Virtual Revolution Part 2 Notes

• Paypal founder Peter Theil
• Paypal handling $60 billion in 2008
• "New world currency"
• web links extremists --> Al Qa'eda - use shock tactics (propaganda)(portable homeland)
• Estonia - 97% banking transactions done online
• April 2007 riots caused by governments proposal to move Russian statue to new location
• Cyber attack --> denial of service (bombardment of traffic causes lack of access)
• "web collapses distances" - Virtual Revolution
• "Cyber-Balkanisation"
• The Great Firewall of China
• China 253 million online
• 30,000 people police the web in china (BBC and New York Times blocked)
• 50 cent army online - 300, 000 post articles in favour of the government
• "One is guiding" "One is blocking" - Yeng
• "We change our tools, and then our tools change us." - Jeff Bezos (Ceo of Amazon.com)
• "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore
• Iran banned Twiiter and it was used to spread news
• "More profound impact than the printing press" - Al Gore
• "The internet is just the word passing around notes in a classroom." - Jon Stewart
• Haystack - Software invented by Austin Heap
•  "You can't take something off the Internet - it's like taking pee out of a pool." - Unknown

Letter to Rupert Murdoch

Dear Mr Murdoch,

Having built a huge media empire with subsidiaries which include hugely successful  well-known publications such as the NY Times and The Times, you know what audiences want. However, I believe that you decision to charge readers to view news content on your sites is not a smart business moves. It is predicted that 2 major titles in the UK will close down by 2014, and since you own most of them you have the most to lose. Understandably, you primary aim is to make money but your decision to make your readers pay to read The Times since 2009 is not the way forward not just for your newspapers but all of them. Ask yourself, why would readers opt for subscriptions on a platform which provides free news? I would suggest a more subtle way of making money such as advertising like you do with Sky. Maybe intergrate citizen jourlism into your websites as social networking sites like Facebook and microblogging sites like Twitter promote these kind of stories and since the audiences they have a far larger than what you are getting, you could utilize peoples reliability on them.

Thank you 

News Story WEEK 9: BBC/Newsnight

http://www.businessinsider.com/british-politician-vows-to-sue-tweeters-who-accused-him-of-sex-abuse-2012-11

Lord McAlpine will sue tweeters who said he was a child abuser after Newsnight falsely showed his name midst its attempts to regain BBC's intergretiy following the Jimmy Savile's case.
                          
                            "It would be as pointless for a defamed man to sue Twitter because of a libellous tweet as it would be for a stabbing victim to sue a kitchen shop because it sold his attacker the knife." - Roy Greenslade (Guardian Journalist)

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1024/breaking13.html

George Entwistle, along with other BBC staff involved will give evidence at a Newsnight inquiry as to why they aborted investigations of Jimmy Savile's sexual abuse case

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-21/new-york-times-chairman-says-scandal-hasn-t-made-things-easy-.html

Mark Thompson the former BBC Director General, now Chief Executive Officer at the New York Times has received sympathy from the NY Times Chairman who has claimed the scandal going on at the BBC at the moment "hasn't made things easy" and that "Mark is a good man".

I think the way the BBC dealt with the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse case was wrong. Instead of being apologetic  the BBC tried to go after other outside the organisation accusing them of similar actions. I also think George Entwistle should not be paid his full year's salary after he chose to quit. Contractually, he is only entitled to six-months worth of pay. As this is tax payers money and we have been witnessing cuts in the public sector, it is not fair that a well paid man (whose tenure as BBC Director General lasted only 54 days) who will probably go on to another well paid job receives double of what he was supposed to get.

News Story WEEK 8: YouTube Songwriters Only Receive $40 for 1 Million Views

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/13/youtube-songwriters-payment-copyrights 

"Their only option is to look at their royalty statements in an attempt to figure out how much each service pays, and trust that they've been paid correctly and fairly. As I've reported, in the case of YouTube, songwriters could only conclude that the rates the company pays are ridiculously low, at about $40 (£25) per million streams (if the song was written by a single writer)."

• sales of records, radio play and movie or ad soundtrack accounted for professional songwriters income.
• songwriters only get 15% of royalties from iTunes sales
• Independent labels make around £1000 per million views

I think $40 per million views is not enough for songwriters. The case of rich controlling the media can be brought up as suggested in Marxist theory; companies like Vevo take majority of the revenue. And YouTube itself will take its cut of the profit before giving some to Vevo. I think laws may need to be brought in to give more power to songwriters.

News Story WEEK 7: ASA Blocks Car Ad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/14/toyota-grand-theft-auto-ad


Toyota's Grand Theft Auto-style car commercial has been banned by the advertising watchdog after it ruled that it glamorises reckless and dangerous driving.

• multimillion pound ad stars a computer animated character driving like he's in a video game
• ASA say it encourages reckless and dangerous driving
• Toyota have replied by saying the ad is clearly set in an animated environment
• Banning came after ASA recieved 2 complaints from YouTube viewers

I think the theory of hypodermic needle could apply here but I don't think the ad is as influential as ASA claim it is in encouraging drives to drive recklessly. The reckless driving part is clearly animated and when the character emerges into the real world, he drives safely.

This is what an ASA representative said:

"Because we considered the ad portrayed speed, and the way the car could be handled in a manner that might encourage motorists to drive irresponsibly, we concluded that the ad was irresponsible and condoned dangerous driving,"

News Story WEEK 6: Regulations To Be Publish By Leveson

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2012/nov/08/free-press-very-well-whom

'Lord Justice Leveson is poised to issue his report on regulatory reform of the press in the wake of the disturbing disclosures arising from the phone-hacking affair which led to the closure by Rupert Murdoch'

• National Union of Journalists defends situation of free press
• Lord Justice Leveson to publish report on regulatory reform of the press, concluding the Leveson enquiry
• Ex-Mirror editor Roy Greenslade has backed reform

Following the hacking scandal which conveniently came during the period when Rupert Murdoch was trying to gain a majority share in BSkyB, I think press reform was inevitable. Some of the disgusting cases such as the Millie Dowler incident were voice mail messages were actually deleted, cannot be forgiven. The possibility of such incidents I think should be eliminated by enforcing regulations on the power of the press. Free press shouldn't be an excuse to evade people's privacy just to be the first newspaper to publish a story. I also thought Piers Morgan comments regarding what he said was not unethical behavior when he gained illegal access to Heather Mills' voice mail messages highlighted the arrogance the press have. 

5 Recent UGC/Citizen Journalism Examples

ARAB SPRING

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/26/arab-spring-egypt?INTCMP=SRCH

MUAMMAR GADDAFI

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/25/muammar-gaddafi-buried-libya?INTCMP=SRCH

IAN TOMLINSON

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/video-g20-police-assault

LONDON RIOTS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/2011/aug/09/at-home-with-the-london-riots?INTCMP=SRCH

HURRICANE SANDY

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/02/sandy-new-york-untold-tragedies?INTCMP=SRCH

Newspapers: The Effects of Online Technology

• UK's daily newspapers have lost 2.25 million readers in the last 10 years
• Revenue for newspapers has fallen by about 20%
• In the next 10 years, one or two of Britain's biggest daily newspapers predicted to close down
• "the world is changing and newspapers have to adapt" - Rupert Murdoch, NewsCorp
• “The internet has given readers much more power.  Everybody wants choice and thanks to the personal computer, people are taking charge of their own lives and they read what they want to read or what they are interested in and young people today are living on their computers.  The world is changing and newspapers have to adapt to that.” - Rupert Murdoch, NewsCorp
• “These days journalists rarely break the story, most compelling pictures come from eyewitnesses, and not from journalists.  Curating news is as important as news gathering, because citizen journalism is not a fab or an intriguing addition to traditional journalism, but here to stay.  Social media is the news gathering of the first report..... Passive audiences are gone forever.  Today, media owners need to embrace the ‘digital conversations’ with their new, activist, audiences.” - Chris Cramer, Global Editor of Multimedia at Reuters (business news)
• "news revolution"
• citizen journalism

1. Ignoring Signs of Change: Prior to the introduction of the internet in the '80s, newspaper executives ignored signs of change like competition from real time news networks

2. Dismissing unconventional competitors: chose traditional formats while some titles were publishing on terminals, television, Internet, and periodicals. Most decided not to change

3. Experimenting too narrowly: Some newspapers did spot the rise of digital technology early and experiment with alternatives.  However, most of these companies limited the scope of their experimentation to replicating their paper offering on-line rather than encouraging audience interaction.

4. Giving up on promising experiments too quickly: Promising business models take time to become successful in many cases and the process entails many setbacks.  Some newspapers did not give new ideas time to build.

5. Embarking on a ‘crash course’: Many institutions felt they were not embracing technology quickly enough and pushed for mergers which did not work.

Traditional Paper-based Form	Online News Site
Has a purchase price.  Is not free	Has predominantly free content
Can only be accessed from newspaper vendors	Can be accessed anywhere with internet access
Can be easily marked or destroyed	Content remains even if portal of access is destroyed.
Usually target a specific audience base	Also target specific although a bit more varied
Costly to produce; paper, printing etc.	Not as expensive but still costly to run; servers, maintenance staff plus journalists etc.
Costly to distribute	Cheap to distribute
Offer limited news stories which are not copy and pasted. Ability to archive physical copy but takes up space.	Can offer countless news stories at any one time plus the ability to archive stories, although many of these news stories are simply replications or re-workings of main news stories and may be cut and pasted news stories from other mainstream news sites.
Only print version of story available	Only version of story available but option of printing it
Cannot be updated immediately and regularly	Can be updated immediately and regularly
Is not interactive	Can be interactive
Cannot allow audience immediate feedback/ citizen journalism	Allows for immediate audience feedback and citizen journalism
Can offer in-depth analysis and comment but is limited by space.	Varied options for expansion of topic matter.  In depth editorials and comment.

Audience Gratifications of The Guardian website.

Feature	Audience Gratification
Long-running chat boards	Allows the audience a chance to interact with the other users who have similar interests, giving them credibility for raising, helping with or even participating in the discussion
Network of weblogs	Individual blogs a collected together and published on one main blog discussing similar topics
Leaving comments on articles	Can make an audience feel powerful by creating the idea that they are challenging the news institution’s values
Readers can access articles online, on mobile devices through RSS feeds or on eBook readers.	Gives the audience the power to keep up to date with the latest updates from their subscribed websites without having to use most of their internet usage. Keeps audiences up-to-date with current affairs.
Varied selection of categories in easy accessible genre areas	Allows the audience to chose what they want to read
Images	Makes audiences associate the image with topic being discussed.
Podcast	Keeps audiences up-to-date with discussions they may have missed on TV or radio.
Access to paper-based content	Provides easily accesible content without having to wait for it to load.
Dating sites/ personals	Achieve success through the use of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

News Story WEEK 5: Google Pledges to Lower Piracy Search Results

'The government is to review Google's pledge to downgrade illegal filesharing websites in its search results, after entertainment groups accused the internet giant of dragging its feet over the issue.'

• illegal filesharing sites are still ranked high for mp3 music downloads
• they were warned by the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt that laws would be brought in if Google did not do anything about the issue

I think that gatekeeper should target the websites themselves and not Google as it is merely a search engine. From my point of view, Google doesn't really encourage illegal downloading; if the illegal website wasn't there or was blocked like Pirate Bay, then Google links wouldn't lead anywhere. As large as it is, I don't believe Google should be forced to spend their money on removing some links.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/nov/05/google-downgrade-piracy-sites-review