OSP: Clay Shirky - End of audience blog tasks

OSP: Clay Shirky - End of audience blog tasks

Our first topic for Year 13 is Online, Social and Participatory media (OSP).

This will allow us to build on the work we did in Year 12 while further exploring the impact of the internet on audiences and media industries. Our two in-depth CSPs are the Teen Vogue online presence (website, Facebook and Twitter) and The Voice website - the online home of the weekly newspaper for the black British community.

Notes from the lesson

Before studying the CSPs, we need to learn a key theorist for this topic - Clay Shirky's End of audience theories. This, along with the remarkable impact of the internet, will underpin everything we study for Teen Vogue and The Voice.

The internet: a brief history

The internet has been the most significant social, cultural and technological development of the last 30 years.

• In 1998, just 9% of UK households had internet access.
• In 2018, it had risen to 90%.
• Daily internet use in the UK has doubled since 2006.
• Smartphones are now the most popular device to access the internet. The iPhone was launched in 2007.

Source: ONS (Office for National Statistics)

The 'Information Revolution'

550 years ago, the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg meant that the number of books in existence rose from a few thousand to 20 million in just 25 years. This led to the Reformation, the Renaissance and the scientific revolution in which centuries-old modes of thinking were radically questioned.

The internet has been likened to the Gutenberg revolution – which means we’re living through this ‘Information revolution’ right now:

• “The most important medium of the twentieth century” (Briggs and Burke 2005) 
• “An application that will usher in The Information Age” (Castells 1996)

Clay Shirky: End of audience

Clay Shirky suggests the 20th century media model “with professional producers and amateur consumers” has been replaced by a more chaotic landscape that allows consumers to be producers and distributors. 

From the rise of collaborative projects to publicity campaigns run by volunteers, he believes that “organizations now have to understand, and respect, the motivations of the billion new participants in the contemporary media ecosystem.”

One of big changes with digital platforms is that “Every consumer is also a producer, and everyone can talk back.”  Yet what may be more significant is the simple math of how many people can reach each other through the connections in a network.  The result is always more connections. 

Shirky adds that media had been a hierarchical industry—in that one filtered first, and then published. “All of that now breaks down,” he says. “People are producing who are not employees or media professions.  So we now publish first, and then filter.  We find the good stuff after the fact.  This is dramatically different.”

Source: Internationalist Magazine Trendsetters profile 

Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks

Media Magazine reading

Media Magazine 55 has an overview of technology journalist Bill Thompson’s conference presentation on ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ It’s an excellent summary of the internet’s brief history and its impact on society. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 13 to read the article ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ Answer the following questions:

1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?

Enables individuals to trade information significantly simpler/all the more effectively, Freedom of discourse, get together and the opportunity of the press, Connects us to other peopl Great wellspring of information Can be utilised to make political consideration/mindfulness on various battles 

2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?

Cyber bullying and damaging comments, Illegal pictures ,Extremists and radicals can utilise the web to attempt to impact individuals in a negative manner 

3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?

The open technology refers to the idea of permitting the majority of the peoples voices in the web to be heard. Likewise alludes to the possibility of advanced substance being amazingly hard to control, since it could be controlled or potentially changed here and there before it arrives at the buyer. 

4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?

Difficulties and questions for the most part centre around this idea of open innovation: 

Does open innovation imply that free programming can be utilised, changed and redistributed without instalment or consent? 

Does this imply the web enables PCs to trade information, despite the fact that the system doesn't really comprehend the importance of what is being traded? 

5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?

I accept the web ought not be managed and along these lines, less control in light of the fact that specific downside, for example, directing the web may limit profitable data from the general population, additionally controlling the web confines correspondence between humankind, anyway the somebody experts for the web being directed and having more control is that, the legislature would deny and battle criminal behaviour, likewise the web be increasingly open ought to be that it ought to be directed, not withstanding on the off chance that it was progressively limited clients of the web won't have a decent measure of opportunity, which means a decrease for the measure of individuals that utilisation it.

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:

1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?

A profession exists to take care of a difficult issue, one that re-quires some kind of specialisation. On account of papers, proficient conduct is guided both by the business im-imperative and by an extra arrangement of standards about what news-papers are, the manner by which they ought to be staffed and run, what comprises great news coverage, etc. 

2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?

The future introduced by the web is the mass amateurization of distributing and a change from "Why distribute this ?" to "Why not?" 

3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?

We're glad for it. What's more, if the remainder of the nation had pursued our lead, we wouldn't have had every one of these issues over every one of these years, either." 

4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?

the development in the measure of independently published substance found on the web. 

5) Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” How can this be linked to the current media landscape and particularly ‘fake news’?

this connects to counterfeit news supposing that one organization produces something then every other person will do the equivalent even it may be phony and false. 

6) What does Shirky suggest about the social effects of technological change? Does this mean we are currently in the midst of the internet “revolution” or “chaos” Shirky mentions?

We are amidst a web upset as the web since it enables us to energize change 

7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?

this implies anybody can concoct a story and distribute it without learning and being prepared on the best way to be a columnist. 

8) What does Shirky suggest regarding the hundred years following the printing press revolution? Is there any evidence of this “intellectual and political chaos” in recent global events following the internet revolution?

it made individuals feel on edge who were cheerful and invested wholeheartedly in their work and life as they could be jobless. 

9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?

this enables individuals to post their expert pictures in the media despite the fact that it could have been taken on their telephones. 

10) What do you think of Shirky’s ideas on the ‘End of audience’? Is this era of ‘mass amateurisation’ a positive thing? Or are we in a period of “intellectual and political chaos” where things are more broken than fixed? 

I think it is a constructive thing since it enables individuals to have a voice and post what they like in the media.