NDM 20

Police accused of trial by social media after tweeting about super car crash- THE TELEGRAPH


This article talks about the Greater Manchester Police  being accused of  "commiting trial by social media" , the police's traffic unit used their Twitter to post a  crashed Ferrari, after the driver crashed on Sunday, with comments suggesting the driver had been speeding and taking drugs.  With the post the caption red  "Driver said he was only doing 52 in a 50mph area. Thoughts?" and the follow up tweet read : "Well the driver has just tested positive for Cannabis, so that’s probably played a part."

• But the posts sparked a backlash from fellow motorists who accused the police of publicly condemning the driver without  evidence.
• "Isn’t it up to you to decide? Would you post this comment if it was a Ford Focus? Next time ask ‘this chap says he didn’t break in, looks like a burglar to us...what do you think?’" - Twitter post comment
• "The presumption of innocence is clearly not very high on the police's list of priorities.

• “The public have no right to know any of this information. They may be interested in it, but it is not in the public interest. This would appear to be trial by social media and it is disgraceful."-   Nick Freeman, solicitor who specialised in representing celebrity clients

For this, I think social media is a form of hyper reality (Bauldriard) , where people can construct their own images and ideas suited to their audiences showing an example of hyper reality in the digital age. From the problem wit the Manchester police is that  the footage may possibly not provide all perspectives thus making the audience unable to distinguish the truth over false images, which is where the people would find the problem. 

Also, the idea that this maybe a Pluralist idea showing an empowerment of audiences can be seen here, as the high institution, Police, tried to feed into a known idea when it comes to car crashes and sell it off to their audiences (38,000 followers) by asking for their opinion of it but because it came with backlash. 

Pluralists believe that audiences are perceived as capable of manipulating the media and having access to 'plural views of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate or reject' - they believe that audience are able to challenge the news, which tis audiences did when asked by the "elite" about the laws and empowered as they are able to find their own opinion in their liees. 

NDM 19

NET NEUTRALITY REPEAL ALLOWS INTERNET TO ONLY CONSIST OF GOVERNMENT-SANCTIONED SITES - THE INDEPENDENT


The article is about the FCC (Federal Communications Commission)  chairman announcing that they would want to repel  net neutrality protections. This would allow internet companies to charge people for specific websites, or only allow some sites to be free.

Campaigner's have shown how the principle of net neutrality could easily be abused, by giving an example from a Portuguese internet provider: 

• "One Portuguese internet service provider forces people to buy their data in parts – paying extra for chat apps or video streaming, for instance – and Facebook's 'Free Basics' internet project has been attacked for only actually providing Facebook and other sites for free."

This would show how similar rules maybe used allowing media  supportive of the Trump administration or other future presidencies to be given out to users for free. Internet companies could also choose to only allow people to access certain sites that were helpful to them, too. 
Service providers have gone against this to say, that they would "want the protections lifted so they can invest more money in infrastructure, but are looking to actively exploit the repeal of net neutrality."

• "With Net Neutrality gone, the flow of information will be controlled on a level people just aren’t thinking about yet.                                                                                            Imagine the lowest priced net service including only Breitbart, RT, Infowars, TrumpTV, Fox News, basic email & Facebook.                                                                                It’ll happen."   - Twitter post b Catherynne Valente

People showing their dissatisfaction of the repel via social media shows opportunities for the audience to challenge their senators through social media platforms such as Twitter and come in contact with alternative views. However, the majority of traditional forms of media reinforce the views of the dominant higher class, as they are owned by large conglomerates that are run by the elite, which as they know having even more power available for them to feed to audience may reinforce the idea that the population are under hegemonic rule, and that the news/elite maintains status quo. 

NDM News: Marxism & Pluralism - Alain de Botton on the news

1) To what extent do you agree with Alain de Botton's views on the News?

I agree with Alain de Botton point about audience inability to actually take in news but aslo that their is a certain hierarchy deciding what is important for news. Audience are made to view news pandered towards them and what institutions think audiences would wants to read, rather than news which would wholly be better in terms of awareness and information on the world. This is because through gate keeping the elitist are able to keep information and decide what news should be published and revealed to people, reinforcing a hegemonic idea of the elite controlling what audiences see. Also, the populous is unable to differentiate what is soft news, which blurs the line of news and entertainment, and hard news, which is fast paced appears on front page news, as news are now using things such as 'clickbait' or news which is 'dumbed down'(soft news) for audiences which either don't have all facts but are useless in terms of world news. 

2) How can you link Marxism and Hegemony to de Botton's criticisms of the News?

Both Marxism and hegemonic can both be linked to de Bottons criticisms of the news as he criticises the news for lack of distinction from soft and hard news, which would be breaking down the news hierarchy. The use of soft news, as stated, is the so called elite  suing it to dumb us down a hegemonic theory of ruling class imposing this sought of news on audience for this sole purpose of being less aware and less powerful (dumb down). The marxist idea of the news being used by elitist to gain more revenue ,from continued stories being re-used and seem "fresh", and impose the status quo showing how politics is easily able to place and manipulate the news. 


3) How could you use Pluralism and new technology to challenge de Botton's views on the News?

New technology and pluralism can be used to challenge de Botton's view of news because of UGC to citizen journalism. Pluralists believe  audiences are able to manipulate the media enabling them access to 'plural views of society' thus 'conform, accommodate or reject'. As the belief is audience can challenge news, and UGC and citizen journalism  can go against de Button point about how audiences react tot he news reinforcing the idea that audiences are not passive as they were before but now take an active role and control over what they are fed from news and media. 
An example would be the news of the Libyan slave auctions happening in the east of Africa  where people through social media have been able to bring awareness onto the situation and try to create pressure upon the libiyan government to stop the auctions. This would also show how much power audiences , a pluralist idea, have as petitions and knowledge has spread world wide and notable new have taken the story on.

4) Choose two news stories from the last six months - one that supports de Botton's views and one that challenges his belief that the News is used for social control. 

News story that supports de Button's views-  Libyan government says investigating migrant 'slave market' reports

News story that challenges his belief that the news is used for social control - Donald Trump is pathetically insecure

This news story can be argued to challenge Bottons belief that the news is used for social control in particular by politics as this article is clearly criticizing a politician, which would be highly unlikely if the news was solely used for social control. 

NDM 18

Rupert Murdoch says his newspapers are struggling in digital age- The Guardian 

Rupert Murdoch ssays News Corps wont be expanding its newspaper empire to coincide to digital advertising has become "tremendously damaging to print" and even some of his newspapers are suffering. He states some other well known newspapers Times, Australian and Wall Street Journal as successes and says his company has ‘hands full’ keeping print viable

Murdoch questioned some of the big digital giants such as Google and Facebook for allowing their content to be accessed freely for the masses 

• “So far I think we have done pretty well in replacing lost advertising revenue in the major papers, but it continues to be a big problem,” 

Someone questioned him at the event asking will the company be purchasing anymore newspapers and the executive said : “Not really. No. Our hands are pretty full making our existing papers viable, this means it is hard to keep his newspapers successful due to many people going to free content news on the internet from companies such as Google or Facebook .

Murdoch notes that the newspapers which he says as doing well are fine because of the money they have put on them but others he says are struggling in this time. He has stressed many times of the problem all newspapers are having due to the continued changing of technology, due to people still having may free content available to them and few which account for money they woulds ultimately go to what is free and doesn't cost. For me, I think having many newspapers have a paywall and showing their news is new, reliable and trustworthy will be very successful among people if no known newspapers are showing free content (Google and Facebook) will be make it easier for paywalls to be pushed into the world of journalism, with the way technology is moving at a qucik pace and the slow insignificance of print will make it tricky.

NDM 17

Sky Views: Social media helps good journalism- SKY NEWS

The article, is more of a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents. This particular one was by an editor who was questioning whether social media is a sought of good for journalism today rather than taking away from traditional journalism i.e Newspapers.The person states how at an event the found himself and others debating on the topic of journalism, referencing Twitter and Facebook as a hub of fake accounts and news with some being shocked of the ability for those to create accounts to promote certain views to make their audiences think a certain due to targeted information at them from countless amounts of data they hold. There is even the huge volume of fake traffic being put out by Russian sources to disrupt politics in the west. 

• In 2016 a few anti-Islamic posts on Facebook send out by Russians but purporting to be from "the heart of Texas" managed to stir up a confrontation on the streets of Houston.

Veteran New York Times journalist Stephen Erlanger, commented that there is  pressure to provide clickbait, which meant there were fewer resources to check stories and that even his paper, The Grey Lady, now put out trivial stories to attract readers.

• Fearful of fake news and its consequences, people are prepared to pay for reliable and well-presented information.

This comment by the editor is agreeable, to an extent, as I think the thought of fake news and false allegations is known to many and a worry it is still shown from the way false news can be spread that many can still be led on or believe in fake news. Even other countries are known to have paid people to keep bots and create 'opinion-keepers' to be able to put out their thoughts and political views, which most often is run in the time of elections. Paywalls have been made by some newspapers to show to people their reliability and want for genuine 'good news' such as The New York TImes newspaper which advertises it self as something of a luxury to the people who access gain a lot of revenue showing how by creating something to pay for or advertiisng it as a necessity will allow those to buy it.

NDM 16

Thirty countries use 'armies of opinion shapers' to manipulate democracy – report- The Guardian

The article talks about governments of over 30 countries around the globe  using armies of 'opinion shapers' to meddle in elections, advance anti-democratic agendas and repress their citizens, a new report from US NGO Freedom House. 

• Of the 65 countries surveyed, 30, including Venezuela, the Philippines and Turkey, were found to be using “armies of opinion shapers” to “spread government views, drive particular agendas, and counter government critics on social media” -  Freedom House’s new Freedom on the Net report

•  In 2016, just 23 countries were found to be using the same sort of pro-government “astroturfing” (a fake grassroots movement).

•  In the Philippines, it is manifested as a “keyboard army” paid $10 a day to operate fake social media accounts, which supported Rodrigo Duterte in the run-up to his election last year, and backed his crackdown on the drug trade this year.

• Turkey’s ruling party enlisted 6,000 people to manipulate discussions, drive agendas and counter opponents. 

• Sudan’s governments approach is more direct: a unit within the country’s intelligence service created fake accounts to fabricate support for government policies and denounce critical journalists.

From the article, I can see that from the survey done by the Freedom House found that many countries themselves create accounts which all hold views and thoughts which would be beneficial to the party/government which would want to introduce their views. However, the article highlights countries who did not hold an election such as Turkey or Venezuela, social media manipulation was still frequent. The Freedom House's Net Report  made the statement that “strong indications that individuals are paid to distort the digital information landscape in the government’s favour, without acknowledging sponsorship”. This statement really brings to light that governments having the ability to access certain accounts or sites will be able to skew their specific audiences own political views to fit theirs. This is evident in Trumps promoter stating that targeting specific people through Facebook data ,given to them, was how Trump won the election. 

• Governments are now using social media to suppress dissent and advance an anti-democratic agenda

Not only is this manipulation difficult to detect on the sites, it is more difficult for people such as the director of FH to combat than other types of censorship, such as website blocking, because it’s dispersed and because of the huge number of people and bots deployed to do it. In the Philippines, they made a “keyboard army” and paid $10 a day to people to operate fake social media accounts supporting a Philippine politician in his election. 

The difficulty is evident and can be hard to track and represents the extent of power institutions/ government have over audiences and even can be done on sites which people would see as free and private but are also being targeted themselves. 

NDM 15

British MP calls on Twitter to release Russian 'troll factory' tweets- The Guardian

The article talks about Damian Collins, the chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, wanting examples of  posts linked to British politics. In reference, to Twitter giving out a list of suspended Russia-linked accounts to US intelligence committee.

• 2,752 Twitter accounts coordinated by humans at the research agency- tweeted 131,000 times during the period 1 September to 15 November 2016.

• discovered almost 37,000 Russian “bot” accounts tweeting 1.4m times over the same period

• Twitter said the tweets impersonated US news entities, political parties, and groups focused on social and political issues.

• "Prime Minister would not have spoken out on Russia without briefing from our spooks when can Parliament be briefed @BBCr4today ?" - Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, also asked why the government was continuing to let Russia meddle in UK affairs.

An MP of superiority wants for Twitter to release examples of posts concerning the Uk in Russian "troll factory", which he states would be an “interference by foreign actors in the democratic process of the United Kingdom”.

Damian Collins, the chairman of the Commons culture...select committee wanted to see examples of posts about British politics after Twitter handed a list of 2,752 accounts to the US intelligence committee, which it had suspended for being linked to Russia. 

One problem was referenced concerning the a list circulated in Washington posted a widely shared tweet at the time of the March terror attack on Westminster Bridge in London. A Twitter account by the name of  @SouthLoneStar made a post of  a woman in a headscarf the scene of the attack and captioning it with “Muslim woman pays no mind to the terror attack, casually walks by a dying man while checking phone #PrayForLondon #Westminster #BanIslam.”

The woman from the picture commented in response to her picture being circulated: 

•  “Not only have I been devastated by witnessing the aftermath of a shocking and numbing terror attack, I’ve also had to deal with the shock of finding my picture plastered all over social media by those who could not look beyond my attire, who draw conclusions based on hate and xenophobia.”

The article made another reference to an account, which had been deleted by twitter,  after the EU referendum reportedly had posted that Brexit leavers should "clean their land from muslim invasion!”. 

The MP said he wanted the information about impact on UK politics by the end of November(from the knowledge of the stats above) . Last month in a letter to the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, Collins also asked for “information regarding the use of Facebook advertising and pages by Russian-linked accounts in the lead-up to, and during, the 2016 referendum”.

This really brings to light how digital news has been used negatively. This is due to the ability for some to make multiple 'fake' accounts to write skewed information of 'fake news' about certain parties and people to promote a certain ideal. The power which is also held by Twitter is show also as they were able to collect information easily about these 'bots' but refuse to give them up, much like, the Tinder app having detailed information on their users via Facebook to promote and target specific images catered to a group they are in. New digital media is used to throw certain ideals to audiences that even political parties from foreign countries are able to change the ideas of audiences.

NDM 14

Science Explains Why The Printed Word Is Still More Powerful Than Digital- The HuffPost

The article brings on the idea that print have more impact on audiences than digital news using "science" as a back up for the statement. Making three points :

• Print speaks to your senses
• Print is more memorable
• Print is trusted

The article states how we are in the internet generation and how convinence is everything and technology triumphed over print. That those who carry Kindle or read news online on their phone still find more print to be better than print, even the 'internet- generation'.

• In the US, print books are still far more popular than digital versions, 
• In the UK, sales of printed books rose by 7% in 2016.

A linguistic Naomi Baron when collecting data(opinions) on on print and digital was able to find that people loved "the smell of the paper" and author Tara Guha states books can be "sensory delights" for people. Further saying:

• “When we handle a ‘real’ book we react to how it feels in our hand, its smell, the look of the cover, even the sound of the pages turning,”  Naomi Baron

• “We can feast our eyes on the books on our shelves, take them down, and as we open them we remember not just the story of the book, but what was going on in our life at that time. Flipping the pages gives us an emotional hit.” - Namoi Baron

• “When you read a paper book, you can often remember where you saw something - approximately how far in it was, where it was located on the page,”- Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing,

giving the impression printed words is a sought of aesthetic appeal for people.

The article brings upon scientific evidence to back up the aesthetic and memorable appeal of printed media. Research by Anne Mangen of Norway’s Stavanger University has found that "we absorb less when reading on a Kindle than we do when reading print". They allowed Kindle and print readers to be given a short story to read and found digital readers did significantly worse when asked to place events from the story in the correct order afterwards. This may be due to the idea that there is more distraction for technology when using it, such as notifications, which may lead to those reading off devices to not find what they read memorable. 

Students are even advised to print off their work rather than what we do as humans havind the tendency to skim read words on devices:

•  “Digital is great, of course, but I often advise my students to print out work before they submit it because reading print is a different experience from reading on screen. You skim less and focus more and I think you’re more likely to spot mistakes on paper.” -Media Trainer, Hazel Davis

Rogger Dooley  suggests that print might be more powerful because it is more trusted. Historically, books were seen to be wisdom, and newspapers to speak truth to power. Neither was always true, but print still commands a respect that digital can’t match.

• “Of course, the bar is much lower for print today - anyone can self-publish a book that is indistinguishable from the product of a big publishing house,”

• “Nevertheless, it still takes effort and expense. So, I think that even today people assume that print content has had to cross some kind of curation threshold.”

• “Many thought the convenience and cost advantage of digital media would make print content as obsolete as horse-drawn carriages. It’s clear that people still enjoy paper-based content.”

I think this does give the idea that print is still more successful than digital using the science of our brains and memory to support. However, it doesn't take from the decrease in print, in general, for companies. Unless print is seen as a luxury and necessity, why many have the idea of paywalls for newspapers, such as the New York times many would still be put into a niche group for using printed news rather than digital which will continue being on the rise in my opinion. 

NDM 13

M&S Christmas ad uses Paddington Bear to target family audience- The Guardian

The article talks about John Lewis' success in their Christmas adverts which gained a lot of attention and costed a lot of money but also targeted many audiences. Also, how many retailers ,i.e Sainsburys and M&S,try to emulate the the stores 'brand of adverts'  but also the extent in money used to make them. The article focusing on the recent Christmans advert of Marks & Spencers which featured the famous Paddington Bear 

•  John Lewis spends about £6m on its annual campaign and has recently vied with Sainsbury’s to be the most-watched Christmas ad.
• John Lewis advert, featuring Buster the boxer bouncing on a trampoline, attracted more than 20m YouTube views and helped to raise money for The Wildlife Trusts.
•  The department store group sold £2.5m of goods linked to its Monty the Penguin ad, including 48,000 soft toys.
•  “We wanted something which was fun, festive, entertaining, but family-centric.”- Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne, director of marketing at M&S

The director of M&S marketing sttaed he wanted the ads to be "family-centric", which what drives the ideas behind targeted ads. Targeted ads are advertisements to be aimed at certain groups and the Christmas ads all market to families for Christams. 

Sainsburys and M&S are aimed at modern day audience and tries to make a personal bond with the audience and make the stores seem family-orientated, trying to create a warm, loving image for their brand and they are trying to appeal to the mass audience. The article comments on the M&S brand adverts using celebrites such as Janet McTeer or Stephen Fry to be the main in their ads. 

For me, the article is stating that the advertisements directed at specific audiences is where revenue is being gained from for these brand institutions. Targeting ad which many fear on the internet is being used positively for audiences. Also, as many targeted ads are mostly used for the companies, I think, for one's where it features characters and narrative which are recognisable to audiences to advertise their products could be shown as a balance in power between audiences and institutions. 

M&S' last years ads gained a first increase in Christmas clothing sales for six years with John Lewis' 'Buster the Dog' success allowing the store to donate to Wildlife Trusts.  This may be due to competitions but also because they may have targeted different types of audiences, showing that when it comes to advertisements it can be positive and be used, when at their right target group, middle-class, family-orientated groups, for both companies and institutions. 

Hyper-reality and the digital renaissance

1) Read Media Magazine archive, MM30  page 59: 

2) NOTES FROM MEDIA MAGAZINE:

EXAMPLES:

• Television and cinema 
• Social networking and social media 
• Skype, FaceTime other video based chat services 

THEORIES: 

• Baudrillards theory on hyper-reality, inability to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced post-modern society.

POSITIVE ASPECTS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY: (or 'digital renaissance') 

• Increased interconnected amongst society 
• Greater access to knowledge and cultural sharing, breaking down of cultural barriers and ignorance 
• Social networking sites offer the opportunity to enter a hyper-real utopia in which all participants are equal because the signifiers of social belonging and the invocations of prejudice no longer matter.

NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY ON SOCIETY 

• 'Society alienated from itself'
• With the increasing prominence of the internet, both humanity and morality are losing their places in society

WIDER ISSUES AND DEBATES: 

• Privacy, government control through the use of laws and acts 
• Hackers of cloud based services 
• How much mediation is enough or too much? 
• Monetisation of live content 
• Censorship, live content of battlezones, too brutal or is society desensitised? Is it crucial to society seeing this hyper reality? 

3) The article was written in 2009. Offer three examples of more recent social networking sites or uses of technology that support the idea of a 'digital renaissance'.

 Snapchat, users can send images and videos to anyone in the world much through messaging.
Instagram, a website that is specifically for photos. Enables its's audiences to follow each other and focus on photos only
Twitter, users can comment their views, thoughts and ideas very quickly. News can be accessed more easily through twitter and everything is more fast-paced. 

4) How do live streaming services such as Periscope or Facebook Live fit into the idea of a 'digital renaissance'? Are these a force for good or simply a further blurring of reality?

Periscope and Facebook Live  revolutionised the digital media, as apps which demand for content to be consumed has led to an increase. Users have no need to wait for their content hence the increase use and demand for live streaming services. I believe these can be forces for good as it could increase the amount of people that are coming together for shared interest but it could also mean bad news for television or other broadcast services.

5) How can we link the 'digital renaissance' to our case study on news? Is citizen journalism a further example of hyper-reality or is it actually making news more accurate and closer to real life?

I believe we can link the digital renaissance to our case study on news as it is something that is heavily influenced on the advancement of technology which directly has an impact on digital media as well as traditional news platforms.  
The increase in citizen journalism through the use of social media is something that breaks down the aspect of news and information being mediated and allows audiences to experience stories at a more of an emotional and personal perspective as an audience rather than from the perspective of an institution who might have other hidden agendas in the form of dominant or preferred ideologies and readings. 
However, the the link 'digital renaissance' to our case study on the news as the emergence of citizen journalism is an advancement to technology. Citizen journalism can be seen as an example of hyper-reality as the footage may possibly not provide all perspectives thus making the audience unable to distinguish the truth over false images

NDM NEWS: Citizen journalism and UGC (user-generated content)

1) Read Media Magazine archive: MM30 page 55.

2) NOTES FROM MEDIA MAGAZINE 30: 

• The case of Rodney King, who was a victim of police brutality. The event was filmed by an onlooker from their apartment window and made it to prime-time news, and led to the charges of four police officers.
• The natural disaster of the Asian Tsunami on December 26th 2004 is another example. Much of the early footage of events was provided from citizen journalists. Tourists who would otherwise have been happily filming holiday moments were suddenly providing on-the-spot witness accounts of events as they unfolded.
• The London bombings, the people who were caught up in this attack provided the majority of footage from this event. The footage provided by those caught up in the bombings from their mobile phones was raw and uncompromising. This first-hand view, rather than professionally shot footage from behind police lines, is often more hard-hitting and emotive.
• The Hudson river plane crash made it into the news due to a Twitter of the plane crash. A dramatic picture of a plane half sinking in the river, and passengers crowded on the wing awaiting rescue was posted by Janis Krun, with the tweet saying: "There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy." It was the citizen journalists, empowered by social networking sites, that first broke the story, not international news organizations.
• Seung-Hui Cho Attack- 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho mailed videos into NBC news of his shooting. In his 'manifesto, ' Cho showed his paranoia and obsession, likening himself to Jesus Christ. The reporting of the terrible events at Virginia Tech that day was also affected by citizen journalists and the footage that student Jamal Albergotti shot on his mobile phone.

THEORIES: 

• Uses and Gratifications theory - Personal identification
• Surveillance (Uses and Gratifications - Katz and Blumler) - in terms of obtaining information useful for living, we now rely on other people as well as institutions.
• Gatekeepers are there to stop misleading the public in the news - and prevent invalid stories that haven't been fact-checked. Blogosphere provides an opportunity for independent, often minority and niche views and news to reach a wide audience.

BENEFITS TO INSTITUTIONS:

• Footage of events that their professionals may not have been able to obtain can be gained for free through social media
•  Canalso engage with the audience more easily

BENEFITS TO AUDIENCE:

• They now become the producers of content, also makes the news more interesting as there is first-hand footage which is appealing to the audience.
• Access to news on a wider scale, it is now available through social media sites

WIDER ISSUES AND DEBATES: 

• 'Monitoring' UGC content

• Influx of unmoderated content
• User privacy would be a huge issue and debate 
• Dumbing down society due to content that anyone can make anywhere anytime 
• Potential job losses in the future for trained staff

• The existence of gatekeepers

SHEP

-SOCIAL: UCG allows audiences to voice their own opinions and not have their freedom of speech taken away through the blogosphere. An issue, however, is that whether a news story from a citizen journalist is accurate or valid is never sure - and needs to be fact-checked first. This also means the quality of news will go down as a result.

- HISTORY: As early as 1991 with the recording of the Rodney King beating, UGC has been becoming more prominent 

-ECONOMICAL:  In terms of big institutions, there are some issues because journalists and institutions are affected by citizen journalism - as people are more willing to focus on citizen journalism.

-POLITICAL:  News is less biased, raw footage of the action usually shows all perspectives but this could be challenged

3) What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?

A citizen journalist is someone who plays an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. This can be done through footage collected by a citizen journalist and the distribution of it on social media.

4) What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?

One of the first examples of news being generated by 'ordinary people' is the case of Rodney King, who was a victim of police brutality. The event was filmed by an onlooker from their apartment window and made it to prime-time news, and led to the charges of four police officers.

5) List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.

Polls

Forums

Message boards

Blogs with comments enabled

News articles with comments enabled

Q & A's

6) What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?

User generated content footage tends to be  more realistic and uncompromising. First-hand is often more emotive as it is a lot more closer to the scene compared to professionally shot footage which are almost always behind police lines due to regulations. Professionally shot footage a lot more mediated and first hand UGC content is unmediated which audiences can experience a lot easier through news makes audiences relate to the the stories a lot more.

7) What is a gatekeeper?

A gatekeeper is someone who processes information so it can filtered for the mass audience, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication.

8) How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?

The role of the gatekeeper has changed due to the audience's becoming producers of the news, leading to a smaller amount of gatekeepers to process UGC. Additionally, bigger institutions have been buying up social networking sites for the last few years, meaning they can have access to UGC content more easily, making the use of gatekeepers almost irrelevant.

9) What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?

One of the primary concerns held by journalists is that the need for trained staff at news organisations is decreasing. The idea of crowd sourcing is becoming more prominent where a small amount of staff 'gatekeep' content from citizen journalists which reduces the need for having large number of actual trained journalists.

10) Offer your own opinion (critical autonomy) on the following:

What impact is new/digital media having on:

• news stories

New and digital media is having an impact on news stories due to the engagement between audiences and the news industry. The audience have a role in producing stories i.e. citizen journalism, for example viral tweets that have the potential to be breaking news has led to the increase of journalists who are now on social media to find stories such as these. Furthermore, with the shift to news online, audiences can share and comment on stories.

• the news agenda (the choice of stories that make up the news)

I believe there has been a change in the news agenda. To bring in larger audiences many news companies are attempting to provide stories that induce moral panic and more shocking content. This brings in a larger audience due to bad news selling the most rather than good news.

• the role of professionals in news

The roles of professionals in the news is decreasing due to the reliance on the audience producing the news. Majority of the footage in the news is citizen based.