Weekly new and digital media story 2

The Independent expands its digital presence to the States

Newspaper creates ‘web office’ in New York as online traffic increases

The Independent has opened a “web office” in the United States. Andrew Buncombe, the paper’s former Washington correspondent, has become US digital editor.

The announcement coincides with a rise in the Indy’s online traffic. ABC figures for January show that the number of its website’s global monthly unique browsers increased by 53% over the previous year to 52.5m. 

The story highlights the gradual and inevitable transition from broadsheet to online. The Independent expanding its digital presence online proves that they understand that online is where they will gain revenue and they are utilising it as a result, to make up for broadsheet losses.

Weekly new and digital media story 1

News Corp newspaper revenue falls 6% as ads and subscribers go online

Newspaper revenue in the UK, the US and Australia is down despite a rise in the company’s overall revenue thanks to book publishing and real estate divisions

Declining sales, advertising and subscriptions hurt revenues at Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper business in the final quarter of last year, News Corp has reported.

Revenue at the company’s news and information unit, which publishes the media tycoon’s newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, fell 6% to $1.52bn.

Total advertising revenues fell 9%, with the UK market especially hard hit.

“The advertising climate in the UK remains very difficult, but we are renewing our efforts on digital ad sales and assiduously cultivating core clients,” said the chief executive Robert Thomson.

Another story about newspapers losing money again highlights the fact that the newspaper will continue to decline and lose money as long as it continues to focus and produce broadsheets. The fact that to gain revenue the chief executive said he will try to gain digital ad sales highlights that even  newspaper chiefs know that the future and money is online.

Weekly new and digital media story 2

YouTube Kids app launches in the US for Android and iOS

Standalone app is free and ad-supported, offering a mixture of TV shows, educational videos, music and child-friendly vloggers

YouTube is launching a separate app for children which will filter out inappropriate content, hide comments on videos and which will not allow them to register and log in to its service.

The YouTube Kids app launches today in the US for Android and for iOS devices, and the company intends to roll it out elsewhere in the future. The app will be free and funded by advertising, although YouTube says it will be carefully screening ads to ensure they are appropriate for children.

“Parents have been asking us for years to build a friendlier version of YouTube for families,” product manager Shimrit Ben-Yair told the Guardian, citing data showing that while YouTube’s overall viewing time grew by 50% in 2014, this rose to 200% for “family entertainment” content.

This new app from youtube targeted at children highlights the digital age we are now living in as children are now even being targeted for digital products as children are now using digital products in infancy,

Weekly new and digital media story 1

Mail Online soars past 200m monthly browsers as newspaper sites bounce back

Mail Online powered past 200 million monthly unique browsers for the first time in January.

The Daily Mail website’s monthly traffic increased to 224,934,062, an 18.7% increase on the previous month, according to the the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Thursday. 

It remained comfortably the most popular UK newspaper website, with its daily traffic rising by 13.9% month on month to 13,949,793 daily unique browsers.

All the other national newspaper websites recorded gains after the traditional December traffic lull, with stories such as the Charlie Hebdo attack helping drive traffic.#

These figures highlight the inevitabile transition of newspapers to completely online as views of online articles continue to increase whereas broadsheet sales continue to decline. The fact that figures dramatically increased after the Charlie Hebdo attacks showed that people now use the internet to find out about news stories.

Weekly new and digital media story 2

http://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2015/feb/17/chelsea-fans-prevent-black-man-boarding-paris-metro-video

Chelsea fans prevent black man boarding Paris metro train

Amateur footage shows Chelsea football fans preventing a black man from boarding a Paris metro train shortly before the Champions League fixture between Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday. The unidentified passenger attempts to squeeze on to the train, only to be pushed forcefully back on to the platform at the Richelieu-Drouot station. The fans then chant: 'We're racist, we're racist and that's the way we like it'.

This story highlights the power of new and digital media as well as user generated content as we are now able to view and then punish crimes that otherwise would not have been seen. Without the user generated content the story would never have become the big news story it has become, highlighting the pluralistic view that new and digital media has liberated us in that people can not get away with crimes they could before due to everyone having a camera phone.

Weekly new and digital media story 1

http://www.standard.co.uk/business/media/roy-greenslade-our-national-newspapers-are-no-longer-willing-to-toe-a-political-party-line-10008667.html

Roy Greenslade: Our national newspapers are no longer willing to toe a political party line

With 100 days to go to the general election, the Sun set out what it called “our demands... the key policies we want to deliver success to Britain”.

Given that newspaper’s track record, most of the demands were unsurprising: clear the deficit, limit immigration, reform the NHS, cut welfare handouts, stop defence cuts, dig for shale gas, prune the BBC, and take the axe to foreign aid.

This was the assertion of its values and policies as distinct from the values and policies of a specific party, a change from typically adapting their views to support one.

The national press has become more genuinely independent of party than at any time since the Second World War. The formal links have been broken, and their allegiance is no longer assured.

Newspapers have turned on politicians as a breed, encouraging public cynicism towards politics itself.

With newspapers becoming hypercritical of both politics and parties, it is feasible to argue that they have encouraged their audiences to turn on the mainstream parties and what are often disparagingly referred to as “professional politicians”.

The article argues that newspapers are now becoming less bias in that they are no longer being favourable towards certain parties, the Sun previously being famous for its promotion of the Conservative party. This suggests that newspapers are becoming more liberal and are offering us less impartial news when it comes to elections and politics.

Post-colonialism: blog task

1) Summarise the three theorists we have looked at: Alvarado, Fanon and Said.

Alvarado's theory categorises non white characters in the media as 4 representations:

• Exotic 
• Dangerous
• Humorous
• Pitied

Franz Fanon's theory theorises black people "putting on the white mask" when talking about representation of blacks in society. He spoke about infantilize, primitivilize, decivilize and essentialize. 

Edward Said's theory challenges the concept or the the difference between the east and west with the east and west being civilized and the uncivilized, with the concept of 'them and us'.

2) Watch the opening of Yasmin (2004) again. Does it offer a positive or negative view of British Muslims? To what extent does it reinforce or challenge Edward Said's theory of Orientalism - that the west is superior to the exotic or uncivilised east?

The clip does offers a partly negative representations it shows one of the characters being very uncivilized where he is eating peanut butter directly out of the jar and also his dirty clothing. Similarly the clear disrespect shown by the main character towards her religion can provide a negative representation of Muslims as she takes off her hijab.

In contrast it can be argued that the main character provides us with a very identifiable character as she tries to break free from her religious barriers and be a part of western society.

3) Finally, choose THREE clips for EACH of the theorists and explain how you could apply that theory to the clip. Pick a selection of clips on YouTube from TV, film, music video or advertising and embed them in your blog before writing your analysis under each clip. Note: this means you need NINE clips in total on this blogpost.

FANNON:

ALVARADO:

SAID: