Digital Media

Introduction

• Within the last 30 years, the Internet has transformed the structure and economics of the media business.
• Before the 1970s, media were defined by their delivery systems:
  • Paper for print media (newspapers, magazines, books).
  • Antennas for broadcast signals (radio, television).
  • Film for movies.
  • Discs for music.

Digital Communication Transforms Media

• The Internet delivers all types of media (print, broadcast, movies, recordings) using a single delivery system without barriers.
• The Internet has caused the emergence of new media products and new competition in the media business that were impossible to foresee.
• The Internet combines millions of computer networks sending and receiving data from all over the world, with competing interests joined together by a common purpose but no common owner.
• "Digital media" describes all forms of communications media that combine text, pictures, sound, and video using computer technology.
• Digital media read, write, and store data electronically in numerical form, using numbers to code the data (text, pictures, sound, and video).

Digital Media Support Convergence

• In 1978, Nicholas Negroponte at MIT identified the theory of "convergence."
• Convergence means that the products media companies produced began to resemble each other.
• Negroponte created two models to show the position of the media industries in 1978 and his projected vision for those industries in the year 2000.
• Negroponte divided the media business into three segments:
  1. Print and publishing
  2. Broadcast and motion pictures
  3. The computer industry

20th-Century Discoveries Made Internet Possible

• Tim Berners-Lee is most responsible for the World Wide Web, creating HTML (hypertext markup language).
• Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) allowed people to create and send text, graphics, and video information electronically and set up electronic links from one source to another.
• Berners-Lee named his invention the World Wide Web.

Web Opens to Unlimited Access

• Universal access, limited only by available technology, gives the Web a feeling of "anarchy" - a place without rules.
• The Web’s growth as a true mass medium is limited only by digital technology and economics.
• The potential economic reward if consumers adopt a digital media product is so large that media companies are willing to take the risks of developing new products.

What Happens to Old Media?

• The introduction of a new medium or delivery system does not mean the end of the old.
• When television was introduced, radio adapted to its new place in the media mix, delivering music, news, and talk.
• Movies, threatened by television, responded by delivering more spectacular and more explicit entertainment.

Transformation Takes 30 Years

• Futurist Paul Saffo developed the 30-year rule, which has three stages of about 10 years each:
  1. "Lots of excitement, lots of puzzlement, not a lot of penetration."
  2. "Lots of flux, penetration of the product into society is beginning."
  3. "Oh, so what? Just a standard technology and everybody has it."

Web Access Leaves Some People Behind

• E-mail and text messaging are easy to use and text-based, which is familiar to most people.
• Familiarity and convenience are very important because fear of the unknown can keep people from changing established habits.
• The gap between people who have online access and those who don’t is called the "digital divide."
• According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, one out of five American adults say they have never used the Internet or e-mail and do not live in an Internet-connected household.
• These "truly disconnected adults" are people with less than a high school education, over 65, or who live in a rural area.

Internet Combines Commerce, Information, and Entertainment

• What makes the Web different from traditional media is its capacity to combine commerce with access to information and entertainment.
• Today, the largest single source of Web income is the money people pay their Internet service provider (ISP) to connect to the Web.
• Two other potential sources of income on the Web:
  1. Promoting Commerce
  2. Accepting Advertising
     • Most commercial Web sites now carry some form of advertising.
     • Because the Web is such a targeted medium, it holds better potential for monitoring consumers’ buying habits than traditional methods of advertising.
     • Internet "tracking" offers advertisers information about the audiences for their ads.
     • "Ad robots" allow a business to eavesdrop on chat room conversations while the user is online.
     • Advertising agencies offer "search marketing," which means placing client ads next to consumers’ online search results.
  3. Paying for Online Content
     • It has taken a long time for consumers to accept the idea that they should pay for Web content.
     • Some explicit Web sites charge for access, and some news and information sites, such as The Wall Street Journal, charge subscribers an annual fee for access to archived online content.

Mobile Media Chase the Audience

• The latest big target for expanding Internet media sales is the cell phone.
• The nation’s millions of cell phone users make mobile media consumers an inviting target.
• Mobile media content is restricted because it must be audible and/or clearly visible in the small viewing space of a cell phone screen.
• All four of the major TV networks and most subscription channels now offer programs and news video online, on demand, for computer and cell phone viewing.

Government Attempts to Coordinate and Control the Net

• The federal government has attempted to coordinate and regulate the Internet as it traditionally regulated broadcast media.
• Three principles guided the creation of the nation’s telecommunications structure:
  1. Private industry, not the government, would build the digital network.
  2. Programmers and information providers would be guaranteed access to the digital network to promote a diversity of consumer choices.
  3. Steps would be taken to ensure universal service.

Social Networks Grow Globally

• A social network is an Internet community where people share information, ideas, personal messages, photographs, audio, and video.
• Mobile applications (apps) make social network connections, such as Facebook, available to anyone with a mobile phone, anywhere in the world.
• Social networks enable anyone who wants to create a podcast or a blog or a personal Web space to share information and ideas and, most often, to stay in touch with friends and family.
• Podcast: Podcasting is the distribution of an audio or video file online. Individuals can easily use the Internet to create and share podcasts. Consumers can download podcasts and listen to them whenever and wherever they want, which also makes podcasts an easy way to reach a mobile audience.
• Blogs: By one estimate, 80,000 new blog sites are launched daily. The blog search engine Technorati tracks 29 million blog sites. A blog (short for Web log) is an online discussion group where people can post comments about a topic in a running conversation with each other.