"Thanks to web 2.0, companies are beginning to conceive, design, develop, and distribute products and services in profoundly new ways.............companies can increasingly source ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds from a vast global pool of talent". Taken from Wikinomics - Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams (2006). This idea can be applied to many media areas for instance the film industry - students making their own films and uploading them to Youtube, people making mash-ups and putting them online - the same goes for music videos. MP3 has enabled unsigned artists/bands to record and upload their music to social networking sites such as Myspace.
Music Video: Unsigned Band
Mash Up
Dan Gilmor outlines in his book We Media how anyone can be a journalist because converging technology means that events can be filmed and uploaded to Youtube, social networking sites - think about the first footage of 9/11 or the woman whose car was pushed down the motorway by a lorry (filmed by a civilian in a passing car). What about how advterising is personally directed to us following the information we have about ourselves on our facebook page or how personal recommendations are emailed to you from amazon after you've purchased a product.
Andrew Keen discusses a darker side of web 2.0 and he suggests that the new form of "online collectivism" is threatening our culture and our economy. He argues that authentic talent is disappearing as amateur media is banded all over the Internet. He refers to the death of the newspaper (readerships declining) whilst Youtube videos of skateboarding capture the nations eyeballs. Michael Moore supports this notion when he discusses the dumbing down of western society by multinational capitalist conglomerates.
Would a Marxist think that mass collaboration on the Internet is good? Anyone can be a media producer and have their work viewed by millions of people (hence limiting the profits of large capitalist organisations - think about musicians leaving major labels and setting up on their own - simplyred.com). However, some critics argue that online collaboration and sharing is promoting a "free economy" where unpaid volunteers are exploited by corporations. Taken from Wikinomics - Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams (2006);
I really like some of the ideas of Charles Leadbitter in his book "We Think" (2009). He outlines two counter arguments "Will the web promote democratic collaboration and creativity? Or will it be a malign influence, rendering us collectively stupid by our reliance on what google and wikipedia tell us being true, or, worse, promoting bigotry, thoughtlessness, criminality and terror?" He goes on to discuss how the emergence of web 2.0 has allowed us to express ourselves and as charles Chenung would state self-represent. Leadbitter acknowledges the active nature of the audience and states that the web is not just for producing but it also encourages surveillance, "not just by the state and corporations , but also by our peers and friends". Think about Facebook for instance and how people constantly view and comment on peoples status - or even how companies have used status updates and wall posts in disciplinary cases. Leadbitter states that any move we make on the web can be tracked and ultimately come back and haunt us.
Furthermore, he offers that economically the web destroys just as much as it creates - think about the music industry and how illegal downloading is costing the industry billions of dollars. What about the death of newspapers? The death of TV advertising and how potentially advertising will go all together as TV viewers move online or watch on demand (sky plus). Will it be replaced with product placement instead? That way brands names will still be associated with and aimed at certain audiences but consumed whenever the media text is? I have the book in the classroom if you want to pursue his ideas in more depth.
No comments:
Post a Comment