Unit 1: Digital Media Sectors and Audiences Revision Notes

Unit 1: Digital Media Sectors and Audiences

A understand digital media sectors, products and platforms 

Sectors
Firstly you need to know a bit about the different media sectors

Moving Image:

Film: Feature films are shown at the cinema, sold on DVD/blu ray and made available to stream or download online. They can be major Hollywood releases (made by one of the Big 6 Hollywood Studios) or smaller independent films (made all around the world, including the UK). India and Nigeria also have large film industries (Bollywood and Nollywood). They can be in many different genres.

TV: TV can be factual (news, documentaries, ‘reality’ tv) or drama (soaps, sitcoms etc.) that are broadcast to a mass audience. This can also include TV advertising.

Some moving image media is not made for broadcast, like corporate or training videos.

Audio:

Here we have radio (like TV it can encompass factual and drama), podcasts made for downloading or streaming, as well as soundtracks for moving image media (film and TV)

Publishing:

Newspapers, magazines, flyers and printed adverts. Whilst publishing still exists in analogue form (not online) a lot of publishing has gone digital, and we can now consume newspapers and magazines on the web, or through apps.

Websites:

Websites are pretty self-explanatory, but is good to remember that they often exist in collaboration with physical media (a website of a newspaper or TV channel for example)

Games:

Like film and TV games can be across genres, and can be educational as well as entertaining.



Platforms:

The place where consume media is called a platform. So this can be TV broadcast, radio broadcast, newspapers, magazines, cinema, DVD/Blu ray, VOD (video on demand) or digital download.

Devices: 

In recent years there has been an increase in the number and type of devices you can consume media on - so in addition to TV and Radio we have tablets and smartphones. 

Technological convergence:

Another recent development is that different media technologies have converged together. Now on one device you can consume different media (on a laptop or smartphone you can watch TV, listen to the radio, play games etc. and you can share and comment on media products through social media or blogs).

Digital consumption: (Pros and cons)

The fact that we can now consume media online has many advantages. These include:

Immediacy - we can now consume what we want when we want, almost instantly.

Access - we can now access different media products from across the world, including user-generated content (‘homemade’ video on YouTube etc.)

Convenience - it’s easy, cheap or free!

Connectivity - we can now ‘connect’ with each other online - share our experiences of media on social network, and share content.

Interactivity - we can now more easily interact with media, tweet-along to our favourite TV shows or join in with game-shows online. 

But there might also be some downsides.

A major one would be the expansion of piracy. Media was copied before, but peer-to-peer download sites like The Pirate Bay and others have made this much more common. If media is ‘stolen’ in this way, producers will lose out on revenue.

The might also be social negatives. Do we still all sit down together as a family to watch TV?

And of course we shouldn’t forget that there are still some people in the UK who cannot access the internet (13% in 2014). Across the world less than 50% have internet access!

Synergy:


One key concept in media is the idea of synergy, or working together. Major media products will often not just exist in its primary form (eg. a film, a TV show and magazine) but also in other media. A major film will often have a soundtrack album and maybe a computer game released alongside it. Often these products will be produced within a conglomerate. 

Passive viewing: (hypodermic)

When we just sit and watch, read or listen we are consuming passively. Pre-digital media was designed for this - we are not expected to interact or actively engage with films, TV shows, newspapers etc. (but this has changed somewhat in recent times)

In the early days of the last century, when mass media was becoming the norm (national newspapers, cinema and radio, then television), people were worrying about the effect the media could have on it’s audience. They thought that we would just receive the messages in the media passively. So if a newspaper told us to vote for a particular party, the audience would do it. Or if they saw lots of violence on the screen, they would be more violent. 

This passive theory is often referred to as the hypodermic model.

Active viewing: (Uses and Gratifications)

Later, the 60s and 70s, media theorists moved away from this passive approach, to view the audience more actively, and explore why we consume media texts - what we get out of them.

This is called the Uses and Gratifications model, developed by the theorists Blumler and Katz. They viewed the audience as active, and argued that different people will have different responses to media texts at different times.

1. be informed or educated

2. identify with characters of the situation in the media environment

3. simple entertainment

4. enhance social interaction

5. escape from the stresses of daily life