As more of our personal information lives online, the more the issue of online privacy becomes. Today many of us have entered addresses, numbers, credit card information, and other personal details onto our computers. Although we feel like information is safe, much of it can be accessed. This not only effects everyday people, but also large companies or governments when people are able to hack and release their private information, or secrets. While this allows for a transparency that many think is a good thing, it can also be dangerous if the secrets revealed get into the wrong hands and put peoples' lives in danger.
Quotes:
"Today, in the digital age, when exporters can gain access to private e-mail messages, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages as well as voice mail, such practices raise questions about how far a reporter should go to get information." (494)
"In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it… Just as the Internet has no terrestrial address or central office, neither does Wikileaks." (514)
2. Social Issues with the Digital Age
While the rise of the digital age has aided our advancement in many different aspects of our lives, there have also been many drawbacks. One of the main ones has been our disconnect from the world as we grow more connected to our phones. With the convergence of a lot of the ways we got our information onto one device, there becomes little reason to go anywhere but our phones. Many phone and tablet companies, like Apple, are releasing commercials trying to convince people that our phones are changing the way we interact with the world around us, but not necessarily in a negative way. Whether you believe that it is negative or positive, it is clear that our way of viewing the world has changed; we communicate, learn, capture moments, listen to music, and so much more, all on our handheld devices. With people younger and younger having smartphones, it also brings into question the appropriateness of the information they are able to access.
Quotes:
"Today, media consumption is mobile and flexible; we don't have to miss out on media content just because we weren't home in time to catch a show, didn't find the book at the bookstore, or forgot to buy the newspaper yesterday. Increasingly, we demand access to our media when we want it, where we want it, ad in multiple formats." (59)
"Many people are critical of the quality of much contemporary culture and are concerned about the overwhelming amour of information now available. many see popular media culture as unacceptably commercial and sensationalistic." (16)
Dangers with your cellphone
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-texting-while-walking-causes-accidents-031014
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-texting-while-walking-causes-accidents-031014
3. How Advertising Has Changed in the Digital Age
Advertisers have moved from traditional print or TV ads, to a more advanced and effective way of getting their products to consumers. Although these types of ads still exist, by using the internet and social media, companies can have people like, share, and write about their advertisements - letting the consumer do the work for them. It also allows companies to specify who sees their ads, like directing advertisements for clothes and fashion items to someone who frequently searches for these types of products, using their cookies. By tracking who "likes" what on Facebook or other social mediums, advertisers can create a valuable map of what products are liked by certain groups, making their advertising more effective.
Quotes:
"Knowing you like it, your friends view it; as they pass it along, it gets more earned media and eventually becomes viral - an even greater advertising achievement. As the Nielson Media rating service says about online earned media, "study after study has shown that consumers trust their friends and peers more than anyone else when it comes to making a purchase decision." Social media are helping advertisers use such personal endorsements to further their own products and and marketing messages - basically, letting consumers do the work for them." (398)
"Ad agencies and product companies often argue that the main purpose of advertising is to inform consumers about available products in a straightforward way....In managing space and time constraints, advertising agencies engage in a variety of persuasive techniques." (399)
"Ad agencies and product companies often argue that the main purpose of advertising is to inform consumers about available products in a straightforward way....In managing space and time constraints, advertising agencies engage in a variety of persuasive techniques." (399)
4. Reptilian Brain in Advertisements
Advertisers use a variety of techniques to entice the reader and get them interested in the product that is being sold. Part of this is the stimulation of the three brain, the neocortex, limbic, and reptilian brain. The neocortex and limbic are activated when you read or thinking rationally about a commercial and when the commercial makes you feel an emotion. For me, the most subtle activation of the brain is the reptilian brain, which is the oldest brain that controls our animalistic needs, like eating, mating, and fight or flight. If a commercial can grab the viewer's attention, they can be enormously powerful.
Quotes:
"A different technique, the hidden-fear appeal, plays on consumers' sense of insecurity. Deodorant, mouthwash, and shampoo ads frequently invoke anxiety, pointing out that only a specific product could relieve embarrassing personal hygiene problems and restore a person to social acceptability." (400)
"With its ability to create consumers, advertising become the central economic support of pervasive and persuasive strategies, advertising today saturates the cultural landscape." (414)
GoPro and Red Bull
http://gopro.com/news/gopro-joins-red-bull-signature-series-as-official-partner-for-the-2013-season/
http://gopro.com/news/gopro-joins-red-bull-signature-series-as-official-partner-for-the-2013-season/
5. Who Gets to Control the Internet?
With the rise of the digital age and increasing convergence of our lives onto the internet, companies have emerged to take control. These major companies have changed and been replaced over the years, but today the large four are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These companies hold a huge amount of power, both on the internet and economically. In order to remain powerful, these companies buy competing companies in order to eliminate competition, like Facebook buying Instagram, and expanding their reach beyond the internet.
Quotes:
"As the business magazines Fast Company explains, "Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google don't recognize any borders; they feel no qualms about marching beyond the walls of tech into retailing, advertising, publishing, movies, TV, communications, and even finance. Across the economy, these four companies are increasingly setting the agenda." " (63).
"In 2011, in response to Apple's iPad, Amazon released its own color touchscreen tablet, the Kindle Fire, giving Amazon a device that can play all of the media - including music, TV, movies, and games - it sells online and in Appstore." (64)
Facebook Buys Instagram
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instagram-for-1-billion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
6. Can the Magazine and Newspaper Industry Survive?
The world of magazine and newspaper publishing has been drastically changed with the rise of the digital age. Journalists have had to change the way they investigate and get information now that so much of it is accessible online. The industry has also had to adjust as more and more people have turned to the internet for their news instead of to print. Now that so much is available for free so conveniently, magazines and newspapers have had to converge onto that platform to stay relevant and still make a profit.
Quotes:
"Both print and TV news can continuously update breaking stories online, and many reporters now post their online so tires first and then work on traditional versions. This means that readers and viewers no longer have to wait until the next day for the morning paper of for the local evening newscast for important stories." (506)
"In the digital age, newsrooms are integrating their digital and print operations, and asking their journalists to tweet breaking news that links back to newspapers' Web sites. However, editors are still facing a challenge to get reporters and editors to fully embrace what news executives regard as a reporter's online responsibilities." (291)
Page One
http://www.magpictures.com/pageone/
7. Who Owns What Online?
http://www.magpictures.com/pageone/
7. Who Owns What Online?
Now that media is so easily accessible through the internet, the issue of ownership is introduced. Everything from music to movies to books are easily found illegally online on hundreds of different sites. Companies find it difficult to regulate this leak of media because of the amount of ways this is available. Many companies have attempted to find a medium between illegal downloads and the traditional way of viewing or listening, like Hulu, showing television shows for a subscription price, Pandora, allowing you to listen to personalized music, but with commercials, and The New York Times, letting you look at parts of articles before having to subscribe.
Quotes:
"It is not surprising then that the internet, a mass medium that links individuals and communities together like no other medium, became a hub for sharing music. In fact, the reason college student Shawn Fanning said he developed the groundbreaking file-sharing site Napster in 1999 was "to build communities around different types of music."" (126)
"The multi functionality and portability of third- and fourth-screen devices means that consumers may no longer need television sets - just as landline telephones have fallen out of favor as more people rely solely on their mobile phones." (209)
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/23/online.music.kazaa/index.html?iref=24hours
8. Does Anyone Buy Books Anymore?
Along with the change in the newspaper and magazine industry due to the rise in the digital age, books have also had to readjust. With the invention of e-readers like the Kindle, people are turning away from hard copies and towards digital reading. Both the publishing industry and book stores have suffered and had to find ways to deal with the convergence; publishing industries have built alliances with digital corporations and bookstores, like Barnes and Nobel, have embraced e-readers.
Quotes:
"Now, the transformation of books and the publishing industry is changing our book-bound institutions - including bookstores, libraries, and schools - and our reading habits. Book in the digital era are both more and less personal: we are less likely to have a physical book to hold, but we can easily self-publish books about our own thoughts and adventures." (347)
"The most extensive digitization project, the Google Books Library Project, which began in 2004, features partnerships with the New York Public Library and about twenty major university research libraries - including Harvard, Michigan, Oxford, and Stanford - to scan millions of books and make them available online. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers initially sued Google for digitizing copyrighted books without permission." (363)
http://business.time.com/2011/07/19/5-reasons-borders-went-out-of-business-and-what-will-take-its-place/
9. How Much Information is too Much?
In 2014, the amount of information we have access to, and are exposed to, has hugely multiplied. On the internet we have constant updates on what is going on, both in world news and personal news on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Outside of the internet, radio and television have also expanded their options for tuning in. Instead of having a few basic stations, people have access to thousands, reaching out to a certain niche of people instead of a broad population.
Quotes:
"Over the past decade or so, two alternative radio technologies have helped expand radio vend its traditional AM and FM bands and bring more diverse sounds to listeners: satellite and HD (digital) radio." (181)
"First, we may just be producing too much information. According to social critic Neil Postman, as a result of developments in technology, society has developed an "information glut" that transforms new and information into "a form of garbage." Postman believed that scientists, technicians, managers, and journalists merely pile up mountains of new data, which add to the problems and anxieties of everyday life. As a result, too much unchecked data - especially on the internet - and too little thoughtful discussion emanate from too many channels of communication." (487)
http://safeandsavvy.f-secure.com/2013/11/07/kids-and-the-internet-why-parental-controls-arent-enough/#.U2G9MuZdXCc
10. Government Regulation
With the relative ease of putting information online, the question is raised as to whether everything should be allowed. America has always emphasized free speech, but now that anyone can post anything, people begin to wonder if there should be any regulation or censorship. The other option to this complete freedom is some government control, which many people reject. When the U.S. House of Representatives proposed SOPA in 2012, there was a huge backlash for free knowledge from major companies, like Wikipedia's 24-hour blackout.
Quotes:
"However, it is important to remember that the First Amendment protects not only the news media's free-speech rights but also the rights of all of us to speak out. Mounting concerns over who can afford access to the media go to the hear of free expression." (573)
"When students from other cultures attend school in the United States, many are astounded by the number of books, news articles, editorials, cartoons, films, TV shows, and Web sites that make fun of U.S. presidents, the military, and the police. Many countries' governments throughout history have jailed, even killed, their citizens for such speech "violations." (547)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/04/tiananmen-square-online-search-censored
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