Affiliate institution
Abstract
The new media has presented new interactive forms of delivering instant information to audiences. The proliferation of internet technologies and its capabilities have charged the culture of the audience from the consumer of information to a creative consumer who can individual or in a group influence the public opinion. The media institutions need to reengineer their content delivery strategies to be able to satisfy the hunger for immediate delivery of accurate, relevant and reliable information to its uses. Government controlled media institution are in a threat of extinction with the entrance of the new media
Media can be defined as means or tools for storing and transmitting data or information (Ewart, 2000). In the 21st century a number of channels for information transmission have increased and diversified unlike before when the only media for information passage were the audio media through the radio, visual media through the television, the newspapers. With the advancement in information and communication technology, the media industry is undergoing a complete revolution to remain relevant in the modern days (Foust, 2005).
With the entrance of powerful and affordable computers and advancement in networking the cost of generating and transmitting digital contents has significantly reduced (Manovich, 2001). Despite of all the hype generated by the use of internet researchers warn that this is just the tip of the iceberg (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The technological intertwining in computing, networking and digital content generation and presentation occurred with the creation and popularity of integrated services and activities emerging from the created digital space (Rainie, 2010). In the current digital world all issues to do with the institutional activities and social life are widely carried out in the emerged interactive digital media environment over a meshed of connected digital devices. Leisure activities have too shifted from the outdoor activities to online or computerized gaming of all sorts.
Computer games as a pass-time activity have continually attracted a number audience towards using the digital media. The emergent of Internet a potent platform to deliver and transmitting digital contents have revolutionized the way businesses are conducted and the way we communicate on a daily basis. Never before had the world had a communication media that joined the whole world till it appears like a big village. This media has become a key information sources for billions of users at work, home school and even those on transit. Coupled with the advanced graphic cards for our computers and the console systems games are now played online. This helped to popularize the digital/online games (Choi, & Kim, 2004).
With the increasing number of internet users which according to the conservative figures of internet users worldwide ranged at 150 million at the end of 1998, and the number quadrupled to approximately 500 million users by the year 2000. During these years the number of new internet web sites increased exponentially (Johnson, & Kaye, 2004). In Australia for example approximately 19% of the population were utilizing internet service in 19998 while in Britain 23 percent of the population had used the internet. USA recorded the largest number of internet user at same period. As at 2002 internet usage statistics the world internet users has rose to 7,017,846,922. The number of online users are directly proportional to the popularity of the online games. A research showed that the video games demand rose from 2.1 billion dollars in 2003 to 5.5 billion dollars in 2006. A further study conducted to segment the population of online gamers based on the age showed that of 65 million online gamers 16 percent are persons aged above 45 percent. This statistics shows that online games or rather digital games are popular among all age group (Choi, & Kim, 2004).
The media houses need to study the factors that lead to the popularization of the online games to be able to redesign a better strategy to capture the attention of the audience in a similar manner the online gaming did. The internet has provided a new channel through which various media form can be generated and transmitted. Internet supports the transmission of media in form of text media, audio media, and video. This has significantly influenced the strategies media houses are going to adopt or integrate the new media into their content dissemination/deliver strategies (Ewart, 2000).
Internet media has had a significant influence on the youth’s culture as this are the major consumer of the internet contents. The research literature on the internet and youth culture presents different views regarding the role of technology in society. There are two views in which the influence of technology on culture can be studied: deterministic and social construction of technologies.
The technological deterministic outlook takes the internet as an innovative power that has deep effect on young people. The technology breeds new forms of expression, communication, and motivation. Attempt to segment a group of young adolescents were exposed to the internet at their early stages of growth have been immersed in a media-rich environment, using computers, playing online games, regularly communicating and connecting with their closed persons friends by digital devices. This group creates and utilizes the digital spaces for social communication, identity expression, and media production and consumption.
There is an interesting association between the youth and the media. The youths today are the active partakers of the internet contents and at the same time they are active creators and contributors of the contents online. This was supported by the advent of web 2.0 platform which support various forms of media forms and provide tools for interactive communication (Livingstone, 2004). The reduced costs of organizing creative efforts and sharing resources permit persons to create their own content and to cooperate with other web users in social, economic, and political activities (Livingstone, 2004). Social media platforms enabled a number of adhoc and formal, small and large-scale online bloggers to showcase their creativity for instance the bloggers posts their opinions and analysis, people share music, picture. Thus with the interactive web platform the internet users are now active creators of opinion unlike before where the media houses moderated the opinions and users where only given chance to read.
In the early days mass media plays an important part in joining the world of persons. They had and still has abilities to cover a wide number of audiences with influential messages which may change the course of a society. Television and Radio have had a profound effect on the lives of the people. They dictated the contents the viewer or listeners listen a particular content. The mass media influenced the people’s opinions, informed people of the current issues and educated them on various topical issues. With the emergent of the new media, the traditional media has been challenged since the new media changes the mode of audience participation.
The traditional media have a reason for concern since this are the golden age for new media. The right technology is in place and the availability of trained professionals to offer professional services. With the increasing population of young people with great hunger for relevant and time information.
With improved communication and increased bandwidth and the increasing confidence in the media, a crisis is looming. The push for more channels and choices would significantly compromise the quality of the local contents (Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008).
With the infiltration of the new media there has been a growing concern on the quality of the contents. Initial regulatory authorities had a grip on the contents presented in the traditional media and also how to curb the increasing influence of the powerful elites in the media industry. In their argument Taylor and Perry (2005), postulate that there is little the media market can do to control pluralism and diversity.
Currently, the fast evolving technology is fuelling an information revolution. Digital broadcasting and the internet are bridging the constraints of the analogue world and waning out the control of government-owned media platforms. Comparing the relationship between the message broadcaster in the traditional media and new media shows a distinct difference. In the new media the contents are delivered instantly and the broader caster engages with the audience in an intelligent and interactive platforms (Morris, & Ogan, 1996).
The availability of the internet exposure have fuelled the creation of citizen journalists. Anyone can create news, this will release the tasks of developing news from the institutional news organizations who sometimes manipulate issues to change the opinion of the people.
The internet platforms have evolved to match with the people’s need. For institutions how were still exploiting there employees or governments who have for long denied citizens the freedom of express are soon losing control over its citizens (Lovink, 2007). Institution need to change ways of communicating issues to its citizen in a transparent and timely manner.
References
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