The rise
of technology brings a new media age where people are able to consume as well
as produce media through various media outlets. People are able to
access information, entertainment, political and cultural media through various
outlets known as social media. Social media applications are
conveniently accessible through our smart phones, computers, and tablets and with
this in mind we have now moved from an era of media to social media (Menovich,
1). I found this statement to be interesting, seeing as the change
that took place over the course of a couple year was almost
unnoticeable. Many people used to obtain their information and media
content from media sources like the radio, news broadcasting channels, and the
newspapers. However we are now seeing a large divide between old
media and new media, mostly being social media and social
networking. The most interesting shift taking place between these
two types of media are the producers. With online social media
platforms available to the public we are now seeing more “non-professional”
media producers oppose to “professional” paid media producers (Menovich, 1). However
even though there are numerous media platforms online available to the public
at no cost, very few people take part in online media production. In
Menovich’s article he claims that in the year 2007 only 0.5-1.5% of online
users were producing online content (Menovich, 2). I found this
number to be extremely low even for the time. However I now have to
take into consideration that we are in the year 2013 and that online media
production is probably much higher seeing as the popularity of many social
media sites have sky rocked, and so many people feel the need to publish every
single thing they do to the internet.
A website
that I found to be extremely focused on online media production is
YouTube. YouTube is a social media website that allows people to
publish their own or others content and upload it to their page where they can
share their videos with the world. What I found interesting in the
Hilderbrand article was that he believes YouTube’s success to be because of
social memory. YouTube is a social media website that allows us to
access our social memories that we can relate to and remember otherwise forgotten
memories. These memories can be from a Super bowl
halftime, news broadcast, a funny clip of a kitten dancing, or even from our
favorite TV show that you are able to re-watch over and over again online
(Hilderbrand, 50). Also what was interesting in his article was that
he mentioned that people spend more time watching a video on YouTube oppose to
watching the actual event where it took place. I could not help
myself but to think of every viral video that is available on the internet. If
the MTV music award are on and something dramatic happens, suddenly everyone
wants to watch the clip and the first place you go to find the clip is YouTube.
Social
media websites like YouTube however have a difficult time publishing content
due to copyright laws. In order for social media websites to face
copyright laws they need to start having corporations like Disney, and Time
Warner or CNN to join YouTube and set up accounts where they put the clips that
people want to see from their movies, TV shows or news broadcasts. This
would get rid of copyright infringement laws because they own the
content. I believe this is what many artists have done by creating
their own page and uploading their latest videos for fans to sample music as
well as create playlists.
Even
though the tools to create online media content are right very accessible I do
not find myself taking the time to produce online content, however I am more of
a consumer. I follow numerous blogs on various topics, I watch viral
videos on YouTube along with my favorite YouTube star Jenna Marbles and I
appreciate their online media production however that is not something that I
would be interested in doing.
References
Manovich,
l. (2008) The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass
Cultural Production?Critical Inquiry. Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter
2009), pp. 319-331.
Hilderbrand,
L. (2007). Youtube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge. Film
Quarterly. Vol. 61, No. 1, 48-57.
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