they have attracted.

Audience power
The next time you use your mobile phone, download an MP3 track or switch on your games console, think about yourself as part of an audience. What choices are available to you? Who else is involved in your use of the technology? How is your quality of experience changing? Is what you are doing cheaper or more expensive than it used to be? Developments in the technology itself may help to dictate how people interact with one another. But as a user of New Media your choices and experiences can, in turn, help to drive the development of new products and devices – your behaviour as a member of a New Media audience can be as important to the institutions that govern the media as the evolving technologies driving it. MM

Struan Bates

What’s on the box tonight?

An introduction to thinking about digital and interactive TV
For OCR’s New Media Technologies unit (2732) you need to gather material for a case study. This article is intended to introduce some of the issues related to digital and interactive television; the topic is vast so further investigation on your part is vital.

Digital television has been with us for just a few years, but already it has reached a penetration rate of around 50% of homes (approximately 10-11 million homes). Digital television can be accessed using three platforms: Digital Satellite (Sky), Digital Cable (NTL/Telewest) and DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television – Freeview). All platforms offer an expanded choice of channels and varying levels of interactivity. In general, the digitised television signals mean better picture and sound quality as well as using less bandwidth – this is why it is possible to offer so many additional channels.

Increased channel variety
While some reject the value of all these additional channels, arguing that their output is over-reliant on repeats, imports and ‘trash’, most accept that the possibilities are enriching. Specialist music, documentary, arts, movie, children’s and sports channels are plentiful, particularly on digital satellite and cable platforms. Inevitably, much of the programming is of lower quality; but some of it is also of high quality and of the type rarely seen on the five terrestrial channels. Perhaps the ideals of public service broadcasting should be reconsidered for the digital age; today the channels offering ‘something for everyone’ seem increasingly outmoded.

Increased bandwidth also means that for little extra outlay, channel owners can offer +1 services, which allow viewers a second chance to see a programme they may have missed. Such channels, as well as multiple movie channels showing the same films at 15-or 30-minute intervals, question the traditionally rigid idea of scheduling. Just a few years ago, if you missed a programme you cursed your inability to programme your VCR. Now you can watch it an hour later, or a few days later as part of a weekly cycle of multiple repeat or ‘catch up’ slots. By clever navigation of the television listings, it is becoming almost possible to make your viewing fit around your life, not the other way around.

The increase in the number of channels does have some disadvantages. For viewers, the absence of original programming can lead to a feeling of ‘nothing’ being on across hundreds of channels. ‘Event’ programmes are also under threat; virtually gone are the days when 30 million people tuned into the same programme. For channel owners selling advertising time is increasingly difficult. Niche broadcasters may be advantageous in terms of reaching a specific target audience, but many have official audience shares of 0%. For example, Sky News, despite its reputation as the most successful 24-hour news channel, has an audience share of just 0.6%. In August 2003 the ‘extra’ channels combined had 25.1% of the audience share compared to BBC’s 24.4% and ITV1’s 23.1%. Little wonder, then, that there is an absence of money for risky, original programming.

Press the red button
Interactive features are one of the clear differences between analogue and digital television. On digital platforms the ‘red button’ on the remote control is commonly used to access the interactive content delivered with the television pictures. The appearance of these interactive services varies, but is much like a slimmed-down website or even a DVD video menu. Through the interactive ‘pages’ it is possible to play along with quiz shows, watch video clips, modify the experience of the channel’s main television programme, perhaps by selecting a different camera angle or narrative audio track, or play games. Sky viewers can even buy console-style controllers used specifically to play the games provided on the platform’s interactive service. Using a telephone connection, viewers can also send information to the channel, possibly in the form of votes, as has been used in programmes such as Big Brother and Restoration.

Alternative experiences
The increased bandwidth available on digital platforms allows interactive content to be sent along with a conventional channel. Quickly these interactive offerings have been embraced, admittedly with varying success. Test the Nation, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Banzai are just three quiz-based shows offering viewers the chance to take a fuller part in the proceedings. Premier League Football, tennis at Wimbledon and programmes such as Big Brother and Walking with Beasts have all offered extra video and audio content. Walking with Beasts offered an alternative narration; the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage on interactive television allowed viewers the choice of which game to watch. Such variations link to the experience offered by many other New Media Technologies. The traditionally linear nature of books and films has been made non-linear by the Internet and DVD video (an idea explored in MediaMagazine 4). Interactive services can mean that there is no definitive version of a programme, as viewers switch between the main programme and the supplementary video clips, pictures, or passages of text. The computerised feel of interactive television, and DVD, is making all of us a little more comfortable with computers, and is a good example of convergence.

Optional extras
For viewers, interactive services have the advantage of offering ‘extras’ as well as encouraging a closer interaction with a particular programme. It could be argued that the viewers have greater control if they can select camera angles or the depth of the narration. For the owners of digital television channels, interactive services are attractive because they can both encourage audiences to become more involved with programmes and, more importantly, earn more money through a share of call costs arising from activities such as voting or entering competitions. Increasingly advertisers are using ‘red button’ interactivity to offer viewers the chance to send for more details, request free samples or enter competitions. All viewers need to do is watch out for the red button invitation when the advertisement appears.

As you can see, there are many aspects of digital and interactive television to explore. A good place to start is the BBC News website and the Guardian’s MediaGuardian site. By using the ‘search’ boxes and visiting the sites regularly you will quickly become a digital television expert!

Gavin Luhrs

Glossary
Analogue: analogue signals are sent in radio waves which are received by rooftop aerials. Digital signals are composed of a series of ones and noughts, making the transfer of data, in this case a television signal, much more accurate.

Bandwidth: the capacity available to send data (television pictures, computer files).

Convergence: the process of technologies combining to create a new product – digital television combines moving pictures and computerised, interactive displays.

Digitised: if something is digitised it is converted into computerised data. At its most basic level digitised content is made up of a series of ones and noughts. This allows the perfect reproduction of content as many times as necessary.
Niche broadcasters: providers of specialist content, usually based on a theme. For example, there are channels devoted to food, travel, money and music.
Platform: the ‘stage’ on which something operates. The use of this depends on the context. For example you could talk about a gaming platform to mean either a PC or a games console. Or you could talk about either Sky Television or your PC as a platform for the Internet.

Scheduling: the process of deciding what is on television and when.

This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 6, December 2003

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You Tube - does it increase audience's creativity?

YouTube

It’s visited by 10.4 million people a month, and its traffic has grown by 56% since last year alone. Even the Queen uses it. It’s almost certainly bookmarked on your computer. So what do you do with yours? Pete Fraser investigates the weird and wonderful world of YouTube.

YouTube is fast replacing TV viewing for teenagers, and they are not just watching copyright-infringing professionally-made stuff designed for bigger screens, or violent happy-slapping stuff shot by bullies on their mobiles. The interesting bit is the stuff in between...this article looks at some recent sub-genres of homemade YouTube material which seems to me to be quite interesting (and in many cases not impossible to emulate yourself!). So be inspired...

Lego videos

If you type ‘lego’ into the YouTube search you will get around 58,000 results. They are not all brilliant animations, but many of them are. And a lot of them have had several hundred thousand hits. Top of the list when I looked was Grand Theft Auto: Lego City with over four million, followed by Lego Indiana Jones and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the latter professionally produced for the film’s latest DVD release). Lots of clever re-makes of scenes from films, done with loving care and attention to detail by young animators pepper the site. There are also many examples of music videos re-made, some of which clearly lend themselves to systematic animation, such as ‘OK GO’, while others are just eccentric, such as ‘Fame’ or songs by Rammstein.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF-kELmmvgA (Grand Theft Auto)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egPgU5kAjKE (Indiana Jones)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIXByCAIzos (Monty Python)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjCL0_0Il7w (OK GO)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6O3RTHO6OI (Fame)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxUZUnRwH7s (Rammstein)

Sweding

The recent release Be Kind Rewind from director Michel Gondry, in which Jack Black and his colleagues do nil budget truncated re-makes of famous films, coined a new word: ‘sweding’. The characters pretend that the delay in films being ready for rental is because they are being imported from Sweden, hence the term. As part of the marketing for the film, the distributors set up a competition for viewers to ‘swede’ well-known films of their choice, uploading them to YouTube, thus spilling over the fiction into the reality of fan production. By the time this MediaMagazine is published, I would expect there to be thousands of sweded films on YouTube, partly as a result of the competition and partly through the film inspiring other viewers to make some. My favourites at the time of writing are Die Hard and a silent version of Taxi Driver, although if you search for the latter, you may also come across some home videos of wild taxi rides in Gothenburg!

There are even director channels full of sweded videos, including Dokkoi from Japan, who even uploads ‘making of’ sweded videos, showing how he made his Blade Runner swede.

http://www.bekindmovie.com/ (the main movie site)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT6XYtlIGj0 (Die Hard)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6g0zJVO8qA (Taxi Driver)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiBPEu2rDzA (Blade Runner)

http://www.youtube.com/user/dokkoi (Dokkoi’s profile)

Anime Music Video (AMV)

I heard researcher Mimi Ito from California speak at a conference in London last year where she showed some amazing Manga videos and introduced me to an online world I knew nothing about. She has looked at how young people create their own communities online in which they share music videos they have reworked from a huge range of existing anime texts. Sites such as http://www.animemusicvideos.org is a good illustration of this, where the fans not only upload their material to share, but also comment on one another’s work and then meet up for conventions and award ceremonies. Some of these videos have found their way onto YouTube, though they have often been removed for copyright infringement. Again, a search on YouTube for ‘anime music videos’ will reveal an enormous amount of material. If you try Mega64’s ‘Sorry’ you will find a good example of how the fan community comments on a video, with over 80 comments and 30,000 hits.

Silvermoon377’s profile (a retired Canadian AMV maker) tells the viewer about her work and the time she put in on each video (175 hours editing on just one!). Her videos are incredibly intricate labours of love; if you watch her video ‘She’s Just Oblivious’ you will see her extraordinary work. The video has had over 600,000 hits and 2,500 comments.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=NnlzWZrmqII (Mega 64 ‘Sorry’)

http://www.youtube.com/user/silvermoon377 (Silvermoon377 profile)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O9dZF2q6R8 (She’s Just Oblivious)

Machinima

According to Wikipedia:

This technique involves rendering computer-generated imagery using real-time, interactive 3D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Usually, machinima productions are produced using the tools (demo recording, camera angle, level editor, script editor, etc.) and resources (backgrounds, levels, characters, skins, etc.) available in a game. It can also produce more professional-appearing production than is possible with traditional at-home techniques of live video tape, or stop action using live actors, hand drawn animation or toy props.

A massive resource for these videos is machinima.com’s channel, which features nearly 500 videos in a range of genres and links to channels with fan versions of games, music videos and short films.

Have a look at the Madonna ‘Hung Up’ video, which has more than 1 million hits and was made using SIMs 2. LuVR2003 tells you how to make machinima using SIMs on his channel, which also features Rhianna’s ‘Umbrella’. More commonly used as the engine for Machinima is Halo, of which there are many videos on YouTube, such as those produced by imSuck. But the place you should start if you want to find out more about machinima is with Fling Film’s ‘What is a machinima?’ which was made using GTA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1RVugthVM (Madonna)

http://www.youtube.com/user/LuVR2003 (LuVR2003 channel)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSW6onXiyYY (Rhianna)

http://www.youtube.com/user/imSuck (imSuck channel)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBE4KoXGgDk (What is a Machinima?)

Where next?

So once you’ve had a look at some of these – what about having a go yourself? Lego animation can be done with very cheap stopmotion programmes and a cheap camera attached to your computer. The main trick is in the movements – keep them very small! Follow the instructions and you should be able to have a go at machinima if you have any PC games. Anime music videos of course use found material and re-work it in imaginative ways, but I’d guess that to do it well you would not only need to know a lot about the material you are working with, but also have many hours to spend trawling through it to find the bits you want to ‘rip’. But if you have a camera, some mates and some bits of junk, sweding is the instant one to go for. Just think of a film you all know well, pick out some iconic moments, some memorable lines, hum some theme music, make a few props and costumes and before you know it you’ll be a director to rival Jack Black. I’ll be looking out for you on YouTube – if you make something as a result of reading this article and getting inspired, tag it with MediaMagazine – there’ll be a prize for the best thing I spot during 2008!

Pete Fraser is Chief Examiner for OCR A Level Media Studies, and Director of Learning at Long Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge. He has written many film and media textbooks.

The Guardian - how it is adapting to new technologies

Watching the revolution

If you’re following OCR’s AS Media Studies course this year, then you will have the option of writing about newspapers in Section B of the exam (Unit G322: Key Media Concepts). This article looks at the exam’s requirements and presents a case study of the online version of The Guardian. As the newspaper industry is changing rapidly, this should provide a starting point for your own research, so that you can develop an individual case study to wow your examiner.

There’s no need to reproduce the specification here, but it’s worth highlighting some key points. You only get 45 minutes to answer a question that is general enough to cover not just newspapers but five other media areas. Your answer can’t be vague though – you are expected to write about a ‘specific online version of a national/local newspaper’ and be prepared to discuss production, distribution, marketing and exchange, and audience consumption (including your own experiences). The context for your case study is ‘the contemporary newspaper market in the UK and the ways in which technology is helping to make newspapers more efficient and competitive despite dwindling audiences.’

That phrase ‘dwindling audiences’ may make newspapers sound like yesterday’s Media Studies, but what is happening in the industry reflects a global revolution in the way information is gathered, processed, then sold by media institutions to audiences all over the world.

When Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising agency WPP says:

I don’t think newspapers will die because they are the best way, or one of the best ways along with TV, of reaching large sections of the population

it’s clear that newspapers are not going to disappear overnight. However, WPP’s ‘pre-tax profits plunged 47% to £179m in the first six months of 2009’, so advertisers are facing tough times as well2. Whether our newspapers can adapt to the changing media landscape remains to be seen; but there’s certainly never been a better time to watch the newspaper industry…

Ownership and profits

We might expect newspapers to disappear following the growth of the internet. As so much information can be found for free, it begs the question: Why would anyone pay for a newspaper nowadays? The Guardian’s most celebrated editor, C. P. Scott, provided one possible answer3:

Comment is free, but facts are sacred… The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard.

He was writing in 1921, celebrating the centenary of The Guardian and affirming its values as an independent newspaper.

Let’s take a closer look at The Guardian. In 2009, it is celebrating 50 years since it changed its name from The Manchester Guardian to become The Guardian, and 10 years since The Guardian Unlimited network of websites was launched4. It is the only UK national newspaper wholly owned by a trust, which means that there are no shareholders to satisfy, and profits are reinvested to secure the newspaper’s future.

Does The Guardian make a profit then? In short, no, but it’s more complicated than that. The Scott Trust owns a multimedia business, Guardian Media Group PLC (GMG PLC), whose ‘portfolio includes national, regional and local newspapers, radio stations, magazines, a raft of websites and B2B media5.’ Guardian News and Media (which publishes the Observer and Guardian, and produces The Guardian Unlimited website) is just one part of Guardian Media Group PLC, and it reported a loss of £36.8m for 2008/09. GMG PLC as a whole reported a loss before taxation of £89.8m. But the bigger picture is important – last year the group enjoyed a profit of over £300m, and each year the figures are complicated by deals involving joint ventures, restructuring, and links with subsidiary companies. If reading a company’s annual report sounds off-putting, at least download and skim through GMG’s 2009 report – it’s surprisingly colourful, readable, and will give plenty of ideas for further research.6

The Guardian might not have survived in its current form were it not for the fact that The Scott Trust draws profits from other titles such as Auto Trader, which it partly owns through the Trader Media Group. To be fair, the Trust was set up to ensure the survival of the newspaper by carefully investing its profits and that is exactly what it has done. So the editorial freedom continues even though the ‘profitability’ of the newspaper might be questioned. As the chair of GMG, Amelia Fawcett, puts it:

While not immune to difficult market conditions, Guardian Media Group is able to place long-term security before short-term profit.7

Whilst the printed Guardian might not be ‘profitable’ by itself, Guardian Unlimited made a profit of £1m in 2006, its first year ‘in the black’ since it was launched in 1999 and after £20m of investment.8

It is important to recognise that The Guardian’s status as a globally respected source of news is partly due to its history of independent ownership. But history aside, how important is the printed newspaper today, in relation to its online version? A closer look at production might help us to answer that question.

The production process

The Guardian’s headquarters is in the brand new Kings Place building in Kings Cross, London. Kings Place is also home to two orchestras including the London Sinfonietta, as well as housing a concert hall and two art galleries. But music aficionados will not be disturbed by the thunder of nearby printing presses, as The Guardian Print Centre is seven miles away, in Stratford. For a short but fascinating look inside the print centre, check out YouTube. Incidentally, recent redundancies at the print centre made headlines as industrial action was narrowly averted, showing us that the downturn in the newspaper industry is having a serious effect upon The Guardian.
Kings Place has been home to The Guardian since December 2008, and such a recent move means that The Guardian now has an office space ideally suited to the new media environment.

Editor Alan Rusbridger, writing at the time of the move, gave an insight into the changes it had brought:

Print and digital operations are largely integrated, where previously they were physically separate.

He also pointed out that as well as regular desks with computers ‘there are seven state-of-the-art recording studios and 24 editing desks.’ The Guardian is an online provider of news for a global audience and their new headquarters reflect a new convergence of technology as stories are written simultaneously for print and the website. Podcasts and video reports are also produced for broadcast, and live feed coverage of key events is now common. The way the agenda is set is changing too: morning news conferences can be attended via video-conferencing for Guardian employees not physically present at Kings Place.

Innovation and integration

In terms of innovation, The Guardian has been groundbreaking in many respects. It was the first UK national newspaper to use blogging software, the first to produce podcasts, and, perhaps more radically, the first British newspaper to produce web-first stories (i.e. on the web before being seen in print). It has a reputation for enthusiastically adopting new technologies, which was played upon in its 2009 April Fool article:

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication.

As production of The Guardian website and print versions is seamlessly integrated, it becomes difficult to establish where production of one ends and the other begins. And given the wealth of extra content on the website, it is now hard not to see the website as being of primary importance and the print version as a brand-strengthening advert for online services.

The impact of the recession

Finding up-to-date figures for the total number of journalists and editors employed by The Guardian is difficult, though a recent report suggested that this year the editorial staff at Guardian News and Media is shrinking from around 850 to 800 through redundancies. One fear consistently voiced by commentators on the newspaper industry is that the quality of journalism will suffer as production costs are cut and reader-generated content becomes more popular. The rise of citizen journalism has been well documented elsewhere (see page 56), but we can’t ignore their impact on The Guardian and the ambivalent relationship which must now exist between professional journalists and accidental eyewitness reporters. A key story one might explore in this respect is The Guardian’s campaigning investigative coverage of 2009’s G20 protests in London and the death of Ian Tomlinson.

The quality of news produced by Guardian journalists has been examined in Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News. He employed specialist researchers from Cardiff University to analyse stories printed in The Guardian and three other national dailies during two one-week periods. The result? A staggering

60% of these quality-print stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material.

In other words, press releases or unchecked stories from agency journalists were forming the bulk of the domestic ‘news’ in print. Of the four papers analysed, The Guardian had the lowest percentage, but it was still more than 50%.9 Davies refers to this ‘copy and paste’ reporting style as churnalism. Is there any wonder that many readers would trust Joe or Joanna Public’s account of an event, over a ‘report’ filed by an overworked and underpaid ‘churnalist’? By the way, there are no hard feelings at The Guardian over Davies’ analysis – The Guardian news desk helped with the research, and Davies continues to be employed as a journalist by The Guardian.

Distribution

How is The Guardian’s news ‘distributed’? The printed version, once it has been printed at one of the two Guardian Print Centres (London and Manchester) is delivered to UK wholesalers by TNT Newsfast/Network Logistics. The Guardian is also printed internationally, in some countries using OCE’s DNN service. For example:
under the current deal The Guardian is able to print 600 copies per day in Sydney and have the copies on sale down under before their readers in Europe have even woken up.

Digital newspaper printing‚ the missing link:
http://www.inpublishing.co.uk/kb/articles/digital_newspaper_printing_the_missing_link.aspx

The website is ‘distributed’ via the internet, of course, but the content of The Guardian’s website is not only found by visiting
www.guardian.co.uk through a web browser. RSS feeds, email headlines and mobile phone services all allow Guardian readers to stay up to date. And recently a major new feature has been added, as The Guardian has released its ‘Open Platform’, a set of software developer tools which was launched with a content API (Application Programming Interface). What this means is that web developers can integrate Guardian content seamlessly into their clients’ websites, whilst The Guardian controls the adverts which are associated with the free content it provides. As Guardian director of digital content Emily Bell puts it, this will allow Guardian content to be ‘woven into the fabric of the internet’.

Marketing and exchange

We have already seen how software is being used to market The Guardian’s content through APIs, and the ways the printed newspaper acts as an advert for online services. But The Guardian also uses other traditional media to advertise its newspaper and website, including some innovative TV adverts. In common with other national newspapers, it also offers discounted subscription schemes and often runs promotions to give the newspaper away to university students as a way of encouraging a lifelong Guardian habit.

Free copies are a great incentive, and cutting across issues of distribution, exchange and audience consumption, is the issue of ‘bulks’. These are large orders of heavily discounted copies of the printed paper, typically sold to airlines and hotels to be given away to their customers. This year has seen The Guardian break with another tradition in this respect, as it announced it would become the first national quality daily to scrap distribution of all its bulks. MediaWeek reported that Guardian News and Media claimed the move would ‘increase transparency across the newspaper industry’ – the implication being that its rivals inflate their circulation figures through the use of bulk orders. We might wonder whether the move to scrap bulks was linked with the industrial action and redundancies at The Guardian Print Centre; though as the MediaWeek article pointed out, bulks represent a much smaller percentage of total circulation for The Guardian than for many of its rivals.

Identifying the precise point of ‘exchange’ between publisher and reader is interesting in the case of newspapers as they run parallel online and printed content. An online reader might have seen a headline on the website encouraging them to buy the print edition, or have been encouraged to go online by an advert seen in the print version. And with subscription models to consider, how might exchange be usefully understood? For example, an online reader might be sent email content or be paying for access to subscription-only content, even when they neglect to check their emails or use the site. Of course, buying a printed newspaper doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll read it either, so any discussion of ‘exchange’ must be complicated as we distinguish between the physical product and its content. The transaction between publisher and consumer, of this product and its content is further complicated when we look again at the issue of APIs and their role in distributing content through other media. Clearly, we cannot explore this fully in this article!

Audience consumption

At the time of writing, based on June’s circulation figures, The Guardian website is the second most popular UK newspaper website after Mail Online. An online readership battle seems to be hotting up, with the top three (Telegraph, Guardian, Mail) boasting 27, 28 and 29 million unique users respectively. If we average this out over a month that’s nearly a million users per day for each of the top three newspaper sites. The Guardian newspaper sells around 330,000 copies per day, so as a very rough guide it has three online users for every newspaper purchase.
This picture is complicated further, however, as the number of copies sold doesn’t necessarily equal the number of readers: many people share their copy of a printed newspaper so the readership and/or circulation figures can only ever be a rough guide. They are vital to the industry of course, because a newspaper which reaches a larger audience can charge more for its advertising space, and newspapers make more money from advertising than anything else. The cover price in most cases will not cover the cost of production.

Patterns and trends

If you’ve used free online survey websites such as www.surveymonkey.com, you’ll know how easy it is to gather questionnaire results for a coursework project without the hassle of distributing wads of photocopies. Try conducting a survey of the newspaper reading habits in your Media Studies class this term so you’ll be able to compare your own experience of newspapers with those of other AS students. Are there any trends or patterns? Any surprises? How do your survey results reflect the national picture of newspaper readership? Remember that the mark scheme explicitly rewards discussion of your own experience. This section is the ideal place to put in some well-researched data to back up your case study of The Guardian.

Conclusions

In researching this case study I’ve found that a lot has happened in the newspaper industry during the past year, so by the time your exam comes around (or heaven forbid, a resit!) there may well have been other changes to cover in your research. For example, by the time you read this article, The Guardian may well be the most popular UK news website once more, so it’s worth checking out the statistics available online. However, rest assured that examiners are aware it takes time to develop case study materials, so as long as you use clear examples and identify sources where possible, you’ll be credited with having learned your material, even if it’s not bang up-to-date.

We’ve seen that The Guardian is at the cutting edge of technology in the newspaper industry, which helps to explain why it is one of the world’s most popular news websites. However, we’ve only scratched the surface here in terms of how it is using sophisticated software to market its content globally, especially in the USA. We’ve also seen that the not-for-profit Guardian is not immune to the current unprecedented pressures on the newspaper industry and that, like its competitors, it is facing very tough times.

Does Digital Media make media more democratic / fair / empowering for audiences?

In the Age of Media Six Questions about Media and Participation

David Buckingham, Professor of Media and Communications at Loughborough University, considers some of the revolutionary claims made for participatory media and 2.0, and makes a case for cautious optimism rather than whole-hearted celebration.

In the last ten years, we have moved into a new age of participatory media. The advent of online social media – often referred to as ‘Web 2.0’ – has brought about a much broader media revolution – a move to ‘Media 2.0’. The world of Big Media – in which the media were owned and controlled by large commercial corporations – is no more. In the age of Media 2.0, ordinary people are no longer mere consumers of media, but also producers. Vertical, top-down communication has given way to horizontal, networked communication.

Thus, blogs and online forums provide opportunities for ordinary people to have their say, and to speak back to those in power; wikis enable us to collaborate and share knowledge in ways that challenge elites and experts; on social networking sites, we can represent ourselves and connect with other people in new ways; while online sharing sites like YouTube allow people to distribute their own media content to global audiences. All these services appear to be free and open – they don’t require lots of money to use, they don’t depend on getting past editors or gatekeepers, and they can be accessed at any time, by anyone, anywhere. And these things are leading in turn to fundamental shifts in the operations of ‘old’ media like television, newspapers and even books: there is much talk of ‘user-generated content’, ‘citizen journalism’ and the empowerment of consumers.

This, at least, is the story that’s often told about new media. It’s an attractively optimistic view, which reflects a broader desire for a fairer, more democratic, more creative society. Yet it’s a view that – as students of media – we need to question. We need to look more closely at what is really happening in the world of ‘Media 2.0’ – at who’s involved, what they are doing, and where the power lies. In this article, I want to propose six questions that should help us to get a more critical view of these participatory possibilities.

1. What’s new?

The term ‘Web 2.0’ seems to have been coined by the digital marketing entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly back in 2001. In some ways, it was an attempt to re-brand the internet business after the bursting of the so-called ‘dot.com bubble’ – the collapse of many internet companies that took place around the millennium. Many people have questioned whether ‘Web 2.0’ is actually any different from ‘Web 1.0’ that preceded it. Tim Berners-Lee, widely identified as the inventor of the World Wide Web, has argued that the basic technological infrastructure and many of the forms of Web 2.0 have been around since the beginning of the internet.

There’s a long history of utopian fantasies about new media and technology. The kinds of claims that are being made about the liberating possibilities of social media echo those that were made in earlier times about the impact of cable TV, portable video, radio and even the printing press. All these things were apparently going to bring ‘power to the people’ – to undermine the power of political elites and big corporations, create new forms of collaboration, and allow ordinary people to express themselves and have their voices heard. Yet in each case, the ultimate effects of these new technologies were much less revolutionary and much more complicated.

In terms of media theory, there’s a danger of a kind of technological determinism here – the idea that technology will bring about revolutionary social change, in and of itself. Yet technologies do not come from nowhere: they are created in response to wider social, economic and cultural developments. And their impact is always dependent on how they are used, by whom, and for what purposes.

2. Who’s participating?

The history of technology shows that innovations are adopted in uneven and often unequal ways. In the case of Web 2.0, statistics on patterns of use are not wholly reliable. Some – such as those produced by the Pew Foundation in the United States – produce very high estimates of the numbers of young people who ‘share content’ online. Others – such as those from the market research agency Hitwise – suggest that the number of active participants is very low: less than 0.5% of YouTube users, for example, actually upload material, and very little of that material is originally produced, rather than pirated clips from commercial media.

Research also suggests that there are some striking social inequalities in participation. While there are some gender differences – young women are leading the way in areas like blogging, while young men tend to dominate video-sharing – the most remarkable differences are in terms of social class. At least in the US, it is young people from high-income families who are most likely to be posting or sharing online. While people in disadvantaged communities do increasingly have computers at home, they are less likely to have the multimedia capabilities and bandwidth that are needed for more sophisticated content creation and sharing.

‘Digital divides’ are still apparent here, therefore – and they largely coincide with other differences. Young people from wealthy, middle-class families are also more likely to have books at home, to use the educational dimensions of the internet and to participate in creative or arts-related activities offline. To a large extent, the most active participants in the creative world of Media 2.0 are the ‘usual suspects’ – people who are already privileged in other areas of their lives.
Before we assume that these opportunities are largely confined to young people, we also need to look at the age profile of online participation. While younger people initially drove the uptake of social networking sites, for example, older people are now the fastest-growing group of subscribers. The same is true of mobile communications; while the micro-blogging service Twitter is largely dominated by middle-aged people. Young people are sometimes the ‘early adopters’, but the idea that they are a uniquely ‘digital generation’ – and that there is a kind of technological generation gap – is rapidly becoming outdated.

3. What are they doing?

In these discussions, it’s often assumed that participation is necessarily a Good Thing in itself. But there is a real problem in defining what counts as participation, or as ‘creating content’. There’s a big difference between posting an occasional comment on an online forum or a social networking profile, and filming, editing and posting a video, for example – although in surveys all these things tend to be seen as evidence of high levels of participation. In fact, only a very small proportion of users are generating original content: most are simply ‘consuming’ it as they always have done.

Enthusiasts for participatory media tend to celebrate the more artistic or innovative ‘cool stuff’ that can be found online – fan-produced mashups, videos about political activism, or experimental digital poetry. They tend to ignore the relatively banal domestic practices of the majority of people – such as the funny videos of pets and children and domestic accidents that tend to achieve the highest hit rates on sites like YouTube.

Our research on amateur video-making found that it continues to be dominated by home movies of family life, children’s birthday parties or holidays on the beach. This material is rarely edited or shared, and is kept as a record that people imagine will be watched at some time in the future, even if it rarely is. This is not to say that it is trivial or worthless: on the contrary, home video (like the family photo album) can play a very important role in terms of memory and family relationships. However, people rarely see it as having anything to do with what they watch in the mainstream media – let alone as a challenge to the power of Big Media.

4. Who’s making money?

Here’s one celebratory view of the democratic possibilities of Media 2.0:

Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media élite… now it’s the people who are taking control.

This quote comes not from a radical media activist but from a 2006 interview with the notorious media magnate Rupert Murdoch; and it should alert us to the fact that there are large commercial interests at stake in these developments.

The two richest and most profitable global media corporations are now Google and Facebook. Both are increasingly diversifying from their initial business – as a search engine and a social networking site – into a whole range of other media and branded products and services. Indeed, the apparent explosion of democratic participation in the media could also be seen as a matter of the growing concentration of power in the hands of a small number of global companies.

Of course, this is a very uncertain business. For example, YouTube (now owned by Google) took five years from its launch before it finally came into profit, despite being the second most frequently visited site online. Many well-known services – not least Twitter and Facebook – have struggled to find ways of ‘monetising’ what they do. Others, such as Murdoch’s own MySpace, have undergone a rapid rise and fall.

Even so, it’s clear that the internet is an exceptionally efficient medium for niche marketing and for targeting individual consumers. As we surf around, detailed information about our preferences and buying habits is being gathered, often without us knowing it (by means of ‘cookies’ that are planted on the hard drive of our computers). This information is used to ensure that advertising and marketing are targeted only at those people who are most likely to be interested in it; and through a practice known as ‘data mining’, the data can be aggregated and then sold on to other companies.

5. Who’s doing the work?

Much of this marketing is itself ‘user-generated’ and ‘interactive’. This is most obvious in the case of viral marketing, where consumers are effectively recruited to distribute commercial messages on behalf of companies. Other companies (such as the mobile phone provider Orange) have picked up on the idea of ‘user-generated content’ by running competitions for consumers to create videos to promote their products.

This results in what the media critic Soren Peterson has called ‘loser-generated content’. A great deal of unpaid labour goes into the production of blogs, for example, while most of the income remains with the big corporations. In the case of social networking, participants often spend enormous amounts of time working on their profiles and building networks which they are unable to take with them if they want to migrate to another site. What they produce effectively becomes proprietary information, owned by the company: Mark Zuckerberg owns the copyright of all the content posted on Facebook, and can do what he likes with it.

This is also an issue with fan websites, which have been very much celebrated by enthusiasts for Media 2.0. Some argue that fan websites are about consumers taking back control of the media, making their own meanings from existing media texts, and leading towards a more democratic media environment. There have been some instances where copyright owners – like J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers, who own the Harry Potter franchise – have taken legal action against fans who have used and reworked their materials in making fan fiction, video mashups, and so on. Yet one could argue that, in the end, these fans are just promoting the brand – they may be using Harry Potter to express their own ideas, but they are doing so in a way that contributes to the success and the continuing profitability of the big companies. They may be active participants, but they are also the ultimate consumers.

6. Will Media 2.0 save democracy?

So there is a debate to be had about the wider social and political implications of Media 2.0. While some of these developments may have been exaggerated, and some may be much less exciting and innovative than people have claimed, it’s clear that we are in a period of significant change. But does this amount to a democratic revolution in communications? Is it really liberating or empowering ordinary people to take control of the media?

I think there are good reasons to doubt this. Despite the claims of some of the enthusiasts, digital media are not likely to result in a society of creative media producers, any more than the printing press resulted in a society of published authors. Just like ‘old’ media, these new media are driven by commercial imperatives – and that means that some people are bound to benefit from these developments much more than others. While there is certainly a democratic promise here, the realisation of that promise will require more than technology alone.

David Buckingham is Professor of Media and Communications at Loughborough University.

This article was first published in MediaMagazine 39, February 2012: the ‘Participation’ issue