- until an itunes like service comes out for video, people will pirate it through bit torrent. a consistent and easy to use interface is required

- word of mouth, or adhoc social networks currently help us choose which media to consume (watercooler talk) this is also needed for digital media along with advertising

- talks of using a mobile phone to ‘rate’ a movie, so it can be shared with friends. this sounds good in theory but isn’t the fun of talking about a movie, the experience of actually talking to a real person?

- news organisations now have many people at each end (camera man, reporter, editor, anchor person etc) so does that change how news is perceived?

- napster lost out, but P2P has expanded

- buying a song (or any form of media) should allow you to remix it, ringtone it etc for your own non commercial purposes

- gives practical examples on how to find, extrapolate and organise data

- explains how to access all publicly accessible information, in great detail

- information on how to prepare articles, plan stories and organise yourself

- poses many interesting questions for many different story types

- ukplus ISP has it’s on portal service that filters all bad information – any bad news stories!

- China is over-censored blocking such sites as CNN, and not letting users communicate ’secret’ information online

- Some countries like Tunisia redirect users from the site they want (ie, amnesty.org) to their own version with edited propaganda content

- add this to many sites not being run by ‘professional’ journalists, they feel they can write how they wish and don’t have the training to write ‘properly’

- while newspapers stick to the facts, online writing is often full of opinions, with a style where emphasis is achieved with *stars* or CAPS

- the web has a ‘rolling deadline’ where the story always needs to be written and published ASAP

- online news allows for multimedia elements to help tell the story

CH 6

- newpaper readership in decline
- quality journalism is supported by taxpayers (ABC) or by classifieds cashcow or ‘rivers of gold’
- so what’s happening to classified ads with the internet, especially ebay? is this the end of quality journalism?

CH 7

- communications companies such as Telstra branching out into content, Sensis, Foxtel, online AFL rights etc
- will privitisation of Telstra make profit number one over service to rural Australi?
- 25,000 Telstra job cuts in 90s to be more internationally competitive

CH 15

- internet use on the way up (duh)
- existing brands (like ninemsn) used to make browsing (who uses the term surfing or cyber anymore anyway?) easier and less daunting for new users
- new cultures emerged from the internet, chatting, blogging, photo sharing, video sharing, netcelebs

CH 18

- new media allows for interactivity, control of content, brings with it a new set of standards and rules for different technologies: for example most blogs follow similar structure in posts, once something has a label people behave to the constraints of that label to accepted norms
- is new media one form of media, or is it in fact too much of an umbrella term encompassing many forms of separate media? is even the web too much of a blanket term in reguards to the radically different types of websites and web ‘platforms’ out there? is flickr in a world of it’s own? how about youtube?
- do users develop the culture and then it’s marketed back at users or do the corporations come up with the culture and market it to the users, or is it a bit of both? why has WAP failed and SMS succeeded?

- It was then used, possibly for the first time, in 1983 by Ithiel de Sola Pool in connection with communications technologies.

- In the 90’s TV stations and newspapers started cross promoting each other, with some being owned by the one parent company.

Convergence in media technology

Content Creation – Although stored digitally, not fully accessible due to format restrictions
Content Distribution – Based on 2001 figures in the US before the explosion of broadband, mentions that the net is not used anywhere near as much as the TV
Content Consumption – Besides for the PC, people aren’t using other digital terminals to access information

Convergence

Ownership - A conglomorate owning multiple content or distribution channels
Tactics – Sharing resources and cross-promoting a TV station and newspaper, whether owned by one company or not. This brought in issues of bias/fair reporting and different ideology in reporting news.
Structure - Mainly remained the same, the newspaper people did their job, etc, some new positions made to oversee, or to specialise in multimedia
Information Gathering - The backpack journalist gathering the news in all different formats
Presentation (Storytelling) - Can now have unlimited space (columns) and time (minutes), immediate publishing, communication (blogging/feedback), multi-format, interactive (user decides what/when to view/read/listen)
Implications – Journalists not wanting change, new job requirements

- Citizen journalists report first hand at disaster scenes, uploading images directly from the scene
- News related blogging – random acts of journalism?
- Discussion pages on wikinews are there to debate if news is newsworthy (for editorial reasons)
- Blogs are temporal – wikinews is more spacial in structure (hard to work out recently updated pages)
- As wikipedia has articles at en endpoint with multiple points of views, traditionally news is the start of a debate for different perspectives – not an endpoint. The wiki model prevents this by design

Digital Journalism – An old practice in a new context-a synthesis fo tradition and innovation?
Shovelware – using premade/old content from other media and sticking it on the web

- Digital Media is subject to change/renovation and innovation, unlike print media which has an establish look, feel and brand through fonts and mastheads.

- The web being used as a supplement to TV shows to provide more information, facts and a place to discuss the show

This reading opens with a really good first sentence, but comes across as being obviously dated after that. It speaks of hypertext, and the structure of a story or narrative based on the links within. Clearly a news organisation is not going to link to external sources for a variety of reasons

1 – A commercial organisation won’t want to lose pageviews on their own site
2- A non-commercial organisation won’t want to link to a page that they don’t control, a page which could change or be taken offline at any time.

Both of these hold true for either commerical or non-commercial too.

However good points are made about a story losing its intended meaning by being associated with whatever the user chooses to click on next. Though most news sites now have relevant links and content associated with each story either beneath or next to it. Importantly, these links are never within the story.

Otherwise the reading talks a bit about the technology and standards associated with that technology. Again the age of the article is apparent here as much of what is mentioned is no longer an issue today – broadband, high resolution/color displays and only 2 dominant browsers have put an end to the majority of issues mentioned. Also, news sites are now designed much better than they once were, as with most of the sites on the web.

What stands out for me is that at the moment convergence is happening with the content while we seem to have more devices to access that content on. But if you think about it, the content isn’t converging as much as different devices having the new ability to access that same content. For example, using your mobile to access your emails.

Jenkins also points out that convergence is a as much about culture and society as it is about technology. This is a really good observation, because if people aren’t ready to receive movies on their mobile or have access to ondemand movies then the technology is useless.

Convergence is an ongoing process between technology and media, media and consumer, and consumer and technology.