Changing Media 1

Changing Media

• ‘Power’ of media• Children as avant-garde• Interaction & Relationship between them• Discussion: Four dimensions

– Technologies– Institutions– Texts– Audiences

Changing Media 2

Technologies

• Technologies do not produce social change• Recent changes in media technology

– Proliferation• Broader range of media & means of delivery

– Convergence• Commercially driven & blurred distinctions

between linear broadcast & interactive narrowcast

– Access• Reduced access & distribution cost;

Changing Media 3

Implications

• Children & parents as significant targets• Growing polarization: rich & poor

– But still very few are exploiting the creative potential of digital media

• National centralized control undermined– From public to private– Internet: Anyone publishing anything– Production & consumption boundaries blurred

Changing Media 4

Institutions

• Three institutional & economic changes– Privatization

• Free market, monopolization, commercialized

– Integration• Vertical & Horizontal

– fragmentation• Production: casual labor, outsourcing, independent• Consumption: specialized, fragmented• Media production: amateur & professional

Changing Media 5

Texts

• Changing characteristics & the very status of texts

• Distinctions between video, games, movie… becoming irrelevant

• Intertextuality• Interactivity• Integrated phenomena: Text and related

commodities packaged & marketed

Changing Media 6

Audiences

• Empowered audience vs. Commercially exploited; Empowered vs. Surveillance

• Greater choice for consumers– Repeated vs. new

• Greater activity– Engaged& committed vs. Casual & distracted

• Not a zero-sum game; Powerful or powerless