New Media ( Chapter 8 in Text) -...
Transcript of New Media ( Chapter 8 in Text) -...
Cmns 130
New Media ( Chapter 8 in
Text)
� Definition & the Information Revolution
� Changing economics
� Changing regulation
� Social Issues
� Social Challenges: � The Knowledge Gap
� Surveillance and loss of privacy
� Sharing and Market “Hacktivism”
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History of New Media
� Since 1970s, but especially 1990s, nations concerned with the “ information highway”
� Treated the Internet like an 1840s challenge of the telegraph � Concern that to remain competitive in a global trading economy,
nations needed to “wire up” � Provide businesses, workers and consumers access to the
Internet for education, retail, entertainment � Frontier metaphors often used � Essential for economic transformation away from industrial to service/
information economies: the so-called “innovation agenda” � In Canada, wired telco/cable providers dominated agenda: wireless
only now emerging
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Building the Internet
� Nations regulate telecommunications internationally: agree on bandwidth of electronic transmission, spacing of satellites, sharing of costs/ interconnection
� Also develop technical standards for interconnection ( IP protocols such as MP3)
� This is the international standards role of nations, businesses and technical experts in creating a market for technology, and ensuring consumers don’t buy technology which will not work
� Business play a bigger and bigger role influencing this shadow world of standards: citizens underrepresented
� But: companies still need states to rule on standards
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Definition of New Media
� Digital communication
� Used in the production, distribution and reception of communication
� Involves use of new communication networks: Internet as mass medium
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Information Revolution
� Digitization: using computers to store,manipulate and transmit information in form of speech, text, data, and video more cheaply and faster than every before.
� Networking: distributed, fast digital networks wired and wireless
� Convergence: refers to merging of what were three separate industries: telecommunications, computing, and electronics or broadcasting
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Characteristics of New
Media
� Convergence of telecommunications and entertainment/broadcast media industries
� Wire or wireless communication
� Point to point or addressable
� Interactive ( two way) ( now multiple
conferencing)
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Characteristics Continued
� Interpersonal: ie. The terrain of telephony treats telephone calls ( discretionary contact between two consenting persons) as PRIVATE not PUBLIC communication ( where telco distributors are not responsible for content of message)
� Multiple: can be Mass/Broadcast which is PUBLIC communication ( broadcasters are responsible for message in exchange for spectrum monopoly: hybrid character)
� Now a grey area of semi public/private communication ( can monitor cell phones, amass, monitor and store unprecedented personal communication)
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Digital Communication
� Where image text or sound is converted into binary numbers- ones and zeroes ( 0/1)
� Digital codes can duplicate, track store or play back complex kinds of content
� Strong when combined with ever greater chip capacity in computers, and bundles of glass fibre ( fibre optics) capable of carrying large quantities of information
� Current “revolution”: the Digital Video Disk
� DVDs: higher resolution, no rewinding,now coming recordable for storage and intending to replace CDS
� Also: wireless Internet ( games on the cell phone)
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Implication of Digitization
� Drive to animation and special effects
� Actors worried about cyber simulators replacing them
� Domination of nature: totally simulated worlds?
� Question of authenticity of image
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The Role of the Media in the
Age of Digital Reproduction
� Walter Benjamin, a noted cultural scholar, suggests that the infinite reproducibility of the communication product ( CD, video, internet) due to its low marginal cost of duplication changes the nature of the work of art
� But western capitalism has conceived of the realm of ideas and expression as proprietary � Books, stories or photos may be copyrighted so they ‘belong’ to the
author and no one may borrow or copy them without permission, attribution or payment
� The high risk nature of entertainment ( so called hit rule) calls for imitation or ‘clones’ in popular culture ( riding the next so called fad or wave)
� Infinite reproducibility, repackaging,repurposing and presenting information as original
� There are many pressures on ‘news’ or ‘entertainment’ manufacture for cutting corners on production: ethical standards to prevent recycling content and presenting it as original are weak– digital watermarking is a weak barrier
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Technical Potentials of
the New Media
� Costs of production dropping: makes media creation more accessible ( digital camera and access to the net)
� Costs of distribution down
� Interactive// less hierarchical
� FasterFmore global
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The Internet
� What: a vast network of high speed wires and satellite relays linking computers worldwide
� No central hub: thousands of computer nodes ( it is highly distributed)
� Uses a type of switching that is hard to trace: designed after WW2 in the RAND corporation to avoid worldwide military attack � Now used for: email, commerce, chat lines,file
sharing etc.
� Sometimes synonmous with on line world
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Components of the
Internet
� World Wide Web
� Internet Service Providers (AOL Time Warner; Sympatico,Telus, Shaw@Home, AT&T)
� Portals ( MSN)
� Browsers: Explorer, Netscape
� Search Engines and directories ( Google, etc)
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Rate of Diffusion
� Each generation of technology ( telegraph, telephone,radio, satellite to cable TV, VCRs) had an increasingly rapid rate of diffusion
� Key is where it reaches ‘mass’ or majority ( 60% or more) of consumers.
� Internet has done so within one decade: only other technology to do so, but not quite as fast were the VCR and cell phones
� Now well over 75% of Canadians have access: that number rises to 100% under 25
� The Internet the fastest techology in rate of social adaption
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Impacts
� Changed the way we work
� Accellerated space time compression: globalization processes
� Convergence of computers and distribution allows greater efficiency of control and communication
� Much cheaper to sell via Internet than in person ( 1/100th cost per transaction for banks, airlines)
� Average person is now estimated to spend 187 hours a year on line ( source: Penguin Media and Information 2003)
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Social Transformations of
the Internet � Utopic Visions
� Breaks oligopoly power � Allows user control over media
selected, compiled, used � Provides new forms of social
connection beyond space based � New communities of interest may
form ( beyond borders) � Together with other technologies
allow development of artificial intelligence/body/intelligence augmentation
� A Democratic Realization
� Dystopic Visions � Reinforces and extends it ( US
controls 65% share of world Internet server hosts)
� Keeps user in ‘invisible walled gardens’
� Has enabled social predation: largest use for pornography /weapons and illicit drug/and stalking on line
� New market intelligence aggregating in unprecedented scope: data shadows and on line surveillance
� Few use the Net for political news, mobilization: while alt.news and other organizations are growing: commercial search engines bury them so they are difficult to findFthus an authoritarian politics continued, not a democratic one
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World Wide Web
� Between 22 and 800 million sites– less than half indexed
� Main search engines:
� Google (500 m page estimate)
� Alta Vista294)
� Yahoo
� Iwon,
� Northern Light
� Fast
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Industry Structure
� No one owner of Internet � ISP providers route through a tangled web of other providers � One dominant PC software manufacturer: Microsoft ( Internet
Explorer) � Decade long anti trust suit settled out of court � Like AT&T, US Department of Justice concerned about dominant
market power, and predatory competition
� Until 1990s, little competition between telephones and cable companies: now starting
� Late 1990s a wave of Stock Speculation and large scale mergers for dot com sector just before its crash
� AOL ( which owns Netscape) tookover Time Warner: sign of new technology surpassing old
� Emergence of little known Netscapes of Power
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Ideology of the Internet
� Electronic Freedom Foundation � Neo liberal/New Media
� Free
� Egalitarian
� Decentralized
� Ad Hoc
� Open and peer to peer
� Experimental
� Autonomous
� Anarchic
� Media Oligopolies ( Incumbent Media) � Social Responsibility model:
but self not government regulation
� For Profit
� Hierarchical
� Systematized and Centralized
� Planned
� Proprietary
� Pragmatic
� Accountable
� Organized
� Reliable
� Source: Richard Campbell, Media and Culture, 41.
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The Business Case for On
line Start Ups
� Sector characterised by rapidly falling costs � Transistorization etc. � Costs for average computer falling 30% per year ( just 0.01% of costs
in 1970)
� E commerce applications growing, but still less than 5% of retail( slower than supposed)
� Personal messaging ( email) very high � Use for Information /Research high: but rise of subscription media
( eg. Newspaper on line, growing only among global travel segment)
� Drive to get video downloadable for entertainment (video cell phones banned in washrooms)
� Still largest volume of business is porn worldwide
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Globalization of the
Internet
� US has privatized domain names but retained control over their allocation
� This is a sore point for Europe and other powerful economic regions
� Internet content providers are estimated to be 98% English, 87% commercial, and dominantly US in origin
� Other foreign governments now trying to: � Invest in promotion of infrastructure
� Offer government services on line
� Promote the development of indigenous services
� ( eg. Canada: New Media Content Fund at Telefilm and the Canadian Television Fund)
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Canadian Shape of
Convergence
� Links telecom and broadcast and news
� No computer sector
� Does link portals and so on
� First impacts of convergence have been to de-localize news and media production
� Consolidation of media production
� Centralization in a few cities
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Regulation of the Internet
� Canada ‘s CRTC decided in 1999 not to regulate the Internet : to leave it to open competition
� Australia and Europe are taking very different directions � 1996 US Telecommunications Act ( calling for deregulation) is
opposed world wide: � It is essentially impossible for one country to act as a content
gatekeeper for a world community– Michael Epstein, quoted in Campbell, 57.
� Hate and offensive contents are of growing social concern ( especially sexual predation on the Net) � 1996 US Communications Decency Act made it a felony to transmit
obscene, indecent, or harassing material on the Internet where children might see it: struck down n grounds Internet no different from a book store: not like broadcast ACLU v. Janet Reno, 1998)23
� Rise of ‘filters’/ ratings? On line entertainment
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“Hacktivism”
� Development of Open Source Code: Linux which is free open source operating system challenges Microsoft
� File sharing “coops” of the type of Napster ( trading MP3s) growing
� “junk” and growth of viruses � Romantic vision of small content providers surging on the net
� Eg. The ‘garage bands’ now can find an audience; the poet self publish, the digital video camcorder allow the production of broadcast quality documentaries for $20,000 versus 1.2 million in the TV industry
� A technologically optimistic view: technology as emancipatory, “revolutionary” shattering the powers of entrenched business, cultural authorities � What Winseck in the courseware calls ‘fantasy’
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Intellectual Property Law
� Part of Intellectual Property Law
� Governs the realm of inventions ( Patent Law) and brands or names ( Trade Mark Law), Trade Secrets ( Commercial Law) and Copyright
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The Canadian Copyright
Act
� “protection” � For the life of the author plus 50 years � Where the creator has the sole right to perform the creative act,
grant permission or a “license” to reproduce it, or copy it. � What is not copyrightable:
� Facts– but the compilation of them ( i.e how they are interpreted, is) � Ideas- unless they are manifest in a drawing, paper, or written form (
see Vivian and Maurin, page 365)
� Copyright: important in book publishing, sound tracks to films, films, music
� All TV and radio based on copyright payment to the performers they use
� Increasingly important in international trade, all forms of academic expression
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Canadian Copyright
Agencies
� CANCOPY: 130 courseware
� SOCAN
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US Digital Millenium
Copyright Act ( 1998)
� Computer users who copy or distribute the digital expression of others without their permission are liable to prosecution
� ISP’s may avoid liability if they police and remove offenders
� Arose because of spread of MP3 ( a digital compression technology)
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Napster
� Before 1999, just 5 companies, court cases on price fixing underway
� Developer launches Website wi 2 mi per day � Called P to P networking � Allowed visitors to search for files on other MP3 users’
hard drive and download to burn their own CDs: control over compilation shifts to consumers
� ‘freeware’: since Napster’s server did not house or archive the music, the owners thought they were exempt from copyright law and reasoned that prosecution should happen at the individual level: since so dispersed and large ( estimated in the millions a month) it was believed it was not possible to enforce the law
� Napster’s early success launched a wave of imitators:
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The Napster Case (see
Fleras: 262)
� Musical Recording Industry argued Napster infringed copyright– even Metallica!
� Damages estimated in the millions
� Refused to admit free sampling in fact increased exposure to music: eventual purchase
� Lined up a number of musicians to argue that the financial damage was to artists ( not the the multinationals)
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Napster defense
� An information source
� Not ‘housing’ or copying
� Intention to move to a subscription service
� Struggled to settle out of court
� Agreed to charge a monthly fee
� Purchased by Bertelsmann
� Lost Case
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Effects of Napster
� Now usurped in the market ( Morpheus , Kazaa and others) but trying a comeback
� Victor? : to large companies: � BUT– they introduced 2 tier pricing to allow new artists to break in � They reduced price of CDs � More services experimenting with subscription and transaction fees � Major transformation in Music Happening
� Victor? To consumers � Forcing a major rethink of copyright � Hierarchy of value: new versus brand artists merit more protection � Should IP be free? It takes a community to raise an artist.
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The Argument
� Fleras: intrusion of commercial interests and government regulation has compromised the regulatory potential of the Internet
� McLuhan: the inception of a new media casts into sharper relief the premises, priorities and power relations of existing media ( page 249).
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Crucial Questions
� Should those who control the medium also control the message?
� Cases: GayTV and Shaw Cable
� BCE /CTV and Independent Film
� Sympatico(Bell) and Oliver Hate Site
� Issue is: will gatekeeper show preference/discriminate against competitors, or evade responsibility?
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The Consumer’s Guide to
the New Media
� 1.Question Everything that is seen, heard or read in new media. ( no FDA)
� 2. Conclude almost everything is to make money for someone.
� Assume everything is a potential threat to your privacy:
� Source: John Pavlik “ The Structure of the New Media Industry: in The Media Entertainment Industries, Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
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The Myth of Convergence
� Not new
� Since 19th century
� Telegraph and global news agencies born together ( Winseck)
� AT&T ran RCA/Films until State department busted it
� In Canada today, we have one of the most consolidated media systems in the world, with a high degree of cross-media ownership
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Risk and Political
Economy Game
� Inventors of new technologies generate new patents ( ham heaven)
� When market become established: patents bought or litigated ( crisis of capital for development)
� Incumbent industries either block development or buy out new technology
� If new technology threatens core business of old, then predatory behavior, or massive buyout
� If new technology too risky, then businesses buy not make new service.
� Thus new technologies rarely challenge the incumbents, but over 50 years can see major change in owner players: market efficient at reducing risk and adapting to change
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The Critical Political Economy View: Lost
in Cyberspace by Dwayne Winseck
� Sees Intellectual Property Disputes as masking the larger problem: oligopoly of power and control
� Internet now dominated by big players, not an ideal perfect competition
� Convergence not new: 19th and 20th century waves and predicted in Canada since 1971
� In Canada: � Rogers allied with Microsoft and AT&T
� CanWest: news and TV and radio
� Bell Globemedia, CTV,Expressvue, Globe and Mail and Sympatico, largest ISP
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Impacts of Cross Media
Ownership
� Now vertically and horizontal companies can control all aspects of message
� Should those who control the medium also control the message?
� Yes: allows economies of scale, more money reinvested in content, better assumption of risk, more choice and convenience for consumers
� No: debt means less investment in content, loss of jobs, avoidance of risk, less choice and higher prices for consumers ( Winseck, 326)
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Canadian Argument
� Canada does have more choice among services � Highest level of cable, cell, Internet penetration in G-8 � Chronic shortage/ market failure in high cost production � Shrinking public investment in non commercial or community media � Indicators News
� More news services, fewer private foreign news bureaus, more reliance on wire services; diminishing number of jobs
� Indicator Entertainment � Digital channels not allied with big Canadian companies on verge of
bankruptcy � Can’t get carried by cable companies, or carried at too high a wholesale rate � Services high level of repetition( estimated more than 66% reruns) � Lag of asymmetry: late on video file swapping, speed of video downloads
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Winseck’s conclusion
� In short, there is a resilience in the “old media” that will not yield
� Incumbents battle new entrants and either buy them up or forge partnerships, or force them out of business
� People still mostly rely on TV for their political information
� Internet works to extend and conserve existing market dominance in cyberspace
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Netscapes of Power
� Must watch “netscapes of power”: rise of gatekeepers and “walled gardens”
� Trend to bundling services for convenience
� Styling information services for personal preferences– and not challenging these ( narrower and narrower homogenous taste communities)
� Technologies of discrimination: owner preference in placing subsidiaries at front of retail shelf and burying competitive service providers
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Fleras: Rhetoric and
Reality ( p.269)
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Rhetoric & Reality
� Subversive/Freewheel
� Egalitarian
� Anarchic Power to the People
� Globalizing
� Free
� Empowering and Enlightening
� Diversity
� Corporatized/Control
� Ehaves/Ehavenots
� Authoritarian power to
the dollar
� Americanizing
� Marketing and
Advertising
� Make Money
� Conformity
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Social Issues:
Surveillance
� Network architecture is now “smart”
� Before, telcos did not know the content of messages
� Now, they do. Bits are monitored, stored in charting flow and effective service
� Nortel and Cisco can establish network architectures which: � Identify each traffic type-Web, email, voice, videoFand isolate
the type of application even down to specific brands, by the interface used, by the user typeand individual user identification or by the site address (winseck:331)
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Surveillance 2
� Rise of “cookies” ( spies on content, personal information and preferences jeapordizing privacy)
� Technological potential of building a complete ‘data shadow’ of the consumer, to better market to them
� Emerging self regulation of services � Eg restrictive private contracts for use, limiting video
downloads, for example, in absence of regulation permitting it.
� Or: @HomeFwide open powers to remove offensive matter which is too prone to authoritarian censorship
� Still major fights: first over spam ( reaccessing your email accounts, and next data shadowing/market surveillance)
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The Walled Garden
� AOL Time Warner term
� Disney too
� Keep users within designated zones for as long as possible ( Winseck, 335)
� How? � By creation of content and service menus, organization of
hyperlinks, bias of search engings, network architecture, promotion, content synergies,elimination of bypasses
� Creation of walled gardens: safe, predictable, branded
� Eg: Disney assumes role of immigration officer in AOL’s world: if people enter their site, and then leave AOL, contract can be cancelled ( Winseck, 336)
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The Information Gap
� Rest of the World is less than one-tenth on the way to cyberspace
� Vast continents ( Africa) left out of “global information highway”
� Rich consumers and those educated elites the first to embrace computers and the Internet
� Poor, uneducated slow: many countries do not have policies to help individuals(eg. Computers in the home), although do help schools
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The Knowledge Gap
� Information and Knowledge gap is widening: despite mass penetration of the Internet in Canada, still high levels of illiteracy, ( under 25%) relatively low levels of university education ( several points below Europe), and growing child poverty: estimates place one in four to one in three kids below poverty level
� Structurally higher levels of unemployment, precarious jobs
� Gendered landscape of technological control