How Twitter is winning the 2012 US election
In the 2012 US presidential election, it is clear the brief age of political blogs shaping the political narrative has passed and we are now in the era of Twitter. The proof is in Twitter's big role in shaping the coverage and the winners and losers of this month's presidential debates
Garance Franke-Ruta, a senior editor for the Atlantic, declared:
"[The] last cycle was all about blogs and the incremental journalism of blogs. This cycle we have really a Twitter campaign where a lot of the conversation has moved off the blogs onto Twitter especially for political insiders."
Twitter's advocates have big numbers on their side. Adam Sharp, with the barely tweetable job title of "head of government, news and social innovation" at Twitter, noted there had been 360,000 total tweets during the two conventions in 2008. The total for both in 2012 was nearly 14m. Mitt Romney's speech peaked at 14,000 tweets per minute. (tpm) Michelle Obama in her convention speech doubled that to 28,000 – and Barack Obama then took it up to 54,000tpm
"We have shifted from a 24-hours news cycle to a 140-character one."
There is certainly a risk that Twitter will lead to ever faster but shallower politics. Romney's response to the killing of the US ambassador in Benghazi was widely criticized as intemperate, premature and in breach of longstanding protocols of political unity in the face of attacks.
Rupert Murdoch apologises to Hugh Grant over 'love child' tweet
Rupert Murdoch has apologised to Hugh Grant after he suggested on Twitter that the actor had abandoned his "love child".
The News Corporation boss made his second Twitter climbdown in less than 24 hours on Thursday, as he expressed regret for earlier comments about Grant's personal life.
Murdoch said on Twitter: "Hugh Grant states that he is deeply involved in his daughter's life – I accept that,regret tweet on the matter. Apologies to both parents."
Last night Murdoch sought to clarify his description of "scumbag celebrities" who met the prime minister to talk about press regulation during the Conservative party conference.
He clarified on Wednesday evening: "I did not say all celebrities were scumbags. Check my tweet. And apology to any who misunderstood."
Murdoch has repeatedly found himself in hot water since he joined Twitter on 1 January.
Newspaper institutions are in competition with one
another to ensure they have enough people consuming their products so that they
can make money from advertising to safeguard their survival. However, it is
becoming increasingly difficult for paper-based news forms to compete with the
rise in e-media news services.
Over the last decade, the UK’s daily newspapers have
lost some 2.25 million readers. Falling circulations mean less money through
the till and newspapers’ other main source of income, advertising, is also
drying up. In the last 10 years, advertising revenues have fallen by about 20%.
In the struggle to stay profitable, newspaper companies are cutting staff,
closing offices and, in the case of local papers, getting rid of titles. Some
within the industry predict that within the next 10 years we could even see one
or two of Britain’s biggest daily newspapers close.
Most institutions have been slow to embrace the web
but are now using the platform to target audiences, but it is proving harder to
make profits from online publishing than from old-fashioned printed forms. With
so many free news sites to choose from, audiences are not prepared to pay money
to read newspapers online. That means that they have to rely on web-based
adverts to generate income. But it is not straight-forward as online
advertisers have many more spaces to choose from and there is less certainty in
terms of who will see these adverts, making the market more complex and
competitive.
In a Summary I understand that because of E Media, newspapers are now finding it hard to survive as not many people purchase newspapers as they can receive news free online futher more consumers are now becoming producers and updating there own news article on the net. The internet growth has appealed to businesses now wanting to advertise their businesses on the net instead of newspapers. This means businesses have less funding or profit to survive which has now affected them being the decrease of journalists left in the industry.
Feature
Audience Gratification
Long-running
chat boards
Interaction
with their audiences makes audiences feel like they are being listened to
which is good for the reputation of the institution.
Network
of weblogs
Leaving
comments on articles
Can
make an audience feel powerful by creating the idea that they are challenging
the news institution’s values
Readers
can access articles online, on mobile devices through RSS feeds or on eBook
readers.
This
allows easier access for readers, if the article is available on most
platforms it has more of a chance of being seen as readers use all platforms
so it makes it easier to access the article.
Varied
selection of categories in easy accessible genre areas
Allows
a mass audience to visit the website, furthermore certain audiences can
choose what they want to read. Some people may want to read about the sport
but some may want to read about technology. Easier for audiences to access
what they like and want to read.
Images
It
gives detail to the article which allows the reader to visualize and understand
the article better if they hadn’t understood if from the words. It brings out
the emphasis in the article as well. Images appeal to all readers.
Podcast
Similar
to images, but again it’s good to hear something as you are more likely to
take it in rather than reading something. Podcasts is good for people who can’t
read English or are bling.
Facebook has posted a loss of $59m
(£37m) despite seeing revenues rise 32% during the third quarter.
The world's most popular online social network revealed this week that its income rose
to $1.26bn, between July and September.
The revenues exceeded expectations, but Facebook's performance remains in the
red, following a loss of $157m in the previous quarter.
Facebook's shares have lost about 50% since its stockmarket listing in May.
The company is struggling to turn its online dominance into profits.
Facebook revealed that 604 million of its 1.01 billion users access its site
using a mobile device.
"People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can
increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and
improve our platform," claimed the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in a
statement.
My Conclusion:
The results that facebook published this week are quite amazing. Facebook is the worlds largest social networking sites who just revealed that they have over 1 billion users. For this article to come out has got me in a shock because i thought Facebook would be hitting rocket high profits but instead they have made a loss. I think that with apps such as Instagram becoming more popular, Facebook will now see a decrease in there users and profits will either stay the same or decrease for the future. This just goes to tell how ever big your business is you can still make a loss.
Skydiver Baumgartner sets YouTube live view record
You must of seen the video, of the 43 year old Austrian Sky diver break records this weekend. If not here is a quick preview of what happend flying straight into the books of History !
More than eight million people flocked to their devices to watch the
43-year-old break the speed of sound live on Google's YouTube site.
It is the largest number of concurrent live streams in the website's history,
Google UK confirmed A Google spokesperson confirmed that the number of viewers
simultaneously watching the Red Bull Stratos stunt live on YouTube was the
site's highest. "We congratulate Felix Baumgartner and the entire Red Bull Stratos team for
their successful mission, and for creating a live stream with the most
concurrent views ever on YouTube," the company said on
its blog.
My View
I feel this is fantastic that we have the techonology to allow us to watch hisotrical events such as this streamedlive on to our computer screens for free. I personally sat down and watched it live through Youtube, it was great coverage and the best feeling was to accutally know I am witnessing History take place LIVE. It is great that Google allowed this event to be streamed Live on their page and it becoming a success. I hope to see more live streaming though Youtube in the future as the consumers experience is fantastic.
Key Facts on the UGC article. Question & Answers are below
“New technologies mean that the audiences are no longer passive receivers of news. The audience have become ‘users’ and the users have become publishers. Audiences now create their own content.”
Key to this change has been the development of new technologies such as video phones and the growth of the internet and user-dominated sites.
A citizen became a journalist by recording Los Angeles police beating up an African American, which caused controversy amongst African Americans and protests were held where people died and were injured. This was one of the first examples of the news being generated by ‘ordinary people,’ now commonly known as ‘citizen journalists’, ‘grassroots journalists’, or even ‘accidental journalists’.
Millions of people have constant access to filming capability through their mobiles, and footage can be uploaded and rapidly distributed on the internet.
UGC now plays a huge role in many aspects of the media. Most news organisations include formats for participation: message boards, chat rooms, Q&A, polls, have your says, and blogs with comments enabled.
Social media sites are also built around UGC as seen in the four biggest social networking sites: Bebo, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook. People also turn to UGC sites to access news: Wikipedia news, Google news and YouTube score highly in terms of where people go to get their news.
The natural disaster of the Asian Tsunami on December 26th 2004 was another turning point for UGC. Much of the early footage of events was provided from citizen journalists, or ‘accidental journalists,’ providing on-the-spot witness accounts of events as they unfolded. Tourists who would otherwise have been happily filming holiday moments were suddenly recording one of the worst natural disasters in recent times. In addition, in the days after the disaster, social networking sites provided witness accounts for a world-wide audience, helped survivors and family members get in touch and acted as a forum all those involved to share their experiences.
We now expect passers by, witnesses, or even victims, to whip out their camera phones and record events, an instinct almost as powerful as that to save their own or others’ lives. Perhaps the news now seems old-fashioned and somehow staged if it lacks the raw, grainy low-quality footage provided by citizen journalists.
Twitter can provide breaking news faster than news organizations. It is now a source which gives you updates within seconds. On the other hand it is free for all audiences to access and use.
Are the gatekeepers still fulfilling their old function of deciding what is and isn’t news, and what will and won’t be broadcast? In some ways, yes. You can send in as much UGC to the major news organisations as you want, with no guarantee that any of it will ever be aired
Some believe that the mediators and moderators might eventually disappear too, leaving a world where the media is, finally, unmediated.
Although how to ‘monetarise’ UGC – how to make money for both the generator and the host of the content – is still being debated, bigger institutions have been buying up social networking sites for the last few years. Rather than launch their own challenge, they simply buy the site. Flickr is now owned by Yahoo!, YouTube was bought by Google, Microsoft invested in Facebook, and News Corp., owned by Murdoch, bought MySpace.
There is a whole new world out there. With it comes new responsibility. There is enormous potential to expand our view of the world and our understanding of what is happening. Our collective knowledge, and wisdom, should grow. On the other hand, in twenty years time, the news could be overrun by pictures of people’s kittens and a few bigots shouting across message boards at each other
Sara Mills AQA Examiner
What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?
Citizen journalist is when a consumer becomes a producer of something. A journalist is someone who provides news to its reader/consumer, through news institutions. But a citizen journalist is when a normal reader/ consumer produces his/hers own media text for others to read and use. The citizen journalist isn’t a qualified journalist but by the power of the internet, he/she can upload their views and points by online blogs, news sites and polls etc.
What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?
One of the first examples is the car chase in LA, which is stated above in the research, in which policemen were caught beating a man with golf clubs and tasering him. This was uploaded by a citizen journalist on the internet; this video had caught police over using their authority. This was an ordinary man who came across this brutal attack which he decided to film from his handset and upload on the internet for users to witness. This lead to the dismissal of the police officers as it was clear evidence of what they had done. This is the positive affect of UGC & Citizen Journalists.
List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.
Participation offered by the news organisations for consumers to participate and have their say on are:
Message boards
Q&A
Polls
YouTube comments
Facebook (Messages on the wall)/ twitter (sending in comments which are answered straight away)
What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?
First hand footage is less edited and states clearly what happened.
Professional footage can be tweaked and edited to the producer’s choice.
Professional footage also uses hi tech quality camera’s which allows consumers to have a better news experience, rather than a first-hand fizzy/blurry phone capturing breaking news.
What is a gatekeeper?
Gatekeepers are people who decide what goes in the news and what doesn’t, they edit what they want and have the power to tweak stories to attract audiences to their news organizations.
How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?
Due to the freedom of the internet and UGC, gatekeepers now find it hard to keep things hidden from consumers. They now have less power as citizen journalists are uploading their own articles with footage or images as evidence. Consumers now find UGC articles more interesting and trust worthy than what large news organisations provide because of the awareness of gatekeepers. This falls into the argument of “are news organizations editing the news to make it more entertaining and attractive to draw in audiences.”
What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?
As people are turning to UGC and avoiding newspapers, there is a decrease in journalist jobs which could affect people with journalist degrees and people currently studying journalism. The internet and citizen journalists has taken over these job roles for the journalists and now institutions only wants to keep the best of the best, which increases competition for journalists to get a job and make a good living.
B. Find and watch a YouTube citizen journalism clip for each of the examples listed in the article (the Rodney King beating, the Asian Tsunami, the 7/7 bombings, the Virginia Tech shootings, the Mumbai bombings, the Hudson River plane crash) and embed them on your blog.
The UK has only just seen the launch of 4G (fourth
generation) mobile communication technology, but academics at Surrey University
are already looking at its successor.
They have received £35m from mobile operators, infrastructure
providers and the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund to fund research into
5G.
Prof Tafozolli, professor of mobile wireless communications
and the director of Surrey University's Centre for Communications Systems Research,
said: "4G for us is
old hat. We started working on 4G 10 years ago. "Being a university we
have to be one step ahead of industry."
The 5th generation should be set for 2020
My
conclusion:
I feel this is great for new technology. On the other hand we
are in 2012 and personally I think 4G has come a little too late. We should
have been on 5G at this current stage and not having to read articles about
2020. Besides the critics it’s fantastic that they are already working on new
this new generation of mobile internet, it improves the audience’s experience.
As we progress into the future we will see better technology being produced
that we had never even thought of. I feel that there is no full stop to new
technology, in years to come we will see flying cars. This is the great thing
about digital media that there are no boundaries and viewers experiences will
just keep on improving, making expectations amongst consumers grow.
High-def CCTV cameras risk backlash, warns UK watchdog
The latest cameras can be fitted with professional SLR camera lenses to improve
images taken
Surveillance cameras will now offer up to 29 megapixels, which is better than cameras used
by professional photographers. :0
Manufacturer's figures suggest there will be 129,299 HD CCTV cameras in the
UK by the end of 2012. In 2016 there will be a rise to over 3.7 million.
The main use for these new cameras will be to improve the qaulity of the images. Reports have shown that these camera's were used to convivt people in the Riots in 2011. The Goverment are hoping this will discourage crime as people will now be more vary.
CCTV images helped police arrest suspects after 2011's riots
"Whether it's tracking down a thug who brutally mugged an old lady, a vandal who
trashed a war memorial or searching for a missing child, CCTV plays a crucial
role in tackling crime and making people safer," said Mehboob Khan, chairman of
the association's Safer and Stronger Communities Board
The UK government has asked Mr Rennison to draw up a code of conduct for CCTV
use in England and Wales. He is
due to present a report to Parliament in April.
His interview suggests he will take a tough line.
"It is the Big Brother scenario playing out large," he told the
Independent.
"It's the ability to pick out your face in a crowd from a camera which is
probably half a mile away."
Below are a few comments from the BBC page from the members of the public.
.Ruth 1 Hour ago
Nothing to hide...nothing to fear. If we are going to have CCTV, it should be
fit for purpose. No point recording a crime and finding the images are so poor
they're useless. So bring on the HD cameras and hopefully crime will either drop
or be easier to prosecute. It will be worth it if it stops or aids the
prosecution of just one crime. I'd rather be safer than have 'privacy' whilst
being mugged!
justin de shed 1 Hour ago
I have no problems with it at present, and would welcome more cameras in some
rural areas.
However I don't always trust the police to use it sensibly
and not for more trivial offences.
Robert 2 Hours ago
The more the better in my opinion.
My university lecturer has been
working on software which can identify peoples height/walk/clothing; meaning a
suspect found on one camera can potentially be found/identified on any other
camera automatically.
The more intelligent and detailed they become the
better...
