Consequences of New Media Technology

Consequences of Lack of Variety

• Serious consequences can occur as it becomes increasingly difficult to voice alternatives to the mainstream media orthodoxy.
• For example, was the coverage given to the anti-Iraq-War protesters fairly represented, especially in the US media?
• Restricted media democracy can lead to restricted political democracy as alternative ideas are deliberately kept away from public attention (especially if they might offend advertisers.

THE NEW MEDIA AGE – democratic potential

Drivers of Change

• The movement is driven by technology, but also by people seeking alternatives.
• The system has upset a lot of people.

• Voices have been silenced
• Creativity squelched
• Rejection letters for quality material litter the landscape.
• The Least Common Denominator has been forced down everyone’s throats.
• Many feel victim to media pollution and being dumbed down to the point of numbness.

Production / Distribution / Circulation

• The conventional wisdom is that content providers today are responding to what people want.
• And because the economics of media production are expensive, they are forced to provide to the majority.

• But who is the “majority” that producer’s cater to.
• The majority is really human nature.
• The majority as it applies to programming and content is appealing to the most basic human impulses because we know that works to get an audience.

• High production costs have forced programmers to appeal to the many.
• Now those costs can come down.
• Digital Video cameras are cheap and ubiquitous.
• A non-linear editing solution can be purchased for under $10k that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Internet content distribution is cheap and universal, and with broadband, will have the same quality as broadcast or cable television.

• The result is that producers are empowered by a new economic dynamic that allows them to produce much more cheaply and allows them to appeal to a much narrower demographic, even narrower than the current fragmented.
• Lowered production costs and niche programming force content providers to appeal to the few, and the few will soon be much more localised than you think.

• A cottage industry is arising of “desktop filmmaking” and “video publishing”
• Many homes will become production facilities.
• Many other New Media Age storefronts will also arise.
• The New Media Age production facility will become as ubiquitous as Kinko’s.

---

Consumption / Reception

Access and Choice

• Broadband and internet media distribution will offer a broader access mechanism for voices that have rarely, if ever, been heard.
• And hopefully, no-one will filter this media from on high.
• Individuals will instead make their own decisions as to what and when to watch.

• Because the niche-orientated nature of Broadband will take more and more mindshare from traditional agencies, traditional media will be forced to embrace a more diverse and fragmented programming agenda.
• The concept of mass media will in some ways disappear.

Market to Individual Values

• The least common denominator will give way to the greatest individual potential, the Age of Media Enlightenment.
• Value orientated.  Altruistic.

• Over decades, corporate interests have conditioned people’s expectations and tastes, greatly influencing the so-called “market”.
• This will change in the New Media Age, where people will define the nature and scope of their media experiences.
• Conventional wisdom will no longer apply.
• This status quo will be shattered in a way no-one can quite foresee.

Non-Products

• Non-Products began with shareware and “free stuff”.
• Advertising itself is a form of non-product.
• The idea is that a free commodity or experience will help sell a paid for commodity or experience.
• A free product is a non-product.

• More and more people are demand that what was once charged for become free.
• The free music movement is a prime example.  In the future films may well follow suit.

• Eventually, copyright owners may need to give up the idea that they can somehow control the sharing of content and will have to look for other ways to generate revenue from their products.
• The Old Guard will be able to create stopgaps to the trend, but ultimately it will not be possible to forestall.
• The media industry will have to accept that the model of property rights as applied to physical property does not neatly apply to digital media, which can be replicated ad infinitum, cheaply and universally.

• Moreover, free sharing might not be such a bad thing.
• In case of music, the free sharing of an individual song may lead to the sale of a CD the song is associated with.
• This the song becomes and non-product to sell the CD.

UNDEMOCRATIC ASPECTS / PROBLEM

• Firstly, the old media aren’t going anywhere, and their dominance of our lives, (radio and TV usage still outstrip the internet by a factor of 20-1) will continue for years.
• Secondly, the old media giants have made their presence felt online too, establishing digital beachheads that might not be making much money (yet), but that re certainly attracting their share of online traffic.
• This is particularly true of AOL Time Warner, whose multimedia reach extends to more than 70% of all online users in the US, and a third of all time spent online.
• Thus, even if the long-touted media convergence has been slow in arriving, the distinction between old media and new – particularly with regard to the impact of conglomerate culture – is largely a false one.

• That’s why the public-policy battles now being waged to rein in the power of the old media (many of the last-ditch efforts to limit further ownership consolidation and to make the media more publicly accountable) are important to the future of the new media as well – particularly in the areas of ownership limits, spectrum management and non-commercial programming.

Internet Example

• The internet has clearly made alternative readings to mainstream media more available than before and acts as a democratic force in its own sphere by offering more equal voice power to the big and the small.
• The problem is however, that the internet still does not project far enough to challenge the power of the traditional media.
• In this respect media democracy relies on all of us, because it is our support and subscriptions that keep democracy alive.

• There are even some reasons to believe that the internet could turn out to be a relatively undemocratic media technology.
• It can be argued that the internet will allow citizens to choose precisely the information they receive, and perhaps more importantly, what they do not receive.
• There is a danger that increasingly powerful citizens will “filter” what they see, leading to increasing isolation.
• Using the internet, and to a certain extent digital TV, means searching for useful information rather than waiting for it to be placed in front of you.
• If people choose to look in only certain places, the chances of running across something by accident decrease.
• Evidence suggests that the active majority take little advantage of the variety of the variety of the internet.  They tend to search for deeper information on familiar topics and areas.

Conclusion

• The emerging broadband networks, which promise to bring broadcast and online technologies together in a platform that fosters interactivity and exchange, has the potential finally to realise that vision.
• But only if public-interest policies are in place insuring that the old-media giants won’t be able to stifle competition and diversity in the new-media environment too.