Friday 31 March 2017

story #60

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/03/29/quebec-budget-contains-help-for-newspapers.html

story #60 "Quebec budget contains help for newspapers"

As the article states, Tuesday’s provincial budget included $36 million to help struggling print media make the transition to a digital product. Quebec Finance Minister Carlos Leitao: “The existence of a lively, diversified and high-quality print media sector is crucial for the vitality of our culture, but also for the health of our democratic way of life throughout Quebec, and particularly in the regions.” Among the tax reductions and financial commitments unveiled by Finance Minister Carlos Leitao was $36-million worth of promised investments to assist the troubled newspaper industry. In his budget speech, Leitao said the money was particularly aimed at helping print media make the difficult transition from a paper to a digital product. In addition to the digital transformation funds, Quebec has established a four-year, $12-million subsidy to offset the payments made by newspaper owners for the recycling of their printed materials. The per-tonne rates that newspaper companies must pay for the recycling of printed material has been rising dramatically in recent years.


story #59

https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Why-Indias-Newspaper-Industry-Still-Growing/1015540

story #59 "Why India's Newspaper Industry Is Still Growing"

Surprisingly as the article states, India remains somewhat unusual in that print revenues continues to grow, with newspapers specifically still serving as an effective way for advertisers to reach a significant audience. Despite the strong growth of digital media in India, the traditional formats of television and print still account for the largest portion of total media ad expenditures. eMarketer’s recently updated forecasts estimate TV ad spending will account for 39.3% of total media ad outlays this year, with newspapers making up 33.9%. KPMG/FICCI reported that newspaper growth was really coming from papers published in Hindi and in other local languages and dialects—generally referred to collectively as “vernacular” papers. According to the research, ad revenues for English-language papers grew 3.5% in 2016, compared with 7.1% for Hindi-language papers and 8.7% for those in regional languages. English is really only prevalent in India’s largest cities, leaving readers in smaller cities and rural areas with an appetite for content in their local languages.   

  • eMarketer estimates the annual growth rate in the number of smartphone users in India will remain in double digits through 2019, dipping to 9.8% in 2020
  • ad revenues for English-language papers grew 3.5% in 2016, compared with 7.1% for Hindi-language papers and 8.7% for those in regional languages
  • eMarketer’s recently updated forecasts estimate TV ad spending will account for 39.3% of total media ad outlays this year, with newspapers making up 33.9%.

Tuesday 28 March 2017

story #58

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2017/jan/24/winning-back-advertisers-is-key-to-saving-the-newspaper-industry

story #58 "Winning back advertisers is key to saving the newspaper industry"

According to the article, for national newspapers the last couple of years have seemed to be a "near-death experience". Paid-for circulation is in decline, but cover prices have frequently risen to mitigate the revenue loss. Where the money has been haemorrhaging is in advertising. Advertising revenues have a range of identifiable problems. It became clear in the 90s that the internet was going to be massively disruptive to the traditional classified sector. The problem for advertisers is that all of their competitors are doing the same and they are only marketing to their existing database. On the face of it, national newspapers’ advertising revenue problems should not be as severe as recent figures suggest. National titles, combining print sales with online numbers, are actually reaching a higher proportion of the UK market than ever before.

  • Total readership across print and digital news brands is 35% of the total UK population daily, 63% weekly and 90% monthly, with the highest monthly reach among the youngest groups (18-34) who tend to access via mobile devices.
  • According to Ebiquity (the largest UK media auditor) 75% of the money in the marketing pot does not actually reach the publisher from an advertiser using “programmatic” or automated bid-based advertising on the internet.
  • In the first quarter of 2016, Facebook’s net income increased 300% and its margins jumped from 26% to 37%.

Monday 27 March 2017

mest 3 - research case study - Apple Music Streaming

The music industry is a global business that generates profit by selling musical recordings in both physical and digital formats to media audiences. The music industry is a complex and competitive business and record companies and labels are continually devising new ways of attracting audiences to consume their products.
Bob Dylan is an established artist who has worked alongside Apple and Starbucks to promote his music. This has resulted in a boost to both his public profile and record sales. Apple has benefited from his endorsement of their product by promoting new technology to an older audience. Starbucks have been able to increase sales inside their stores by being the only distributor of a one off Dylan album recorded especially for them.
The audience relies on the media for information and this removes audiences from creative ‘street level’ or original music
• Audiences can only access what the media offers them and they do not have access to all musical choices that are available
• The industry only invests in the types of music that audiences are familiar with and, therefore, only offer what has been proven to be
successful in the past
• This reduces music into formulaic and predictable formats means past successes are replicated often
o For audiences this means they can only access more of the same
o For the record companies there is less financial risk and more potential profit
o Ultimately, this means less choice for consumers
The internet is used for:
• The sale of traditional physical formats
• The marketing of music recordings
• Netcasts and live performances
• The sale of music downloads
• The management of official websites of recording artists and
record companies
Apple Music costs $9.99 per month, or $14.99 per month for a family subscription for up to six people (which requires iCloud Family Sharing). Students also get a steep discount, with a student tier offering the service for just $4.99. Best of all, there’s a 3-month free trial.
There is not free and ad-supported version. Some aspects will be available to anyone who logs in with an Apple ID—namely, Beats 1, the ability to follow artists on Connect, and the ability to listen to Apple Music radio stations with a limited number of skips—but a paid subscription is required to access Apple Music’s entire library.
Apple Music is available in more than 100 countries worldwide, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Japan, Brazil, and India.
Apple Music has a library of roughly 30 million songs. iTunes on the other hand - its store sells 43 million songs worldwide.
Unsigned artists can sell their music on iTunes, have it streamed on Spotify or Soundcloud and produce their own videos for YouTube.
One way it is doing this is through saturating the market with what
Mulligan calls ‘The Superstar Economy.’ The Internet was meant to
weaken the dominance of superstar artists in the music industry
and enrich the smaller, niche music creators. But new research
suggests that this “long tail” theory is wrong: superstars are capturing the vast majority of music revenues and their share is increasing – not decreasing – because of the rise of digital services like iTunes and Spotify. The top 1 per cent of artists the likes of Rihanna and Adele accounted for 77 per cent of recorded music income in 2013. Most digital music services have catalogues of more than 20m tracks are not listened to. In this illusion of choice consumers are overwhelmingly listening to the ‘hits’.
Synergy is another way in which record companies generate income
via advertising and marketing their artists in association with other
brands or products. Synergy occurs when one branch of a company
(e.g. Sony Music) uses another part of the company (the gaming division) to promote each other. In this example, synergy occurs when the gaming division uses an artist’s music on a game soundtrack. Synergy can occur between divisions of entertainment companies (music, film, television, gaming, books, magazines etc.) and also between the music industry and businesses outside entertainment. Two unrelated brands such as The Black Eyed Peas and Pepsi worked together to target a broader audience and this collaboration benefited both the band and the soft drink The fact that the primary function of the music industry is to generate profit is argued by some theorists to create a conflict as music is seen to be a creative art or an expression of ideas, unlike, for example advertising which is solely focused on meeting its economic function of persuading the audience to purchase goods. Consider how music videos, posters, interviews in the music press and personal appearances all act as adverts for the products being sold by the music industry. Some theorists have identified this financial motivation as being detrimental to artistic development and creativity.
A vanity label receives funding from the record label it operates
under and this money helps fund their distribution and marketing.
Record companies support vanity labels for a variety of reasons:
1. The label creates status for the famous artist by allowing them
creative control to discover new talent and produce music that
is more independent from the ideals of the record company.
2. Vanity labels have the potential to create high volume sales
figures for the record company. Vanity labels need little promotion
because the artists existing fans are attracted to the new artists
signed on the label due to their affiliation with the famous artist ‘responsible’ for the label. 
Drake has shifted completely over from SoundCloud to Apple Music, according to The Verge. As part of the integration of Beats 1, Apple Music's 300 million streams of "More Life" is half of the worldwide total, despite having one fifth the members of Spotify. Drake released a series of Apple Music-exclusive songs in 2015, on OVO Sound Radio. The show airs every two weeks on Saturdays and focuses on new releases. Apple continues to decline requests for specific listenership data or demographics for Beats 1. 

Chance the Rapper has been looked to as a pioneer in the music industry for maintaining his independence by not tying himself to a major label and going the free mixtape route instead of charging for a studio album. That’s why recent news suggesting the rapper might sell his next album became particularly noteworthy. Now, in an extended Twitter commentary, the Grammy winner has revealed that Apple Music paid him $500,000 for exclusive streaming rights to Coloring Book.

  • 77 percent of iOS users are aware of Apple Music
  • 11 percent are currently using Apple Music. That figure is consistent among users who purchase downloads from iTunes, or use iTunes to manage their music library.
  • 18 percent of iTunes Radio users are now listening to Apple Music. iTunes Radio was Apple’s previous streaming product that was rolled into Apple Music and rebranded to include Beats 1 and other genre stations.
  • 52 percent of users who have tried Apple Music are still tuning in. That means that over half are still hooked on the service almost two months after it first launched. (Update: Apple is contesting this figure, telling The Verge that 79 percent of Apple Music users have actually stuck around and are currently using the service).
  • 28 percent of Spotify paid subscribers also use Apple Music. These can be considered the die-hard streaming fans who try and compare different platforms to see which one most deserves their $10 every month.
  • 11 percent of free Spotify users and 6 percent of free Pandora users are on Apple Music. The low figures here indicate that for most users using free, ad-supported streaming services are satisfied and not willing to pay $10 for anything else—even with Apple Music’s tempting three-month trial.
  • 64 percent of current Apple Music users claim they are very likely to pay to subscribe after their free trials end. 
  • 61 percent of current Apple Music users have already turned off the auto-renewal. Perhaps they just want to subscribe on their own terms.
  • 30 percent listen to Beats 1.
  • 27 percent use Connect.
  • 33 percent of current Apple Music users were encouraged to start purchasing or purchase more downloads from iTunes. Apple Music users could be turning to iTunes purchases to get access to music that isn’t available to stream on Apple Music.
  • 40 percent of iOS users are still purchasing downloads from iTunes.
Drake:
After Drake's self-proclaimed "playlist" "More Life" was released on Saturday, it amassed 89.9 million streams on Apple Music and 61.3 million streams on Spotify in the first day alone, according to official numbers confirmed to Fader.
These streams may be a moneymaker for artists like the champagne papi, but they're also a big deal for streaming companies, which last year displaced digital music sales to become the no. 1 way people listen to digital music (if you're curious, R&B and hip-hop are the top genres).
This may be part of the reason that Apple paid $500,000 for Chance the Rapper's "Coloring Book" mixtape to be an Apple exclusive for two weeks. After that, the mixtape appeared for free on Soundcloud and went on to win a Grammy.

Last year Apple Music surpassed 20 million subscribers, while Spotify recently reached 50 million. The more listeners these services gain, the more money the streaming companies and artists make.

BPI figures show that the total income generated by the UK music industry rose 5 per cent last year, from £881m to £925m, as the revenue from streaming services shot up by 60 per cent, the FT reports.
Subscriptions to Spotify, Apple and other services such as Deezer accounted for 87 per cent of the £273m overall streaming revenues.
However, despite popular opinion that physical sales are dying, the total income from non-digital formats still made up 32 per cent of the British market in 2016 - only dipping by 2 per cent.
All of the massive numbers connected to proper streaming services are great, but they don’t hold a candle to YouTube, which is still how the world listens to music...a fact that isn’t exactly making the music industry happy. In fact, while countries like the United States are leading the incredible gains made by firms like Spotify and Apple Music, it’s the rest of the world that seems content to stick with the video platform everybody is already familiar with.

According to data provided by the company itself exclusively to FORBES, an estimated 80% of all views on YouTube come from outside the U.S. The largest and most popular video site on the planet has never had a difficult time pulling in views, but even as those play counts rise, where they are coming from has shifted over the past few years.

Looking at the top 100 videos on the platform during any given week, it is clear that it's not just American-made pop stars that are bringing in the eyeballs. For example, during the last tracking frame in March, the top 100 list contained songs in English, Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Russian and even Thai, with other languages popping into the popular ranking from time to time as well. The most-viewed music video of all time remains Psy's K-pop blockbuster "Gangnam Style," and new releases from megastars in large markets like India and Korea can attract more people than even some of the most intensely marketed names in markets like America.
A representative for the video hosting platform revealed that 40% of views on YouTube in the second half of 2016 came from Latin America alone, and that only 20% of all views across the site originate in English-speaking countries. That number may continue to drop as Americans, Canadians and those in Western Europe switch to streaming sites which are better suited for mobile listening. Services like Spotify and Apple Music may not be as large as YouTube, but they beat the Google-owned site to the punch when it came to features like offline listening, playlisting and curation, which millions are now coveting.
YouTube, which is still entirely free to use and which contains a catalog of tens, if not hundreds of millions of songs, has almost everything a listener could want at absolutely no cost and with no need to download something new and learn how it works. Those benefits far outweigh the perks of a premium account for millions in developing nations, and even if some wanted to subscribe, some of the biggest players in streaming are still working on launching in every nation.

It might not be on the good side of industry bigwigs which have been wringing their hands and shaking their fists over miniscule payout rates and insufficient piracy blockers for years, but YouTube is still how millions of people all around the world listen to their favorite artists and the hits everybody just can’t get enough of, and that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Apple Music, Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) media streaming service, was launched June 2015. In a short span of 20 months, it crossed the 20 million paying subscriber milestone (December 2016), closing the gap with segment leader Spotify, which reached 50 million paying subscribers in March 2017. Both streaming services have captured a major portion of the U.S. market and continue to grow.
According to a recent report by Amit Daryanani of RBC Capital Markets, Apple Music is only installed by 3% of Apple device users. Though not every iOS user will be happy to start paying for Apple Music, a low single-digit number suggests there are still plenty of customers the company can bring to its music streaming service.
Apple Music is already available in more than 100 countries around the world, but there is more room for growth as Apple Music is not even two years old. Senior Vice President of Apple Services Eddy Cue told The Verge the company is hoping for faster growth.
Streaming platforms in the US market are now generating more annual cash from music than digital download services like iTunes ever did.

Streaming vs music downloads:
According to RIAA data analyzed by Music Business Worldwide, the peak of download retail sales in the US market (inclusive of ringtones, music videos, ‘kiosk’ and other digital sales) came in 2012, when they topped $3bn at $3.02bn.
As previously reported, streaming platforms generated significantly more than this ($3.93bn) in 2016, thanks to a 68% year-on-year rise in revenues.
It’s important to note that this $3.93bn figure includes $884m of payouts from SoundExchange, for streaming plays of records on ‘lean-back’ digital radio services such as Pandora and SiriusXM.
Even without SoundExchange, US music subscription streaming revenues reached $2.48bn in 2016 (including $220m from ‘limited tier’ services like Amazon Prime Music and Pandora’s $4.99-a-month Plus platform).
In addition, ad-funded streaming platforms such as YouTube, Vevo and Spotify’s free tier generated $469m in the US last year – resulting in total an on-demand streaming tally (ie. not including SoundExchange) of $2.95bn.
That’s actually bigger than the total revenues from albums and singles sales on the likes of iTunes in 2012 – the year of download’s apex – which jointly reached $2.83bn.
(That year’s total official ‘download’ figure of $3.02bn was boosted by $166.9m in ringtone sales, as well as other niche digital formats.)

It would take a brave analyst to forecast that subscription platforms alone won’t top this $2.83bn mark in 2017.

Streaming has provided a growth boost to the music sector after years of decline because of online piracy and falling CD sales. Yet artists complain that they make precious little from services like Spotify. Chris Difford, who co-wrote hits such as Up the Junction and Tempted with his band Squeeze, said that for every 6,000 streams of one of his songs, he is paid just £1.50.
Mr Masuch said that BMG now pays its artists 75 per cent of streaming royalties, but major labels still pay out much lower ratios, because of higher legacy expenses such as the cost of warehouses, logistics and breakage.
He argued that the big music companies spent, on average, 19 per cent of their revenues on artist royalties. With 60 per cent of music revenues now derived from streaming, a push by artists to renegotiate royalty deals towards a 50 per cent level or higher could steer returns-on-sales rates into negative territory, according to the BMG boss.

On-demand music streams rose 76% in 2016 in the U.S., while digital track sales fell 25%, digital album sales sank 20% and CD album sales slipped 16%, according to Nielsen.
The Recording Industry Association of America expects to release full-year 2016 statistics in March. But for the first half of 2016, streaming accounted for 47% of U.S. recorded music sales, followed by permanent downloads (31%) and physical media (20%), RIAA said.
It's still early days for the streaming music business, with many more consumers left to convert. Predicting which companies will end up on top has become a parlor game for industry analysts.

Spotify and Apple's (AAPL) Apple Music are leading the charge now in subscription streaming music services, though in Apple's case the streaming business is cannibalizing some of its iTunes download sales.
Meanwhile, Tidal, Deezer, Napster, SoundCloud and others are fighting for table scraps. Tidal, the service run by music mogul Jay Z, received a financial lifeline when Sprint (S) on Jan. 23 announced that it was buying a 33% stake in the company for an undisclosed sum reportedly around $200 million.
Music subscription services passed the 100 million subscriber milestone on a global basis in December, Midia Research reports.

Midia, a music industry blog, estimates that Spotify ended the year with 43 million subscribers, to 20.8 million for Apple Music. Deezer, a 10-year-old company based in Paris, came in third place with 6.9 million subscribers, followed by Napster (4.5 million) and Tidal (1 million). Amazon and Google, at this point, don't make the top five, though it's possible they'll give this market more attention at some point.
MusicWatch estimates that Apple iTunes has about 75% of the music download business in the U.S., which totaled about $2.13 billion last year. So Apple's gross sales in digital downloads were about $1.6 billion in 2016, Crupnick said.

MusicWatch also estimates that Apple Music has about 9 million U.S. subscribers out of 25 million streaming music subscribers in the country. With average revenue per user of about $100 per year, that translates to a $900 million annual run rate in the U.S. alone.

Further profits from streaming music:

At the beginning of December, one of the world’s biggest labels, Warner Music, announced revenues of $3.25bn (£2.66bn) this year – its highest in eight years. More significantly, $1bn of that was from streaming, more than double its download revenue and more than $100m more than its physical revenue.

The surge in profits is being seen across all the major labels. In the first half of 2016, streaming revenue in the US grew by 57% to $1.6bn, and worldwide digital revenues overtook those from physical sales for the first time in music industry history, mainly because of streaming. This year’s most-streamed artist was Drake, with 4.2bn streams. There are 90 million people signed up to streaming services worldwide and the shift, and the aggressive speed at which it has taken place, is having the greatest impact on music since digital downloads were introduced. It makes boycotts by artists such as Taylor Swift, who condemned Spotify for only paying between $0.006 and $0.0084 each time someone listens to a song, seem redundant.

The U.S. industry is on pace to expand for the second straight year -- the first time that’s happened since the CD sales peaked in 1998 and 1999. Retail spending on recorded music grew 8.1 percent to $3.4 billion in the first half of 2016, according to a midyear report from the Recording Industry Association of America that was obtained by Bloomberg News.
The credit goes to streaming -- Internet services that give listeners commercial-free access to millions of songs for a monthly fee -- or for free if they’re willing to hear ads. U.S. streaming revenue grew 57 percent to $1.6 billion in the first half of 2016 and accounted for almost half of industry sales. 
While sales from ad-supported, on-demand streaming grew 24 percent to $195 million in the first half of 2016, according to the RIAA report, those services aren’t doing enough to convince people to pay for music and and don’t make enough money off their free users, RIAA Chairman Cary Sherman said in a blog post.
The growth in streaming is being seen worldwide, including previously small markets and others decimated by piracy.
South Korea has emerged as one of the 10 largest music markets in the world, with sales totaling $265.8 million in 2014, according to data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries. A decade ago, that market was half the size and not one of the 25 largest.
Unlike Korea, China was once a major market, contributing $212 million in sales back in 2004. Yet with the explosion of piracy it shrank to just $23 million in 2010. The world’s most populous country was the 38th largest music market.

By 2014, the market in China surpassed $100 million for the first time in almost a decade, with streaming a major source of the recovery there.







story #57

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/05/newspaper-readership-survey-numbers-confusing-commercial-reality

story#57 Newspaper readership numbers could do with injection of commercial reality

As the article states, The Sun has put on 11 million digital readers in the 16 months since it dropped its paywall (and a new editor, Tony Gallagher, ordered a site makeover). Total readership today: 26.2 million, less than three million behind the Mail, which has just nipped over the 29 million mark. What they’re both offering, in sum, seems to resonate. Another interesting development is the ghost of the old Independent’s print edition flourishing online: 16.85 million. But not all of the changes that matter flow in from cyberspace. Look at the Telegraph (which has a quasi-paywall). Its print readership of 3.84 million trails the Guardian’s 4.1 million. But then there’s the Times, with almost seemingly paltry – though remunerative – online figures, because its paywall is robust – but with 4.2 million print readers taking the tablets.

  • 26.2 million, less than three million behind the Mail, which has just nipped over the 29 million mark.
  • Independent’s print edition flourishing online: 16.85 million.
  • The Independent's print readership of 3.84 million trails the Guardian’s 4.1 million.

Monday 20 March 2017

MEST3 Section A exam prep

MEST3 Section A exam prep

q1.)

Trailers for product 1 and product 2 both present enigma codes in their presentation by demonstrating narrative techniques. To begin with, dialogues and questions such as "What?" from the protagonist, as well as "... unexplained disappearances" conjure curiosity that surrounds the plot of this new addition to the film's franchise. As a result, the co-existing audience who are familiar with the film's previous franchises are left excited and encouraged to see the actual film in cinemas. The use of parallel music also mimics a very exciting sort of "hype" created. The sound gain is synonymous with tension, given as tension and pace increases, so does the sound gain. The end result is a very epic trailer being created, which is suitable for its genre in respect as a fantasy/drama/action. 

Product 2 portrays a similar convention to some extents. Product 2 uses dialogues as well, such as "Are you a vampire?" that straight away introduces the audience with it's horror/drama genre and the excitement in vampire folklore. Additional dialogues that are more ambiguous include "Will you be my girlfriend?" paired with "Will you like me anyway?" that occupies the audience with questions and excitement as a result. Given that those questions are also never really answered in the trailer, it encourages the audience to watch the film in cinemas for themselves to find out. As a result there is a demonstration of Todorov's narrative theory of equilibrium, resolution, disruption (as with Drama films), and new equilibrium. 

q2.) 
Outsiders are perhaps perceived to present some interesting merits or qualities about them, for example vampire folklore has essentially co-existed with a large fanbase of people, so to make a film about it would attract a lot of attention regardless. As suggested by Gillian Dyer's lines of appeal, it perhaps fits into the 'art, culture and history', as well as 'dreams and fantasy'. It perhaps also demonstrates a uses and gratifications (Blumler and Katz) as audiences are able to relate to certain ethnic groups or any convention for that matter. An example includes "Gone Too Far" by Destiny Ekaragha, where the film fuses comedy with Nigerian culture. The film also incorporates a very "touching" and "relatable" dialogue using London slang, and as a result attracts a connection between presumably the youth of London that understand and relate with the "language" being presented. As for humour, it is a demonstration of Alvarado's 'humorous' group that presents Iku by conveying him and his foreign ethnicity to stereotypically be linked with humour as they desperately tries to fit into the Western society. As a result, there is a very "attractive" sort of humour aspect of what would happen if a foreigner were to be exposed to the Western society. 

An additional example also includes Ben Drew "Plan B"'s Ill Manors. Ill Manors' story revolves around a marginalized group who are victim to poverty and in "the hood"/ghetto. This may be particularly interesting to outside viewers as they're typically led by a hegemonic view that London being one of the most iconic cities in the world would reflect to high social classes and wealth, but obviously with Ill Manors' depiction the case is quite opposite. As a result of watching the movie and acknowledging the issue, viewers might even have their opinions changed on London teenagers. Typically, we're being "injected" with a hypodermic needle into assuming all teenagers are associated with gang violence, anti-social behaviour, and just negative things in general. Perhaps with interest and compassion the viewer looks at the issue from another angle and gives a mature judgement on it. For example, we learn about Aaron and Ed's struggle with the environment that they live in, and the reasons for the things that they do. There is a challenged view of the youth of London as a result.

q3.) 
Official and unofficial websites perhaps do contribute to a film's success, however it is probably minimal and not significant enough to be acknowledged as something that has accounted for more than half of a film's success. However, social media, specifically social networks such as Twitter and Facebook do have a significant impact. Ill Manors for example had the twitter hashtag #ILLMANORS which created a synergy of references throughout Twitter. Specially, Twitter has the 're-tweet' feature that contributed to the film's awareness and success, therefore meaning it is in some sense a product of a user-generated content as any user is able to support the film. Other influences that account for films are unofficial websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb. The system in which the two websites run give a rating, film description, and reviews from several different critics/companies, therefore influencing on whether the movie was good or bad. However, it may confuse judgement of a film in the sense that critics give a rating of the movie based on objective things such as narrative, plot, things that essentially make a film. But an audience on the other hand may just like a film subjectively because of the way it is or appeals to them on a personal level, because they can relate to it, such as Ill Manors and Gone Too Far.

Sunday 19 March 2017

story #56

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201703190009.html

story #56 Media figures to form council to fight fake news on the Internet

As the article states, an online news executive is mobilizing key players in the Japanese media to fight fake news on the Internet by forming a council dedicated to the issue. The council will organize study sessions to promote awareness of journalism ethics among online media workers. It will also establish rules providing, for example, how the websites of its member entities will expressly present contact information for inquiries on their articles, which will differentiate them from websites that do not observe similar rules. In addition, the council will develop ways to flag articles whose authenticity has been called into question by readers’ reports or other indications so that information can be shared and warnings can be issued

  • 64% of Americans were left at a "great deal of confusion" from fake news
  • 24% of Americans were left at "some confusion" from fake news
  • 11% of Americans were left at "not much/no confusion" from fake news

Saturday 18 March 2017

story #55

http://www.independent.ie/business/media/irelands-bestselling-newspaper-35462842.html

story #55 Ireland's best-selling newspaper

As the article states, there is hope and success for print news still, and in Ireland the latest figures confirm that the Sunday Independent, Sunday World, Irish Independent, and The Herald, Dublin's favourite daily newspaper, achieved sales on average of 1,128,105 copies per week. The latest ABC audit of newspaper sales in Ireland shows that this newspaper accounts for 63.8pc of the quality Sunday market share (191,594 copies). That's more than twice that of their nearest rival, the British-owned Sunday Times (78,658). According to the figures, covering the period from July-December 2016, Independent News & Media titles have consolidated their dominance in the Irish newspaper market. The INM brands are the most popular, topping the quality Sunday, quality daily and tabloid Sunday newspaper markets. The latest figures confirm that the Sunday Independent, Sunday World, Irish Independent, and The Herald, Dublin's favourite daily newspaper, achieved sales on average of 1,128,105 copies per week.

  • The Herald, Dublin's favourite daily newspaper, achieved sales on average of 1,128,105 copies per week
  • he latest ABC audit of newspaper sales in Ireland shows that this newspaper accounts for 63.8pc of the quality Sunday market share (191,594 copies)
  • on the other hand British-owned Sunday Times (78,658)

Sunday 12 March 2017

story #54

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21717107-making-americas-august-news-groups-great-again-traditional-media-firms-are-enjoying-trump-bump

Story #54 "Traditional media firms are enjoying a Trump bump"

As the article states, the Trump bump has been most pronounced at the New York Times. It managed to sign up more than half a million digital subscribers last year—including 276,000 in the fourth quarter alone, mostly after the election. It now has 3m subscribers in total, including about 1.7m digital-only subscriptions. By one measure traffic to its site is nearly a third higher than a year ago. A never-ending flow of big stories helps. “In the evening you put the non-Trump pages to bed so you can focus on the late-breaking Trump news,” says Mark Thompson, its chief executive. As a result, the surge arrives at a challenging time for traditional media. In television, most cable channels are suffering declining viewership, which in turn puts pressure on advertising sales.

  • North America's newspaper industry has lost $30bn in advertising revenue, a drop of 60%, in the decade to 2015
  • The Wall Street Journal endured a 21% drop in advertising revenue in mid-2016, leading to yet more cost-cutting and voluntary redundancies
  • The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, also saw a substantial boost in digital subscribers, to nearly 1.1m by the end of 2016, an increase of about 250,000 over a year earlier


story #53

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/11/newspapers-remain-tried-trusted-despite-social-media-revolution/

Story #53"Newspapers remain tried and trusted despite social media revolution"

As the article states, the decline in newspaper sales is matched by falling commercial revenues as advertisers look to digital channels for greater reach, precise targeting and the ability to trigger an immediate purchase. Most publishers’ digital dreams have yet to be realised as Google and Facebook gobble up the large majority of incremental digital ad spend. Meanwhile, efforts to leverage newspapers’ collective strength through collaborative approaches to advertising sales have struggled to get off the ground.

  • News consumption: 60% TV; 29% Newspapers; 28% Social media; 19% Radio; 6% Online publications; 10% Other
  •  Facebook users from Egypt rose from 450,000 to 3 million
  • 40% more Twitter engagement after Syrian revolution

Tuesday 7 March 2017

story #52

http://allafrica.com/stories/201702070004.html

#52"Africa: How the Poisonous Side of Social Media is Killing the Newspaper"

Social media unlike the printed newspaper has a liberal side to it that is very poisonous. While the newspaper has several gate keepers who are fully aware of the legal, moral, financial and social implications of inaccurate news, social media has a free for all aspect that allows irresponsibility to take centre stage. A person may hide under a pseudonym and say what comes to their mind. Post pictures that encroach on the privacy, of others, use obscene words without fear of reprimand. Yet in the newspaper your byline is your credibility and your word is your bond. Because newspapers, for reasons mentioned above are bound to strive to be accurate, social media becomes a refugee for many. Here they find people ready to feed them with hard luck stories to satisfy their demand.


story #51

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/05/newspaper-readership-survey-numbers-confusing-commercial-reality


#51"Newspaper readership numbers could do with injection of commercial reality"

As the article states, the National Readership Survey’s confusing picture of online and print audiences would benefit from the addition of some cold, hard financial facts. The Sun has put on 11 million digital readers in the 16 months since it dropped its paywall (and a new editor, Tony Gallagher, ordered a site makeover). Total readership today: 26.2 million, less than three million behind the Mail, which has just nipped over the 29 million mark. What they’re both offering, in sum, seems to resonate.

  • The Sun has put on 11 million digital readers in the 16 months since it dropped its paywall
  • Total readership today: 26.2 million
  • The Daily Mail's print readership of 3.84 million trails the Guardian’s 4.1 million

Monday 6 March 2017

Media and collective identity

Media and collective identity

1.) "Who are you?"
Talks about how each individual person thinks about the person they are, the person they want to be, and the person they want to be seen as. 

"I think, therefore I am"
Talks about how people's general thoughts and ambitions change over time, mostly when you reach from a certain age as a juvenile to an adult. 

"From citizen to consumer"
Talks about fitting in and conforming to social expectations.

"The rise of the individual"
Talks about the notion of individualism and how people would want to be viewed by their uniqueness and 'difference'.

"Branding and lifestyle"
People choose products and branding to to match their own self-image.

"Who will be?"
Avatars on the Internet reflect the person someone is, and says something about their personality.

2.) Apple - I own an iPhone and identify myself as a mainstream consumer in the phone market

Microsoft - I own a PC that serves as an essential in the current modern world

Adobe/Sony - I own several programs by them that I use to express and create things

YouTube - my most searched website that I browse almost regularly, and there is a reason it is the 2nd most visited website

Tumblr - use to look up cool things

3.) 'Style over substance' by it's definition means "to think looks are more important than content." As a result, I think that the modern media is in fact this, given that certain groups like to to conform to certain views just because the speaker or subject is something that they favour, despite the objective things being said that challenges or supports an argument or topic.

4.) The increasing dominance of the mass media and what Baudrillard calls ‘media saturation’ results in high cultural value being placed on external factors such as physical beauty and fashion sense over internal traits such as intelligence or compassion.

5.) I don't think my presence in social media is purely reflective of the person that I genuinely am. I would like to think expression on social media is more on the exaggerated and "alter-ego like" personality that a user would have, or a hidden and distinct personality someone would also have.

6.) Data mining in some extents on a moral level is of course an invasion of privacy, however users should acknowledge the fact that once your information is on the Internet anyone or any organization is able to use that for any legal purpose. As once said by a theorist, "Trying to take information out of the Internet is like trying to take piss out of a pool."


Sunday 5 March 2017

Identity and the wider media

Identity and the wider media

1.) According to the factsheet, "We define ourselves in many different ways and our identities come from the individualised experiences we have." It also suggests that we identify ourselves in whichever context we're in. For example, a person might use their relationship with social media in order to identify themselves in any given way, depending on what they see and search for themselves. They might even be influenced by some of the stuff that they seen on social media too.

2.) "Who are you? How could you use the media to help reinforce the following definitions of self?"

edgy - have a similar and esoteric interests understood by a few selected and specialized people in that specific knowledge. Listens to music that is considered to be unconventional and is more to what is seen on the basis. Is considered to be cool in a wacky way. 

a pleasure seeker - have an interest in social media and apps such as Netflix as a way of escapism. Often is a narcissist that uses social network apps to boost their ego by sharing their posts. 

fashionable - has an interest in websites such as Tumblr and Pinterest where they can share their posts of fashion and fits. Looks into latest fashion trends, or might like vintage, normcore, etc. 

witty and fun - uses social media and networks in order to share and view 'Internet memes'. Often uses apps such as Instagram as a social platform to share pictures of memes.

cutting- edge - very, very esoteric. Often a very complicated and complex character that is to be understood in their own way. 

3.) The stereotypical identification associated with youth culture is that they're always involved in anti-social behaviour, very aggressive, reckless, and uneducated. The conventional attire for them have also casted a bad name on brands such as Nike, Adidas, and in earlier times Burberry. As the article states, "The Jeremy Kyle Show on ITV. In 2008/9 when ‘chavs’ and ‘hoodies’ became a common moral panic..."

4.) "Media theorist Richard Hebdige says that youth cultures show their resistance to the dominant culture through their style choices. Urban youth can show itself to be outside the mainstream by adopting the uniform that is feared by mainstream culture and they learn about this fear in the media representations."

5.) "Theorist David Gauntlett claims that the media have influence on identity construction and so the way the media stereotypes groups may become part of how individuals see themselves and media institutions are able to use this to sell their products."

6.) We as a start identify certain conventions to be associated with youth culture. For example, we can say that rap music and growing up in "the hood" to be synonymous with each other. Ill Manor's official song for the film demonstrates this. We often see violence within the media when youth culture is being presented, however while the London 2011 riots may have encouraged this view, the fact remains that this is still a very stereotypical view on a passive group.

7.) "Theorist David Gauntlett claims that the media have influence on
identity construction and so the way the media stereotypes groups may become part of how individuals see themselves and media institutions are able to use this to sell their products. Where the idea of identity has previously been seen as something personal, the audience’s relationship with the media today in the construction of various identities is bringing the personal into the public space."

8.) Realistically, I think the youth are either not concerned with the image the media puts on them in the sense that it doesn't affect them enough, or they are simply not aware. But as Hebdige suggests, the youth do sometimes to an extent try to resist dominant ideologies set forth by society. They can achieve this through the use of social media and network apps such as Twitter to express their own views.