Tuesday 26 January 2010

Second Life

1. How have you chosen to represent yourself?
I created an avatar that represented myself quite realistically and it looks like me in real life
2. What can you ‘do’ in 2nd Life?
Explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world
3. Who owns 2nd Life? How do they fund it?
It is owned by Linden Lab which is a privately held American Internet company. They fund it
4. Is it a good example of online media produced by the public?

Friday 22 January 2010

Definitions

Convergence – tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks.
IM – Instant messaging
Videocasting – Video podcast is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand
Podcasting – The distribution of multimedia files over the Internet for playback on a mobile device, often in MP3 format
XFN
Pagerank – A Google patented method for measuring page importance or relevance
Blogs – A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary
Aggregators – Someone who collects headlines for a news aggregation website
Social Software – Web service that allows people to communicate and collaborate while using the application
Collaboration – Two or more people or organizations work together intersection of common goals
Folksonomy – The spontaneous cooperation of a group of people to organize information into categories

Thursday 10 December 2009

Online news questions

I interviewed ten people from different ages and ethnic origins on their online news comsumption. I found that most people I interviewed got their news from mainstream news sources such as The Times, The Daily Mail newspaper, BBC news on television etc. I found that generally, people working in the city tended to be mostly interested in political, economic and current events in the news and so therefore accessed news through newspapers and television mostly. I found that 18-25 year olds were the most likely to be interested in sport and celebrity news and so were more likely to access news online. Many people said that they found news stories from social networking sites such as Facebook and Hotmail news indirectly as they click on a headline if it interests them. People over the age of 50 were the least likely to use the internet for news and instead preferred newspapers, television and radio. Young people seemed to use niche sources of news the most, as they had various hobbies which they gained news regularly from. For example one 18 year old regularly reads a dancing magazine which includes news stories that would not appear in mainstream news but interests her. I also found that people's occupation influenced how they consumed news. People who worked in an office were much more likely to use the internet to find out current news whereas people who worked for example in the medical profession tended to read newspapers/magazines related to their area of work more.

Thursday 3 December 2009

Wikinomics

Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything is a book published by Don Topscott and Anthony Williams in 2006. It looks at how companies have become successful through mass collaboration and peer production. 
  • Peering - Free sharing of files on the Internet
  • Free creativity - People can edit and remix files on the Internet. Creative Commons provide licenses which protect intellectual property but allow others to remix material
  • Democratised - Free creativity and citizen journalism 
  • Thinking globally - Internet creates a public sphere where national and cultural boundaries are reduced
  • Perfect storm - Combination of Technology, demographics and economics means it is impossible to resist Web 2.0
Sceptics believe that things aren't changing that quickly and that a lot of the world's population don't have access to broadband so thinking globally is not a reliable term.

Thursday 19 November 2009

Key terms

Citizen journalism - Public 'playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information'
Web 2.0 - Where people can interact with webpages and edit the content such as Facebook and Wikipedia
Pubic Sphere - an area in social life where people can get together and freely discuss and identify social problems and matters of mutual interest
Convergence - Different types of media coming together, e.g. Red button on TV - becomes more like online news where you can access more information
Interactivity - How much the user can engage and control what they watch/receive in the media
Accessibility - How easy it is for the audience to access the media

Thursday 8 October 2009

Comparing news and the internet

News websites mean that people do not have to buy newspapers and can select the news that they want to know about rather than reading a whole newspaper to find an article that interests them. Younger people may be encouraged to find out more news online as they are more likely to use the internet than read newspapers. The content of news websites often differs from that in newspapers as there are links online to related articles and so there is a broader variety of news online from different topics, especially celebrity news. Online news means that people can select what news appeals to them without having to read a whole newspaper to find the news that they want. However, this could also mean that people are restricting the news that they consume as they may be encouraged to read other articles in a newspaper that they would not look for online.

I found a specific article in the Daily Mail newspaper about X Factor and I then went onto the Daily Mail website and typed in X Factor Danyl and the article appeared in a list of X Factor articles. This was a very easy way of accessing and locating a specific article and was easier than reading a whole newspaper to find it.
On the webpage there were many links to various related articles and a hundreds of articles related to X Factor, creating a broader variety of news that is restrcited in just a newspaper. The related articles are either about Danyl or the other contestants in X Factor which would interest people who are reading the article and who would probably want to read related articles. The online article is also an extended version of that in the newspaper accompanied by photographs of the show and information about the other acts and references to other related articles which encourages readers to read read other articles online.


I interviewed 10 people on their news consumption. After interviewing my parents, I found that they found out most of the news from newspapers and on television. My dad, like many other people like him works in the city and reads the free newspaper on the commute to work, saying it was easier to get the news from this than on his phone as internet access on his phone is quite slow and the newspaper is free on the train. I found that most working people read newspapers for news but agree that if finding a specific article or looking for news whilst at work will use online websites as they have broader information on them and make it easier to find specific news.
Of the younger people I interviewed, I found that most of them also read newspapers daily for news as their parents bought them at home. However they were much more likely to use the internet to find out news than older people as they spend more time on the internet. I also found that teenagers appear to be more interested in celebrity, television and sport news, for example my friend Raechelle aged 18 often checks celebrity news online such as X Factor and Big Brother news as there is more of this type of news online than in newspapers. Most of the younger people I interviewed often use news websites when trying to find a certain article or researching in depth for school work rather than buying and reading a whole newspaper.
Most people I interviewed agreed that there was much broader news available online than in newspapers and access to online websites makes it easier to read news online than in newspapers or on television, however it seems that the younger generations are more likely to read news online as they can select what appeals to them.

Thursday 24 September 2009

The History of News

During the 17th century, most news was spread through posters, pamphlets and broadsides - a single sheet of paper printed one on side which continued to co-existed with the first newspapers published weekly in the 17th century. Printing was strictly controlled in Britain and the first newspaper printed in Britain was printed by Joris Veseler in Amsterdam around 1620.
The printing press was first invented in 1440 but spread more rapidly after the civil war. During the civil war, the demand for news rose and the first London Gazette was published in 1665. The first national newspaper published was The Daily Universal Register which later became The Times in 1788. The first publications were in the 16th and 17th century after the development of the printing press and most of the quality broadsheet newspapers around today were founded before 1896 such as The Times, Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and The Observer. For most of the 19th century, newspapers were targeted at the richer and better educated people until late in the 19th century when most of the population could read and write.


The coronation of George VI was one of the first events to be recorded by the BBC in 1936. By 1948, The BBC was producing its own news footage in the form of live sounds at the scenes of accidents and ceremony's such as Elizabeth II's coronation.
The BBC was the first national broadcasting organisation and its first daily news bulletin was read in 1954. It last 20 minutes and was introduced as an 'Illustrated summary of the news...followed by the latest film of events and happenings at home and abroad'.


A restriction of this first news bulletin was that the news reader could not be seen; it consisted of a series of maps and photographs while the presenters voice could be heard, followed by a film in the second half which was not very 'visually impressive'. Shortly after, newsreaders were shown on camera, however another restriction was that there was no autocue so they had to constantly glance down at their script.
Another problem with news was that each story was only focused on for a minute so that audiences did not get bored, however, there was a lack of depth in every news story.



CNN was one of the first news companies to have their own website, launched in August 1995. BBC News was one of the first in Britain, launching their website in 1997.



Timeline:
1620 - First newspaper in Britain printed in Amsterdam
1665 - London Gazette first published
1788 - First national newspaper published, The Times
1954 - BBC's first daily tv bulletin started
1995 - CNN launched the first news website
1997 - BBC launched their news website