Globalisation

1) Is our news influenced by American cultural imperialism? What examples can you think of?

An example of how our news is influenced by American Culture imperialism is CNN being 24/7 news and how SKY have copied and done the same. Loads of the news we consume relates to celebrity, Hollywood and american life and we have a similar way of presenting news. Furthermore the layout for both the news organisations are similar. 

2) Has the increased globalisation of news improved the audience experience? How? Why?

Globalisation of news has improved audience's experience, they can be updated with news instantly, receiving it quickly, getting live footage, video/pictures of disasters being closer to the events. News travels much faster and can create a hype or conversation between people all over the world. Audiences have quicker and world wide access to news from all over the world with a variety of choice as to what kind of news they want to read. However this results is less local coverage and hoaxes that fool people with staged false news which may lead news institution to even believe which would ruin their reputation.

3) Has globalisation benefited or damaged major news institutions? How? Why?

Globalisation has benefited majors news institution as they need to pay wages of fewer journalists since the need of having a journalist in every corner of the world isn't needed any more. furthermore The sun can employee the Sun's journalists to produce material for the Sun on Sunday, saving money for them as a business.

Saving them a great deal of money however the damage is on local news with less coverage of local news and local news papers being small institution suffer such as the Ealing Gazette harder for them to stand out. Citizen journalism may not always be reliable or professionally done compared to professional news.  

NDM - 16 yr old watching porn on XBOX leads to raping sister

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/03/boy-rape-younger-sister-porn-games-console

This article from the Guardian focuses on how young people are influenced so easily through their inexperienced lives, as a child watched pornography on a friend's XBOX. The 16 year old being influenced by the clip he saw lead him into attempting sexual intercourse with his 7 year old sister, this followed by social services and is now on the sex offenders list for 2 and a half years. This story links to the bobo doll and copy cat theory as it supports and reinforces how particular people are more easy to influence than others and how what some kids may watch could lead them into copying it. 

Mock Responce

WWW: your use of media language is impressive and you offer some thoughtful, relevant answers. The key area to improve though is...

EBI: examples from wider media! You mention very little else which keeps you stuck on the lower levels. It is essential for Q3.

- keep and eye on paragraphing/ organisation.

- re-write Q2 or Q3 on your blog with a much wider variety of examples.

Question Three:

Websites and new digital media makes the audience feel closer to the action, more connected. Websites often air the movie's trailer, post up prints of the movie as well as behind the scenes footage or pictures. This is synergy through platforms on the site such as broadcasting and print as well as social networking as twitter and facebook links at the bottom of the official site.
The merge of platforms on a site allows audience to see and do more related to the movie which helps hype and create interest with fans. Social media being unofficial sites can aid in the success of box office films. Twitter bomb failure such as Bruno with hashtag rubbish were linked  to show how viewers feel about the film after having high expectations ultimately bringing ratings and reviews plummeting down. This affected the following days views as they declined because of the twitter bomb. On the other hand Twitter bomb being an unofficial site can cause success such as Juno to get a lot of positive feedback and views which is a form of word of mouth through use of unofficial site.
Similarly forums and YouTube responses can act as reviewing or a way of rating films after the user has viewed the film. These unofficial sites that allow users to post opinions and views affect the viewers opinion and views either encouraging or discouraging them to watch it, altering the success into failure as a possibility.

Dark knight already having a fan base such as DC comic fans, means that as soon as their official site is running, fans would quickly view and look at what they have to offer pre-release. Due to Dark Knights marketing it created a massive amount of interest and excitement in the run up to it's release. Dark knight is known for it's marketing and the way the follow up to the release was handled. The marketing campaign was used to engage audience, to make the film come to life for fans. Clues being released and allowing each hashtag to reveal one pixel for the official poster on the official website meant the fans were contributing to the releases making them feel closer to the film. Following the poster, similar release occurred with the trailer that was vandalised by the Joker.

Films such as Star Trek and Iron Man also have huge fan bases that would guarantee viewings and increases box office success as fans would use forums, chat-rooms and other forms of communication to debate and talk about the film itself.

Official and unofficial sites both contribute to the success of box office films, IMBD & Rotten Tomatoes are used for reviews and ratings as they are less biased than official pages. Fans and users view what critics say about the film as it collect information to reveal a rating out of 100% by either critics or audience viewers which means there are two ways to view the ratings. However people don't normally go to these unbiased sites first, mostly when one person is debating or seeing if a film is worth spending money on.

NDM - CL Death Threats

http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/83003/20140310/cl-mtbd-quran.htm

Through CL's performance for MTBD, Muslims fans have reacted in a negative way as they supposedly hear a boy singing the Quran in the background of the chorus with responses to the 'haters' saying that religion teaches us to forgive and to be peaceful. Some comments are just endless swear words slating the singer/rapper. This shows how users on different social media misuse media. Although CL aimed to highlight the beauty of religion as it links to karma to show her creativity and artistic being, her fans have either supported her or turned to hate her. This also shows how one small thing can go viral and receive so much hate so quickly after a performance of a celebrity through a youtube video, CL has received hate comment on the youtube page linking onto the 2NE1 youtube page as well as Instagram and with hashtags on all social networking that fans are on.

(Photo : Instagram, CL)

NDM - News travelling fast

http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/jasmine-gardner-news-travels-fast-in-cyberspace-but-can-we-trust-it-9159845.html

Many people use the internet to find out information, read up facts, to research about a particular person or topic. This advance searching opportunities allows us to find out more and be able to get a hold of more information however the accuracy and reliability is hard to believe. This article points out the obvious hoaxes that have come up in recent years repeatedly such as the supposed death of Morgan Freeman. The higher the follower count and the higher the number of retweets, the more likely followers would believe a post by that user. Users such as Willow Smith tweet absurd posts about trees being purple, etc to amplify the way people believe everything they read. This makes it harder for users to depend on social media for their news as it won't always be 100% true or accurate. People may have heard wrong, reacted in the wrong way or have changed the way the news is reported to get a different kind of angle on the story. Biggest problem the digital media face is who is reporting true facts and who is twisted or releasing hoaxes.
An example of twisted truth is the flappy bird app being taken down and the way the creator tweeted "I can't take this any more." leading people to assume he was committing suicide.

In the US a third of all adults under 30 are said to get their news from social media, with half of all Twitter users receiving their newsflashes in 140 characters. 

Twitter is now an everyday news source for 55 per cent of opinion formers

Mock exam response

WWW: your use of media language is impressive and you offer some thoughtful, relevant answers. The key area to improve though is...

EBI: examples from wider media! You mention very little else which keeps you stuck on the lower levels. It is essential for Q3.

- keep and eye on paragraphing/ organisation.

- re-write Q2 or Q3 on your blog with a much wider variety of examples.

New Values - How would you update them for 2014?

Immediacy is more important than ever due to news breaking on Twitter or elsewhere online. However, this in turn changes the approach of other news sources such as newspapers as the news will probably already be broken by the time the paper is published so different angles might be required.

A reminder of Galtung and Ruge's news values:

Immediacy: has it happened recently?
As new digital media such as Twitter, phones, phone apps are now so easily attainable news can quickly become old, regular refresh and updates are available with a scroll of a finger. This is why newspaper face the problem of using old news as people would have known about what the paper will report before it even reaches them. 

Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain?
with the ability to search news of any country, readers will prefer either USA or British news as they are in their minds more important as British people are more concerned about British people. 

Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?
If it involves more people, it's more devastating and shocking, this is where user generate content will have value and more interest bringing readers closer to the action.

Frequency:  did the event happen fairly quickly?
News reporters often get restricted if a accident or event has happened where they ask reporters to be held back, if caught at a good time user generated content could be captured.

Unambiguity: is it clear and definite?
Forums, chatrooms, commenting allows conversation for people to be able to respond and to clear the questions left about the news/issue.

Predictability: did we expect it to happen?
Out of the blue news causes more attention to be drawn as it is interesting and a non-routine type of news, unexpected and random such as a passing away of a celebrity, a terrorist attack. 

Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event?
Unexpected news is shocking and gets people talking, tweeting, posting, trending, going viral.

Continuity: has this story already been defined as news?
Internet news is able to control what readers can see as important news opposed to gatekeepers of newspaper to decide. 

Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people?
Well known people are of interest, unknown names and faces make the readers feels no connection or recognition as important.

Negativity: is it bad news?
Natural disaster, event involving many deaths would cause people to feel sorrow, pity, sympathy and creates more attention being drawn as well as more posts, comments, conversations about the shock and bad in the world in relation to the news.