Policing the Thinkable, by Robert W. McChesney
A few oligopolistic companies control the media business, leaving no room for competition and the development of smaller companies.
In the early days, when journalism was the most important media platform, they were all very opinionated, which made the companies look untrustworthy. Therefor, journalism became non-opinionated, but in a way, it still volleyed between opinion and neutrality, mastering the ability to manipulate information not by giving opinions, but in how they presented “neutral” facts. Apparently, this new way of reporting the news didn’t sell as much as the older one did, so journalism had to become more commercial and audience-focused, in order to compete with the rest of the media businesses in terms of profit. It has become even more difficult with the birth of the Internet. Internet journalism doesn’t have resources or institutional support, so it’s impossible to compete against the media giants. These companies are granted everyday with more rights and support. Governments and big industries seek to have them on their right side because of their huge influence over the people. This is referred as the Global Media System, and it controls cultures and societies all over the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6MRQnCGWpk&feature=related
The Myths of encroaching global media ownership, by Benjamin Compaine
The statement made in the last reading, although very appealing, is based on a series of assumptions with no solid base, which makes me wonder its veracity. In the following text, Benjamin Compaine can seem as a very capitalist personality, but he does provide substantial arguments by the use of examples and references on how there are no such things as Media Giants. There are lots of small media companies that don’t make headlines, but are growing everyday. Books-a-Million, Amazon, etc., were completely unknown a few years ago and now are considered one of this “media giants”. If that's the case, any of the small companies existing today, may be considered evil in a not very distant future.
The immense “growth” reached by the big media industries is only immense when considered by itself. The moment it’s compared to the growth of the media business in general, it’s easy to appreciate how the media business has multiplied, and not only in the same industries, but presents the people with hundreds of new choices.
“Nor should the Internet glibly be written off as a promise unfulfilled (…) today is an analogous in both maturity of content and format as was radio in roughly 1928, or television in about 1952. They evolved mightily in all dimensions and the Internet will as well.”
Internet should follow into the steps of radio and TV, which not only increased in amount, but also became transnational businesses. This is why sometimes we can get the wrong idea about media giants. These are also transnational businesses, and often they change their names from country to country in order to promote their films in a more specific way. They are not opening new companies in different countries, they’re just adapting to the different audience in different societies. This is how a media company should try to make profit. By fulfilling their audience expectations, not by sitting around waiting for someone to “support” them while they produce material nobody wants to read or watch. These companies that act like they know better than their audiences are referred to as “cultural elitists” and, as much as they may know what’s better for the people, it doesn’t always match with what people want. For example, when some European countries used to have a controlled “cultural programming”, most people owned a VCR to watch whatever they felt like.
*The Valorisation of Surveillance: Towards a Political Economy of Facebook
Nicole S. Cohen
Is Facebook the revolution of networking or just a platform for young people to share unlimited information? Maybe is a combination of both. Facebook got networking to a point where information travels so fast, that companies and personalities cannot longer dictate the trends in a generation, but is the people working together and sharing opinions, experiences and anecdotes what influences day-a-day decisions all over the world.
Mark Zuckerberg, describes his invention as “revolutionary”. But for something to be revolutionary, according to Douglas and Guback, it should create “a fundamental change in the structure of the political-economic-social order, and might well involve an up-heaval in the arrangement of classes”. Facebook is just providing the same existing coexistence, but in a more organized way. It’s providing more of the same.
The thoughts, relationships, likes and dislikes of the people that uses Facebook (almost everybody) doesn’t change the people they are, but provides bigger companies and governments a more accurate description of their audience and how to approach them. The market no longer manipulates the audience, but it is forced to re-invent itself according to the tendencies captured on Facebook. “Members add value to commodities via the production of a cultural or affective component of the commodity, which are online social relations.” The transfer of responsibilities from producer to consumer is called crowdsourcing. The content that the consumer uploads to the site is content that Facebook and its partners get without having top ay their employees to produce it. With this content, the sites are able to create massive databases, adding value to the site.
The Commodification of Information: Harnessing Collective Knowledge
But, where is the real money in Facebook? Facebook’s money comes from advertisement. And why is it more efficient than the rest of the social networking websites? Because Facebook creates connections between friends and friends of friends, being able to detect likes and dislikes of a common group and then introduce them the products they’re most likely to buy.
For Facebook to maintain this huge feedback, it has to be constantly re-inventing itself by adapting to its user’s needs and responding to their dislikes. Facebook does changes to the site hoping for people to react in someway (either good or bad) and then providing them with new tools to manage their Facebook Profile. The producers wait for the audience to figure out what’s wrong with the website and only then they change it. “By taking the understanding that all the individuals have and pooling that knowledge together, you get a better set of knowledge” (Mark Zuckerberg).
This could be referred to as exploitation, because Facebook does not pay its user for the labour produced for the company. That’s why when a person gets an account; he or she automatically grants a license for Facebook to use the information for economical purposes.
The Ambiguities of Web 2.0 Work and Its Rewards
Users do get something for generating information for Facebook, and that is the possibility of maintaining friendships and relationships with others no matter the geographical o economical conditions in which they encounter themselves. This information is not produced under some sort of pressure, in which case it could be consider a capitalist and manipulating model, but it comes from people’s own will and desire.
*SOPA AND PIPA
During the day of the 18th of January, one of the largest online protest took place when hundreds of websites manifested their discontent against the laws “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) y “Protect IP Act” (PIPA), which look to punish those who buy pirate content online.
Several internet-related companies, associated in the NetCoalition made their rejection towards the new legislation quite clear, and after three weeks of threatens, they “downloaded” their website’s content, to show the people and the government how would the online world be after SOPA.
Wikipedia was probably the most shocking scenario. The company replaced their English website with this message: Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge: For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.
The website was unavailable for users during 24 hours.
Google created a doodle that only showed in the United States, where they replaced the logo for a black square. The company also gave a link to a page where they informed about the situation and invited the users to sign a petition to the government.
A great first post Ana - well done!
ReplyDeleteI liked the detail that you went into. Next time try to work in some quotations and use these to analyse your case study. A couple if very minor language issues, but otherwise very good. Well done!