Journal Entry 5

The Debate Topic about whether the Internet is Killing our Culture:
Well firstly this was discussed between Andrew Keen and Emily Bell. Andrew Keen started by asking three questions. The first question was “Is the internet good or bad for consumers of culture (the audience)?” Next was, “Is the internet good or bad for creators of culture (writers, film makers, musicians, journalists)?” Finally,” Is the internet good or bad for the cultural economy?” (The Guardian, 2007).
Well the debate refers to how dependent people have become when it comes to the internet. People use and sometimes need to use the internet everyday all day. This is for a variety of reasons, one is their job requires a computer and they need to be on the internet all the time while they are at work. So take the example, that if the internet was to breakdown for a few days meaning nobody could access it from anywhere at all. This would lead to chaos across the country and some people would not no what to do as the internet has always accessible to everybody all the time.
To get back to the questions, I believe the first question is good and bad for the consumers. It gives information to the consumers they need and is available fairly quickly. On the other hand though, it makes the consumers to reliant on it and they stop using other areas to find information out like in books which can be more reliable as some websites on the internet as well. Keen believes firmly that it is bad for the consumers (The Guardian, 2007). When it comes to the second question I believe that it is more bad than good for the writers, film makers, musicians and journalists, in the sense that music is downloaded illegally and they don not get paid fairly enough for what they are offering on the internet. However, they do get more publicity and their work is at least accessed and viewed more than if it was not on the internet. This is similar to Keen’s views on this question. The last question I would have to say that the internet is not great for the cultural economy a view shared by Keen also.
Saying all of these though, how many of us would say that they do not want to have access to the internet on a daily basis? The answer is maybe a handful of people at the most but more probable nobody would say this. In the long run, so to speak, it may well be killing our culture but it also could just simply be creating another culture! After looking at this debate carefully I believe that it is just changing our culture as we once new to something that is technology dependent but at the same time realising that we should not become to reliant on it.


Bibliography:
• Bell, E and Keen, A. (2007) Andrew Keen v Emily Bell: Is Today’s Internet Killing Our Culture? The Guardian (Comment is Free) (WWW) available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/10/andrewkeenvemilybell

Journal Entry 4

Football Consumers and Users of the Media:
Football is accessed in many ways by the users and consumers of the media. These include; television (TV), newspapers, the internet, the radio, magazines and mobile phone updates. Supporters of football use a variety of these ways throughout the calendar football year to catch up with the team they support, their team if you like, and to see how their competitors. They may also use a numerous of these media mediums at the same time to find out the current scores and earlier results. The audience may pay for sport packages on television. Take sky such as an example, they have all of the sky sports channels available for a yearly subscription fee. They may also buy newspapers just to read about the football’s latest fixture and result news or even just sport based magazines and newspapers that are sport orientated.
I have the sky sports package at home allowing me access to all the live games shown on the TV through sky sports by which all the games shown are spread out between the teams in the premiership throughout the season. Football itself also leads to lots and lots of debate. The internet is probably the biggest type for this to occur. There are groups on facebook and other social networking sites for teams and individual players such as a team being the best or a team which a lot of people dislike. The same goes for the individual players groups. There are also lots of forums debating the weekend results and who deserved or did not deserve to win. For these people it is almost as if they are in the pub just after or just before the match has just finished or started and they are reliving the match again or saying exactly what will happen in the match.
This links in what we have been studying in the sense that it looks at consumers and users of the media but just that it is focused on a particular aspect that is sport, and football to be more specific at that. It shows us how people are involved in the media in many different ways and take different active roles in it as well. I can relate to this myself. I sometimes have the TV on watching a live match and get mobile phone updates on other scores across the premiership to see if it helps the team that support at all in the league. I also have realised I am taking an active role in the football franchise and by paying for the sky sports package I keep it going and make them try and get even more games for the next season to ‘better ‘ themselves compared to the previous season. So as a result I will continue to keep getting the sky sports packages to get access to the matches live on TV. I feel though that the type of media consumed and used the most is that of TV. It offers the ultimate experience for the fans and they have developed TV even further by including high definition and now 3D as an option while watching the match.

Journal Entry 3

Politicians, Forums and Social Networking:
As you may or not be aware at the moment there is a general election coming up quite soon in early may. As a result of this the politicians of the major and fringe parties are trying to get as many as votes as they possibly can but to do this they will need to spread their policies around the country as quickly and as effectively as they possibly can. One way that fits these criteria for politicians is the use of social networking websites in terms of the supporters of the parties acting almost on their behalf. The politicians put certain policies up for the public to look at and compare to other political parties. As a result from this, there are many forums created by people who are followers of one of the political parties and trying to make people convert to their particular political views or try to persuade people who are undecided on who to vote for.
This allows the politicians to view any polls that are going on at any particular time on the internet and to see how they are doing at any particular time in comparison to the others parties. There are also newspaper polls, by which members of the public vote in numerous ways. Newspapers usually tend to favour one of the political parties and express their opinions within the newspaper and also try to persuade the readers of that certain newspaper. This could mean that people knowing the views of a newspaper may buy or not buy it because of this. For instance, ‘The Sun’ now favours the conservatives, whereas it used to favour the labour party. However, with recent trends it shows that labour are on the decrease in terms of popularity, ‘The Sun’ perhaps realised this and switched its views.
This links in with what we have been looking by linking two aspects together. One of which is forums and social networking, the other is the use of digital media to as it was ‘spread the news’. Many years ago politicians did not have this privilege that they have today. As there was not that many ways apart from newspapers and radio to express their policies to the majority of the public they perhaps could not get to as many of the votes as they wanted because of lack of opportunity. Also compared to the past I have noticed that politics is in every type of media form and is quite a big talking point when there is a general election, even on sport programmes politics is mentioned.
Moving on to what I might do in the future regarding politics. If I supported a particular party then I would more than likely try to get others to see my point of view and vote for the party that I was voting for. From my experiences, regarding how politicians use social networking as a form of free labour almost, these forms of digital media obviously help them when it comes to elections and persuasion.

Journal Entry 2

Facebook:
I would consider myself to be a regular facebook user but can go a couple of weeks or sometimes even longer without going on it all. Facebook is a social networking website where anybody can create an account. Its key features include; to ability to chat online to friends who are also online at the same time and this is kept private just between the two friends concerned.
If you also wish to express your feelings and emotions out in the open you can by updating your status. This enabling everybody (on your friends list) to comment on it if they want to. As a result of the user updating their status they must be careful what to say depending on who they have as friends on their account. For instance, if they have family members as friends they may be more careful to how they phrase things or even by not updating their status and just tell friends via chat.
It is also used to find out about social events amongst friends and me the user. It tells you about friend’s birthdays and whether or not they are having a birthday party or just doing something to celebrate. In one instance I had not been on facebook for a while and missed one of my friends birthday party and they were annoyed at me not going and said that the invitation was on facebook. So if I would have gone on facebook more regularly that month then I would have saw it and not missed the party.
It can also create a sense of social identity for the individual. It has personal details and picture of the user. These could give a hint to the type of person you are or what an individual wants to appear like. Facebook links in what we have discussing in class in the sense that we looked virtual communities and social networks themselves. Trebor Schulz said instead of watching Television (TV), kids formulate comments, tag, share, collaborate, chat, work......”. Schulz’s quote shows the link that this has with classroom discussions. I feel that I, like many thousands if not millions, will still be using facebook in years to come as it offers so many things and I cannot see it being bettered in the next or so.
The experience of social networking sites, in specific facebook, has made me experience quite a lot of advantages of using them and as a result of this I will keep using them on quite a regular basis in the future. When me or my friends don not have any credit on their mobile phones or have ran out of free text messages then the next type of communication is via facebook. When on facebook people also usually have a routine while they are on the computer on facebook. This could be listening to music while on it. It also maybe accompanied with a snack and drink while having the TV on in the background as well.

Journal Entry 1

Copyright:

In this blog entry I plan on talking about copyright and whether or not the law should disregard copyright all together and allow people to ‘copyright’ the original piece of work freely. Also, I will look at some of the effects it has, particularly on the music industry. First of all, I will give what I understand to be the definition of copyright. A piece of work that needs to gain the rights from the ‘author’ to use, publish or sell the piece of work.
The amount of people who download illegally has increased dramatically over the last five years. The interest in music is at its all time highest. One reason may be because of the availability that the potential audience have in comparison to years gone by. I feel that this is true in my opinion about the availability and a possible cause to illegal downloads. In my opinion the law on copyright does need changing. It should adapt to recent times but there should still be a copyright law in place today. This is to protect the publisher or creator’s piece of work to some degree, because if there was no copyright law then anybody could claim that a particular piece of work was theirs and this would lead to lots of court cases.
On the other hand, there are arguments that the copyright law that is in place causes problems to participatory culture. For example, one argument says that copyrighting is perfectly acceptable as long as the ‘copyrighter’ is not doing so to gain financially and ensuring that they give credit to the publisher in their work, so not claiming that it is their piece of work (Lessig, L, 2004: 1). To sum up Lessig’s opinions on participatory culture the law on copyright means that people who have never illegally download and do not profit from it are being penalised in that they cannot remix a combination of songs. This eliminates creativity within the music industry, especially for DJ’s and hip-hop artists.
Another form of copyright is the video recorder or DVD recorder. These types of technology allow for programmes and films shown on the television (TV) to be recorded and seen again and again at the person’s discretion. Hollywood and other multi-million companies were not very pleased at companies like Sony in the beginning of their introduction to society. This was because they charged people to watch the film through the sale of videos or on TV where it was a pay per view type of entertainment format. Sony got to money driven though and made their customers ‘jump ship’; they made the engineering more expensive to allow the audience do less with their music. However, the audience did want to do a lot with the music they had wanted to download or to listen to. They missed a trick in that that was one of the features the audience liked to do with the music.

Bibliography:
• Lessig, L. (2004) Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity New York: Penguin Books. (WWW) available from: http://www.free-culture.cc.freecontent

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