KCB206 Tutorial Group 1

While politics in the past was an area that was indeed influenced by media in the newspapers and on television, however there has been a vast change in the political platforms of today due to the advent of online networking and the ongoing evolution of New Media itself. What makes this area interesting is that this advent has brought with it an array of positives with it, but it is also not without its downsides.

One of the primary and most obvious positive influences that networking has had on the political system is that sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit have given anyone with access to the internet the ability to become involved in discussions about the government, allowing for individuals now to publicly state their own views and opinions either appraising or criticizing the operations of their and other countries’ governments. It is clear how much the internet truly has given much power back to the people; at the least to have their opinions heard and in some circumstances this power has lead to direct influence in political going-ons, the passing or absolving of legislation etc.

The other great benefit that networking has has on the political scale is by creating a global, social environment wherein we all operate in our day to day lives with a much higher degree of transparency than we did a few decades ago. And this transparency allows the public to really see what is going on with their leaders, their activities and also to more actively engage with their opinions. This transparency has caused controversy, and this is a good thing, in that it makes people in these positions of power much more able to be scrutinized - and this had led to the decline of many people and institutions who have had things to hide.

The case that probably instantly springs to your mind would be the controversy surrounding the rise of the website ‘WikiLeaks’ whose creator Julian Assange used to publish classified and covered up government material. Since the controversies of WikiLeaks there has been a worldwide acceptance that Governments need to be held accountable for their actions, and this new transparency is forcing governments to make better choices and choices that are apparent to the public, not underhanded activities that are actively ‘hidden’ by prospective governments. It is easily seen why this is for the greater good of nations all over the world as a result of networking citizens are more properly and truthfully informed of their governments activities and motives, as it is far harder now for cover ups to occur due to instant messaging and networking. The changes social media is having is supported by Gladwell when he states that, “The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient.” (2010)

Although I don’t think anyone disagrees that there still isn’t a long way to go in the battle for transparency and to create governments where truth reigns total.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

According to Theresa Sauter, the media and specifically social media’s roll in the political world is to; inform people of occurrences, educate citizens on the meaning and significance of events, provide a platform for competing viewpoints and  allows for informed public opinon, give publicity to political goings on and expose political wrong doing and create public scrutiny(2012).

Politics will be relayed across every medium there is, whether it's so the politicians can attempt to reach out to young audiences, or they're being mocked by them, politics is every where.

Democracy is a fruit that only grows with everyone's hand helping, take away politics on the internet and you'll end up with a lot less people, knowing or caring. 

In the 1990s, there was a discourse of decline in political participation, a "crisis of democracy" (Castells 1998, 342-49). "Falling voter turnout; lower levels of public participation in civic life; public cynicism towards political institutions and parties; and a collapse in once-strong political loyalties and attachments.” (Coleman and Gøtze 2001, 4). Resulting in the decline of social cohesion and community well-being - “bowling alone” (Putnam, 2000)

Politics is about who can shout the loudest so the internet is the obvious battle ground, but of course things can go a little differently such as online activism. Online activism has given the power of politics back to the people, we can respond to policies with greater word spreading of a protest or concern.

The hackers known as Anonymous have engaged in multiple cases of online activism, in protests, hacking government websites, and even posting a video of a message from Anonymous is now seen as an act of online activism - simply for being known as a group of political headstrong, capable and active group.

References:

•Castells, Manuel. 1998. The Power of Identity, vol 2 of the Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell

•Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.

In this day and age the central idea of ‘media audiences’ has changed so drastically that networking and the flow of information from authors to audiences will without a doubt never be the same again. There is a much higher awareness amongst audiences now to question the material that they are being presented with by producers since the original mode of audiences simply receiving and accepting content that producers put out either on the television or in the newspapers is no longer. These days the idea of audiences and contributors have melded into the one category because of the ability for audiences to become not simply ‘active engagers’ but also ‘contributors’ to the new media content, as online networking and transmedia have allowed for contribution from all parties involved in the process. Rosen highlighted this when he said that, “...the people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable.” (2006) Now instead of the ready acceptance of material from producers in a non-dialogue driven setting - where no back and forth communication exists - it is the audiences who interpret this information from our own perspectives, and the audience now has the ability to generate new interpretations or meanings from this information. It is now very much a two way street.

As a result in this shift of power many new online communities have arisen and more are being created every day, that are finding new and interesting ways to change the communication between individuals, networks, companies and producers. This two way communication is becoming ever more diverse and varied. As a result of this evolution, our global economies have also had to radically shift in order to account for and encompass this change in new media technology. “A new hybrid economy has emerged, dominating the architecture for online commerce. ...This new economy can be either a commercial entity that aims to leverage value from a sharing economy; or a sharing economy that builds a commercial entity to better support its sharing aims.” (Lessig, 2010)

These hybrid economies can fall under two categories according to Lessig - either as ‘Community Spaces’ or ‘Collaborative Spaces’. Community spaces is when information is exchanged through networking for primarily sharing reasons (although there is also very prevalent economical and profit-related motives in these communities) - and examples of such sites would include facebook and twitter. However it is important to note that even facebook and twitter can fall under the category of collaborative space (communities wherein the participants are working together to achieve a goal or for a collective purpose) as well when users in the network drive online campaigns to raise awareness of issues or to garner individual support for campaigns - such as the ‘Real Men Don’t Kidnap Girls’ campaign on twitter which was very much a community of people coming together in order to collectively achieve a goal.

These major changes in the producer-viewer relationship have allowed for a much greater level of interaction between users from all over the world and thanks to the now two-way system of information flow, individuals are better able to criticize, support, or add new interpretations in response to the media content. The benefits of the future are apparent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lessig, Lawrence. 2008. ‘Chapter 7: Hybrid Economies’ In Remix: Making Art and Culture Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, 177-224. New York, NY: Penguin (Available on CMD).

“… those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all.”(Rosen 2006)

With the launch of Web 2.0 the audience spectrum has begun to change, no longer are we (the audience) in the corner eating while the cooks continue on in the kitchen, no, now we're the cooks too! Are there too many cooks in the kitchen? Well the internet's a big kitchen but that doesn't mean there's not going to be a hell of a mess.

“If all would speak who shall be left to listen?” (Rosen 2006)

I find this to be just slightly dramatic. Yes, there are disadvantages the creator-consumer dynamic -  the exploitation of data by businesses, a lot of awful memes, everyone thinking they're opinion needs to be heard, ect. But let's dissect this a little, not everyone is a creator-consumer, in fact I'd say that less than half total people who use the internet, aren't necessarily blogging and posting comments and memes. Yes, evening just reading and watching is technically creating something by the process being logged, but the consumers aren't really hungry for that kind of creation. 

Then again, businesses monitor data and use it to their advantage. “Every mouse click or video view is logged and even these inactive lurkers are ultimately (unwillingly?) generating data to refine content delivery systems or recommendation engines, and ultimately drive up the popularity of online media businesses.“ (Green & Jenkins 2011, 111)

So really it's not just that the audience has changed and become creators, the creators have also become the consumers. “The changes the internet has wrought … are shifting how we value audiences, how we understand what audiences do, and how they fit into the networks of capital, both economic and cultural, that constitute the current media landscape.” (Green and Jenkins 2011, 110; with reference to Van Dijck and Nieborg 2009)

Even just consuming is participating, and thus creating (in ways you may not have first intended). Viral makes the world go round and the world makes viral go round.  “...audiences play an active role in ‘spreading’ content: their choices, their investments and their actions determine what gets valued.” (Green and Jenkins 2011, 116)

That's right you helped Rebecca Black's "Friday" become so popular. You helped Facebook get more popular than Myspace. Your 'like' counts!

Bibliography:

•Green, Joshua and Henry Jenkins. 2011. “Spreadable Media. How Audiences Create Value and Meaning in a Networked Economy.” In The Handbook of Media Audiences edited by Virginia Nightingale, 109-127. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.  

Data is collected every second of every day. Every action made generates a piece of data, and big data leverages the advances in computing to make sense of the information and turn it into action to better run a business or provide a better service to customers (The Economist, 2012). The Economist video (2012) expresses the view that we do not necessarily live in an age of information, but one of network intelligence. Existing digital methods include data gathering, processing, analytics and visualisation, with each technique providing evaluation in a range of industries (Woodford, 2014). 

When using social media, trends and user involvement can be measured via hashtags. One particular use is gauging engagement with television, as Woodfoord, Prowd and Bruns (in press) explored using telemetrics. Many television programs and networks will engage audiences via hashtags. ABC Family program Pretty Little Liars, as example shown below, uses hashtags relevant to the events of an episode to generate discussion and allow viewers to categorise opinions. Assessing the number, frequency and content of tweets and hashtags helps networks to understand their viewership demographic and continue creating relevant and popular content. Although much of this is location specific. Take Big Brother for example; in the US there is little correlation between viewers and tweets, whereas in the Australian version of the same program, there is a high correlation between viewer count and tweets (Woodford, 2014). As such, US models should not be applied to Australia, and instead location appropriate techniques must be applied.  

Pretty Little Liars Screenshot Image Sourced from: http://commercialbreaktv.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/pretty-little-liars-out-of-sight-out-of-mind/.

This use of data analysis demonstrates the scale of information released and the influence it can have. This has become so widespread that companies such as Nielsen SocialGuide and BlueFin Labs, have in fact been bought out by Twitter (Woodford, et al., in press). What commercial organisations must bear in mind though is the variance amongst the Twitter audience. Woodford (et al., in press) found that while the variance in ratings are mirrored in tweets and unique users, actual user variation is more extreme. Supporting Woodford (et al., in press) Harrington (2013) states that further development of analytical processes is required to understand how television is experienced by audiences in their everyday lives.

The data that organisations are collecting could alarm the people from whom they are collecting it. Coles and Woolworths both use their award programs, Fly Buys and Everyday Rewards respectively, to track the buying habits of their customers. Doing this permits them to send personalised, targeted marketing to each of their customers. The supermarket giants rely on this data so heavily that Woolworths has outlaid at least $20 million for a 50% non-controlling stake in data analytics company Quantium (Mitchell and Ramli, 2013). In turn, Quantium will be able to tap Woolworths’ de-identified customer data to improve services to a wide range of clients including eBay, Telstra, Suncorp and Qantas (Mitchell and Ramil, 2013).

Considering the large customer base of Woolworths and other large corporations, this use of data could frighten some customers. Especially when data is passed on to second party organisations. Many people do not feel comfortable with the level of knowledge organisations have on their spending habits. So while big data may be a great asset to organisations, consumers may be opposed to the analytics employed.  

Reference List

Commercial Break TV. 2013. “Pretty Little Liars: Out Of Sight Out Of Mind.” Accessed May 8, 2014. http://commercialbreaktv.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/pretty-little-liars-out-of-sight-out-of-mind/.

Harrington, Stephen. 2013. “Chapter 18: Tweeting about the Telly,” In Twitter and society, edited by Katrin Weller, 237-247. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Accessed May 8, 2014. https://qutvirtual3.qut.edu.au/qv/olt_material_search_p?p_unit_code=KCB206.

Mitchell, Sue and David Ramli. 2013. “Quantium leap for Woolworths.” Australian Financial Review, May 2. Accessed May 8, 2014. http://www.afr.com/p/business/companies/quantium_leap_for_woolworths_GVE7EDP9KOkqhdeH5rLw3I.

The Economist. 2012. “What is big data?” YouTube video, posted June 26. Accessed May 8, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZGEusG13A. 

Woodford, Darryl. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 9 lecture notes.” Accessed May 7, 2014. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232447_1.

In this week, we are looking at New Media Politics and Engagement, then I will like to further talk about the positives factors for society and the significant example of the correlation of political power and social media.

 Nowadays, social media can be powerfully use for politicians and when their votes, give them more public perception and support. Different social media’s platforms in the political world which are able to educate citizens on the meaning and significance of events, inform people of occurrences, provide a platform for different viewpoint ad allow for informed public opinions, give publicity to political going on and expose political wrong doing and create public scrutiny (Sauter, 2014).

The use of social media is becoming a feature of political and civic engagement for many people in many countries. According the study release that some 60% of American adults use either social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter and a new survey by the Pre research Centre’s Internet & American Life Project finds that 66% of those social media users-or 39%of all American adults, have done at least one of eight civic or political activities with social media.

Social Media also offers the rare example of a marketing strategy on which politics isn’t twenty years behind.  Candidates and elected officials have been quick to adopt and leverage social media to engage and educate voters.  For example, Barack Obama had dozens of social network profiles, ranging from MiGente.com to Facebook to BlackPlanet. 

The fastest growing and farthest reaching of social network involve four social media which represent the distinct ways of publishing to and connecting with voters in practically.

Facebook

Facebook is comprehensive and allows you to post pictures, add videos, send detailed mass messages, publicly interact on Walls, and more.

Twitter

Twitter excels in short message bursts, event updates, blog post pushes, and breaking news.  It allows a campaign to instantly send a succinct message to 1000’s of followers and also lets the campaign interact with other people in a one-on-one manner.

YouTube

YouTube is purely a video medium.  However, its reach cannot be underestimated.  The service’s search engine is second in use only to Google!  This staggering number of searches makes it essential to own your candidate’s name for search on this platform.

Flickr

Flickr should be used to publish campaign photos.  With more than 4 billion images and over 30 million monthly visitors, it’s an important place to be and exposes your campaign to an important network.

In fact, the online activism and politics certainly now has playing important role in our society. It has provided a good opportunity to allow politicians to express their opinions and policies and promote themselves. It allows them to reach more people from public while also allowing their supporters to feel involved in the campaign and give them an opportunity to voice their personal opinions.

 However, online activism is most being positive using in the society. It allows people to communicate their opinions on negative and positive occurrences in their society. It allows for a larger following for any petitions and surveys.

References:

“Week 8 New media politics and engagement”, Sauter Theresa 2014. Accessed 29th april 2014.   http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232450_1

BIG DATA, GOOD OR BAD?

So what is big data and what is it used for? Big data is essentially data that is collected about nearly every individual on this planet that is somehow connected to technology. According to The Economist (2014.) Big Data can be summed up as “Whenever you click on a website, every time you make a purchase, every time that a light switch goes on and off, its generating a piece of data. Big Data right now is leveraging all the advances I computing in order to make sense of all that information.”  So basically anyone who lives in society where any form of technology is used cannot escape from generating data that is then stored.

The generation of big data can serve as a platform to gain information for many different purposes. This includes predicting what films, music and other entertainment we might want to see based on our previous viewing history. While this can be a good way to sort through the large amount of media or entertainment (data) that we wont be interested in, in order to save us (the consumer) time, is it really a good thing that companies are able to invade our privacy by seeing what we are watching and when?

  According to Woodford (2014.) “Big Data is generally seen as a currency. It’s something that’s bought, sold, traded… Wal-Mart is famous for using analytics to maximize the profit of their retail operation, by knowing their customers buying habits.” If this is true then it is worrying that large companies such as Wal-Mart are in fact taking advantage of information that should in fact be private information in order to make a large profit.

  However it is not only large organisations and companies that are able to take advantage of the data that each person creates. “The people that are spending most of the time right now, speaking and focusing and thinking about big data are large companies and governments.” (THNKR, 2013.) If both companies and governments are using big data for their own gain then who will make sure that the use of our private and personal information is not being abused and used unethically?

  It is scary to think that there is potentially no regulation or monitoring of what our personal information is being used for. Companies are actually selling this information to each other in order to possibly predict our futures. This means that our information can then be used against us. As Siegal (2013.) states “Predictive technology is commonplace and affects everyone, everyday. It impacts your experiences in undetectable ways as you drive, shop, study, vote, see the doctor, communicate, watch TV, earn, borrow or even steal.”

  If our data could in fact be working against us without us even knowing it, (by taking advantage of our private information) then maybe this an issue that calls for society to confront governments into putting policies in place, so that our data is not being abused by the wrong people.

  References:

Siegel, Eric. 2013. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie or Die. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Accessed May 9, 2014. http://reader.eblib.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/(S(wbn2xnvnovl3stjuefywoz5p))/Reader.aspx?p=1124085&o=96&u=srUimbpc5%2bYqzWe3zTvhXg%3d%3d&t=1400240931&h=A72C545944C48F46ED2F3EE39AA48BC8C9CBB5B6&s=12905123&ut=245&pg=1&r=img&c=-1&pat=n&cms=-1#

The Economist. 2012. "What is Big Data?" Youtube Video posted June 26. Accessed May 9, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZGEusG13A

THNKR. 2013. “The Dangers of Big Data.” Youtube Video posted April 16. Accessed May 9, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8yMlMBCQiQ

                                            (Image Source)

As society continues to invest in being technologically involved, sharing information online is becoming a norm. Posting a status, liking a link, shopping online or browsing online sites are part of our online footprint which combined all together is understood to be Big Data. Woodford defines it as a large and complex amounts of information that are difficult to maintain or control; furthermore in each specific industry, Big Data acts as currency (Woodford, 2014). It is the constant monitoring and storing of any online behavior. I could login in to Facebook in the morning and post a status. If I did this 3 times in a day and repeated it everyday, such a simple act can contribute to a study conducting how many times users login and use Facebook a day.

Individuals are able to see the mass amount of information online however only industry experts are able to use Big Data to collect and analyze specific information to influence their target markets. The objective - varying depending on the industry – allows the experts to compile information as statistic evidence on their target demographics in order to determine what is happening and why. This is important for who the experts work for as it allows then to assess what is needed to influence the behavior of their target group to positively impact on their business interests. It is important to note that any information – knowingly or unknowingly – given online is contributing to Big Data.

Most common platforms that allow experts to analyse the public is through twitter and tumblr. Specific terms searched on both sites allow them to see public interest on such topics as well as which individuals these topics are relevant to. Unfortunately compiling such data without the knowledge of the individuals contributing blurs the line between public and private. Big Data research is often caught in the dilemma of ethical data collecting and conducting research that invades privacy. For experts working for media companies, they are able to use online platforms to affect marketing campaigns to benefit their company. However, individuals whose information is taken can counter argue with belief that such practice crosses an ethical line.

The Internet encompasses the ideal that every has a right to ‘freedom of speech’. However Big Data research ensures that such a right can later be used in order to target the individuals demographic. Personally I find this burdening as anything I do online can be tracked and monitored by such media experts. Although Big Data is beneficial when determining trends and behavior trends online, it is evident that online users be aware that what they share is open for anyone to track. What's mine is yours; subsequently what's yours is mine. Beware the online tracker.

  References

(Image Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Big_data_cartoon_t_gregorius.jpg)

How many people do you know that have an online presence?

Actually, scratch that. It’s probably quicker to ask you to count how many people you know that don’t have an online presence.

The chances are that most of the people you know are online (unless you know an unusually high amount of elderly people).

The truth is, it is becoming quite difficult to live your life without being online. Things like online shopping and online banking are becoming increasingly popular. So popular that it can sometimes be more pleasant to do things over the internet, rather than deal with incompetent staff members in store (who usually refer you online anyway so they don’t have to bother with you). These days, doing your errands online has become so normal that we don’t even think about what we’re doing. We don’t think about how much information about ourselves we leave behind as we frolic around cyberspace looking at all the cool stuff.

This information – all of our information – is Big Data.

Big Data is, in essence, large and complex amounts of information that are difficult to maintain or control (Woodford, 2014).

Big Data, for every industry, is currency (Woodford, 2014).

There are many experts across every industry, who specialise in dealing with Big Data. They collect it and analyse it so that they can use it to influence their target market. It is all compiled into statistics based on demographics to determine what you’re doing and why. They do all this just so that they can make you more inclined to buy their product or service.

However, Big Data doesn’t only come from information imprints you left behind by accident. I can guarantee that a majority of you will provide Big Data willingly on a daily basis. And you probably don’t even know it.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever used a Hashtag (now put it down, you look stupid).

That’s right, the simple Hashtag is key in finding some pretty important information. Those who are interested can find out what people are talking about, what they think of it and why they think that way. All on one quick search. For example, if the marketing team at Channel Seven wanted to find out how My Kitchen Rules was being received by the public, they could just search twitter for #MKR, or even just the ‘keyword’ MKR, and every tweet involving either that Hashtag or keyword would be at their disposal.

The act of collecting Big Data has been known to blur the lines of public and private data. Data such as tweets are on a public forum, and therefore can be considered public data. However, if the person who wrote the tweet didn’t realise that it would be used for Big Data market research, can it also be seen as a breach of privacy? Where do you draw the line between ethical data collection and privacy invasion?

I'll leave you with this question: Is Big Data a big issue or a big breakthrough?

  References

What is this data? The record of action through the pathways of networking - almost the internets subconscious - the constant and vigilant recording and monitoring of every website visited, every link clicked upon, every item purchased online, the storing of information that is the ever growing life-flow of the internet. And this big data is constantly growing in size and complexity - REALLY growing. The fact that, “...90% of the data in the world today was created in the last 2 years,” (Koirala, 2014) truly highlights just how fast the escalation of transfer of information on the internet is rising.

There is a huge variety in the types of big data information that is collected, and alongside this, there is a huge number of REASONS why such an enormous amount of effort in Computing Technological advances in the modern day is coming up with ways of storing much larger volumes of this ‘Big Data’, and indeed how to store more ‘complex’ volumes of this data. The variety of this data is highlighted by Siegal (2013) when he says, “Depending on who is gathering the data and what they plan to do with it, it can include clicks on a website, purchases you make both on and offline, and the media content you view.”

When thinking about your everyday life, you quickly realize just how much of this data you ALONE must create. Even the simple acts of checking and replying to a few messages on facebook, commenting on a twitter post, and watching some content on youtube - every time any action is performed through such networks by you, you are adding to the vast megastore of global data. Now imagine this much data being created by the  approximate 39% of the entire world’s population that uses internet (International Telecommunications Union, 2014) - that’s an approximate 2.8 billion users as of 2014. Now a true glimpse of the size and nature of Big Data can be seen!

Although there are many obvious implications and benefits in the monitoring, compiling and analysis of this type of data, such as to allow for businesses to run smoother and for companies to learn what their customers want, there are also counter arguments for the total freedom of this sort of information tracking - on ethical grounds such as people’s invasion of privacy and right to anonymity. While today the vast majority of this data is obtained anonymously, there is contention as to when does the simple gathering of market data for websites, companies, and products, actually become spying into people’s private online usage - and when this information is used to track your interests and then used, as is common today, to spit back advertisements at the user aimed at hitting home, it is no surprise that networkers can be somewhat anxious about the idea that every movement of theirs is tracked or stored in some way.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

International Telecommunications Union (2014). “Internet Users Per 100 Inhabitants 2006-2014”. Geneva, 2014. 

Siegel, Eric. 2013. “Introduction – The Prediction Effect.” In Predictive Analytics, 1-16. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

In this week’s lecture we learnt about the phenomenon of Big Data, predictive analytics and how these concepts are reinventing the entertainment industry’s traditional modes of determining success. Big Data is essentially a buzzword that is used to represent the billions upon billions of bytes of data generated by the interactive processes of online business. The world’s information is now accessible in real time, generating statistics and figures corresponding to every nuance of interactivity. “Big data right now is leveraging all the advances in computing in order to make sense of all that information” (Chung, 2012).There’s ways to pinpoint the multitude of people that are talking about which specific news topics, which websites are accessed the most on a regular basis and which country listens to which musical artist the most. Analysis of this kind of data can accurately measure the way the public consumes any aspect of online life.  

Twitter hashtags are being analysed by television studios as a new mode of interrelation with viewers that goes beyond mere rating statistics. A television show’s social media presence and ability to generate an online dialogue has become almost as important as traditional platforms for measuring a show’s success. Cooper Smith wrote in Business Insider Australia that “Social TV activity creates a trove of useful data, which can be put to use to generate more effective advertising and better programming decisions”(2013).  Social Media functions as a real time focus group for television shows and a way for a network to determine the key demographics and opinions of their viewers. When an advertiser wants to know the kind of audience a television show has; big data analysis provides a more accurate, detailed depiction of these kinds of statistics than ever before.  It shows how an audience interacts, interweaves and connects with the wider media ecology (Woodford, 2014).

One example of a show fully embracing the world of social media is the hugely successful reality dance competition Dancing With the Stars. Last year the show partnered with social media giant Facebook to revolutionise the way their show functions.  Each episode now utilises two of Facebook’s main tools, its keyword API and keyword insights API. These API’s capture live conversations happening over the social network in real time which are displayed as messages and data on-screen during and after a dancer’s performance. This data is then analysed to determine which dancers are generating the most buzz and breaks down the volume of conversations into specific demographics such as age, gender and even hyper targeted to geographic locations (Marechal, 2013). This new mode of cross platform media interactivity not only makes for a more immersive consumer experience, but actively encourages viewers to create a social media dialogue to essentially promote the show. It is an inventive synergy exercise that has positioned the show as a modernist platform on the forefront of a new wave of entertainment technology. . 

Big Data has revolutionised the way entertainment is now marketed, created and consumed. As Anthony Silva stated in the Economist’s short video shown during our lecture: “We can measure so much more than we ever could, and now we’re going to be able to visualise so much more than we ever could and it’s going to provide a whole new framework for understanding human civilization (Silva, 2012)” It’s an exciting new development in new media that certainly can be pinpointed as one of the more exciting revolutions in popular culture today.

References

The Economist, Andrew Chung. “What is big data?.” YouTube. YouTube, 26 June 2012. Web. 11 May 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZGEusG13A>.

Marechal, AJ. "Facebook Friends 'Dancing with the Stars' for First Entertainment Pact (Exclusive)." Variety. N.p., 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 11 May 2014.

Smith, Cooper. "Social TV Is Moving Beyond The Hashtag, And Deep Into Big Data Territory." Business Insider Australia. N.p., 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 11 May 2014.

Week 10 – New Media, Big data and telemetrics

Everything you do generates data

The Title speaks for itself; everything you do produces data. One of the videos that I watched about big data states that data is collected every second. “Everything” involves clicking on a website, making a purchase, turning a light bulb on and off. Therefore, it can be seen that a lot of things in our everyday life creates data.  IBM say that every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – so much that 90 per cent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone (Runciman, 2014).  Today an unprecedented amount of data is being produced at greater speeds from a larger number of sources, and there are complex new data types to deal with (Karena, 2012).

While journalists are embracing social science techniques, social scientists are undergoing a fundamental shift in the ethical structure that has defined the moral use of these techniques (Fairfield & Shtein, 2014). Much of social science ethics focuses on rights and responsibilities toward the individual human participant (Fairfield & Shtein, 2014). Therefore, the amount of data produced each day does create ethical issues and challenges for companies. Big data can be misused through the abuse of privilege by those with access to the data and analysis tools (Runciman, 2014). This can cause private information to be leaked and can cause security problems. With all the data generated every day, how can we be certain that it is not misused and our information is managed responsibly? An example of misused data and leaked information is the 2006 Netflix incident. They released an anonymised database of 100 million movie ratings and offered $1 million to the first team who could use that data to "significantly improve" Netflix's recommendation algorithm (Walton, 2014). Using publicly available user ratings in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) for fifty Netflix members, researchers were easily able to identify to a statistical near-certainty two users in the Netflix database (Walton, 2014). Big data can cause big issues when it comes to privacy. The data can create ethical issues with companies and users need to be aware of these issues. However, so much data is being collected so it can be a challenge to ensure these incidents never occurs.

    Bibliography

Fairfield, J., & Shtein, H. (2014). Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Exploring Questions of Media Morality. Big Data, Big Problems: Emerging Issues in the Ethics of Data Science and Journalism , 29 (1).

Karena, C. (2012). Top 6 big data issues . Retrieved May 11, 2014, from The Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/top-6-big-data-issues-20120816-24a6w.html

Runciman, B. (2014). Big Data, Opportunities and challanges . United Kingdom: BCS Learning and Development Ltd.

Continue with the topic of new media and big data nowadays. As we all know, “new media” is the most effective way of spreading news or what’s been happening around the world, other than that, it often makes sure the world know them rapidly.

Imagine a piece of news as a good story with continuing chapters, new media like telemetries is the person who sits by you and tells the story, but time’s up, you’ve got to go to bed, and you are desperately wondering what happens on the next chapter, what would you do? This is when predictions come up to the stage. “Predictive Analytics: The power to predict who will click, buy, lie, or die” is the book that tells you everything about predictions and the effects of them.

For personal opinion, predictions in media factor are just very powerful, and it this book and the new media could perfectly bond together. For example, “Hollywood studios predict the success of a screenplay if produced” (the book ‘Predictive analytics: the power to predict who will click, buy, lie, or die’, page five, number one), this is how people consume, or we can say how people predict what will happen in Hollywood. The question is “how is this connecting with new media?” let me ask you a question: how does everybody know that Hollywood succeeded in screenplays? The media! This is why they are the perfect twin that before any predictions are spoken in any circumstances, new media makes sure those predictions are on the right track by providing truths.

Truths are boring, guessing is unreliable, but if they are bonded together it will be very impressive, and this is the relationship of new media and predictions.

Predictions are fundamental in our real life. This is one way of guidance of public opinions direction and it is crucial. (stock market, gambling, sports gaming, educations, bank loans, etc) (Good news! Predictions need not be accurate to score big value. For instance, one of the most straightforward commercial applications of predictive technology is deciding whom to target when a company sends direct mail. If the learning process identifies a carefully defined group of customers who are predicted to be, say, three times more likely than average to respond positively to the mail, the company profits big time by preemptively removing likely no responders fi·om the mailing list. And those no responders in turn benefit, contending with less junk mail. (Siegel & Eric, 2013)

Predictions might not be very accurate still, but as it’s been mentioned, it is very important to have predictions around the world and it does make values. Making new media and the predictions bonded is a wise idea; new media can do his best to make sure predictions are as accurate as possible. The new world begins, with the new ways.

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