Audiences and Publics Are Important in Media Convergence Culture

SCHOOL OF MEDIA, CULTURE AND CREATIVE ARTS ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET To be attached to all assignments (ALL SECTIONS MUST BE COMPLETED) STUDENT NAME:†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦HAO JING WEI†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ STUDENT ID:†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦15646457†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ UNIT NAME AND NUMBER:†¦MCI212 Consumers, Audiences, Publics and Users DUE DATE:†¦Critical essay 15 October 2012 (by 4pm via email) †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. WORD COUNT:†¦1800 – 2200 words †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢ € ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. TUTORIAL DAY AND TIME:†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦11am to 2pm, Wednesday, C25†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. TUTOR’S NAME:†¦Ms.Lai Jia Weng †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT YOUR TUTOR’S NAME IS ON ALL SUBMITTED ASSIGNMENTS DECLARATION: I declare that I have retained a copy of this assignment. I have read and understood Curtin University policies on Plagiarism and Copyright and declare that this assignment complies with these policies. I declare that this assignment is my own work and has not been submitted previously in any form for assessment. Signature:†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Hao Jing Wei†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Date: †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 15. 10. 2012†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Audiences and Publics Are Important in Media Convergence Culture IntroductionAfter we have studied about consuming culture through module 1, now all of us should know about consumption better. As we know audiences and publics are important parts in consuming culture – such as audiences purchase goods, shopping, living, traveling, education, services and so on, the world especially the consumption world is all about audiences and publics, at the same time they play a very important role in convergence culture as well. In today’s increasingly digital cultural, the way consumers consume and the way publics and audiences communicate are totally different from the traditional media times.Nowadays, people require both of physical and mental for life satisfaction such as purchase more healthy foods, watch digital TV, go to higher education, have internet services and so on. Convergence culture is the outcome of the rapid development of new information and communication technologies. According to â€Å"†¦Media convergence must also be seen as having a cultural logic of its own, blurring the lines between production and consumption, between making media and using media, between active or passive spectatorship†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Deuze, 2007, p. 74)From this quote we know that media convergence makes several changes between production and consumption, between making media and using media, between active or passive spectatorship of mediated culture. In this essay there are four main points to discuss how audiences and publics play roles in convergence culture. Discussions Firstly, the role audiences and publics play has been changed from passive to active. With the high technology development of media, new media has become more and more important than old media. Back to 20th century, old media such as TV was the main trend in the world and controlled audience.For instance, as we know all the TV programs will follow a fixed schedule, audiences only can watch whatever the TV programmes show, once you miss the show, then you will miss the show ever, unless the TV channels broadcast again. While nowadays, with the digital TV appeared, the audiences have become from passive to active. First of all, the digital TV can broadcast programmes at the same time, and based on â€Å"†¦Another huge advantage of digital television is that digital data takes up less bandwidth, meaning more channels can be broadcast at the same time.This gives viewers much more choice in what they watch and allows for follow up channels which broadcast the same programs as their namesake, just an hour later†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Davies, n. d. ) And â€Å"†¦Digital TV from Telenet: watch whatever you want, whenever you want†¦(Digital television, n. d. ). These mean the audiences can watch different shows at the same time, as well as they can switch programmes to whatever they want to watch. This kind of changes is a big different from analog TV. Next, digital TV allows audiences to pause or record live broadcasts at the click of a button.According to â€Å"†¦With Telenet Digital TV you can pause prog rams and rewind programs that you have viewed. You can record a program by simply pushing one button and your recording is immediately stored digitally on a hard disk†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Digital television, n. d. ), so you no longer have to miss your favourite TV programmes! And based on â€Å"†¦However, it’s a great leap to presume that the availability of digital networked technologies turns everyone into active participants. †(van Dijak, 2009, p. 44) From these quotes and examples we can see that audiences and publics are not passive any more.Secondly, audiences and publics have more participation and interactive with production company. For instance, Big Brother is a reality TV from United Kingdom and developed in the late 1990s. This TV programme offers audiences go to the onscreen world of the programme, use mobile phones and automatic number redial techniques to try and ensure their candidate in the house emerged the winner. These are two special points of Big B rother. According to â€Å"†¦Over the past 15 years, viewers have increasingly acted as participants in game shows, quizzes, talk shows and make-over programmes†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (van Dijak, 2009, p. 3) And â€Å"†¦particularly the surge of reality television has boosted the of ‘ordinary people’ in broadcast productions†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Teurlings, 2001) and â€Å"†¦In addition, the popularity of personal and communal media (home movies, home videos, community television) has profoundly affected television culture, particularly since the 1980s†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (van Dijak, 2009, p. 43) And based on â€Å"†¦Viewers were encouraged to visit the websites, and for a small subscription fee, could buy additional access to coverage of the more intimate activities, likes and dislikes, directly to the gained from syndicated†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Ross, 2003, p. ), from these quotes we can see that the audiences have more interactive than before and the production company tr y to require unprecedented levels of interactivity with public as well. Thirdly, the perspectives of audiences and publics have more influences on programmes producing. Not only TV programmes but also all media programmes need audiences, need public. If a production company produces a programme without listening to the voice of audiences, it is just like flowers are far away from soil, fishes are far away from water. Without audiences, the progranmme is dead sooner or later.Based on â€Å"†¦Similarly, producers of popular television entertainment – such as soap operas or police dramas – are developing innovative ways to collect audience feedback, and then applying this information to the development of new characters and plotlines, as well as to include the most current social issues in their shows†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Deuze, 2007. p. 75) And according to â€Å"†¦A very important reason is to understand your audience. The more you know about the types of people i n your audience, their backgrounds, their interests, and their preferences, the better you can be at making programs to suit them†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Know Your Audience, n. . ) With the development of media convergence, audiences’ interests have become more and more important. â€Å"†¦The intensity of emotional involvement exhibited by viewers of reality TV led programme executives to consider new ways to monitor, channel and exploit viewer interest†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Ross, 2003, p. 3) From the quotes we can see that audiences’ perspectives play an important role in the development of programmes producing and audience curiosity is subject to commercial exploitation. Fourthly, audiences and publics play more than one roles in media convergence culture. †¢ Audiences as users †¦In the development of a professional identity among media workers, can be illustrated by a November 2005 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project among teenagers in the United St ate, which report concludes:’ Some 57% of online teens create content for the internet. ’†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Deuze, 2007, p. 76) And based on â€Å" †¦During 2005, online social network sites like MySpace and Facebook became common destinations for young people in the United States†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Boyd, 2005, p. 119) From these quotes, we can see that with the rapid development of Internet technology, social networks appeared into people’s life, especially for the young generation.Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. â€Å"†¦Young people were logging in, creating elaborate profiles, publicly articulating their relationships with other participants, and writing extensive comments back and forth†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Boyd, 2005, p. 119) Users can create blogs, create or work on a webpage for school, an organizations, or a friend, share original content such as photos, opinions, stories, videos online, or art work and so on. Another example is Sina Weibo. Weibo† in Chinese stands for micro-blog, it has been launched recently in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and North America. Sina Weibo is China’s twitter, it is the hottest mircroblogging services in China now and it’s activity around Chinese Diaspora. â€Å"†¦In Weibo, the user can post pictures and embed videos directly into their feed. Much like in Facebook, the media is thumbnailed and will expand if clicked on instead of opening up a completely new page/tab as in Twitter†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Jou, 2012) Based on â€Å"†¦According to Sina, Weibo has a registered total user base of 358 million, of which roughly 36. million active users daily†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Jou, 2012) And according to â€Å"†¦It consumes 90% market shares of China’s microblogging services, with more than 140 million users in less than 2 years, while Twitter gained 200 million users in less than 5 years. It’s new, itâ €™s hot, and it’s becoming bigger and stronger†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Falcon, n. d. ) Bade on these data, we can know that social networks have become an important part of people’s life. â€Å"Social network sites are based around profiles, a form of individual (or, less frequently, group) home page, which offers a description of each member.In addition to text, images, and video created by the member, the social network site profile also contains comments from other member and a public list†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Boyd, 2005, p. 123) According to â€Å"†¦Identity refers to our own sense of self and how we are seen by our communities†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Social Design, n. d. ) And â€Å"†¦Social Design defines how we understand ourselves and each other and can be broken down into three core elements: Identity, Conversation and Community†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Social Design, n. d. ) Users can create their individual profiles based on their own identity, such s you can design how your homepage looks like, share what you are interested, show privacy information about yourself to public etc. †¢ Audiences as citizen journalists With the social networks appeared, audiences are not only a group of people who receive messages, news and information but also be senders to send information, publish news. Audiences as public also can share information and news in the first place, that is we called citizen journalism. â€Å"†¦Citizen journalism is when private individuals do essentially what professional reporters do – report information†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Rogers, n. . ) And â€Å"†¦The Internet gave average people the ability to transmit information globally†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Rogers, n. d. ). From these quotes we know that as the development of Internet technology, nowadays everyone could be a journalist to publish what happen around us and around the world. According to â€Å"†¦New media technology, such as social networking and media-sharing websit es, in addition to the increasing prevalence of cellular phones, have made citizen journalism more accessible to people worldwide†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Citizen Journalism, n. d. ).We know that citizens can often report breaking news more quickly than professional media reporters. Such as â€Å"†¦two predominant groups of youth published information, calls to action, documentation of policy brutality, and coordinated their planning and activities via Facebook and Twitter†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Anemic Portrayal of, 2012). Another example is â€Å"†¦was a topic on The Call, and the show’s blog post for the topic incorporates citizen-generated content into the posts. The post starts off with a brief intro by host John Schiumo, a nice fresh statement that goes†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (â€Å"The Call† interactive, 2012) The third example is â€Å"†¦At 10:25 p. . on May 1, 2011, Keith Urbahn, who happened to be the former chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld but in this case was funct ioning as a citizen journalist, tweeted: â€Å"So I’m told by a reputable person†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (How citizen journalism, 2012) The last example is â€Å"†¦Online petitions undoubtedly, though, do represent a fabulous means of exercising one’s civic voice and leverage a response from public officials. In this example, New York City restored most of the proposed cuts to its public library budget due†¦ † (Petition power, 2012) As those examples tells us citizen journalism is more and more popular for media audiences.This is the outcome of development of Internet technology and development of mobile phone technology. Today, you can use your mobile phone to surf the internet while watch a TV programme, or watch a programme that was on TV last night on your smartphone while you are on the way to work and so on. There are too many changes in people’s life. Conclusions â€Å"All over the world, as audiences increasingly take control of their media and communications use, traditional business models are being forced to adapt quickly to the new realities of the digital era. † (Convergence Review, 2010. From the quote, we know that audiences and publics play important roles. Everyone has been in an audience, we have all been part of a group of people who come together to experience film, music, foods, traveling or other social activities. In media convergence, â€Å"All media events are audiences events since they require people to hang out in media time-spaces where they physically, mentally and emotionally engage with media materials, technologies and power structures. † (Ross, 2003. p. 6). Audiences are any group of people who receive a media text, it could be ny format such as Internet, TV news, radio programmes, newspapers and so on. Audiences are not only be audience any more, they also could be consumers and users at the same time in new media terms. They are not a group of people who receive messages and be pass ive any more, they are more active, participate and interactive with media convergence. Word count: 2106 References Anemic Portrayal of. (n. d). 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