#smst102

Task: Identify and describe what strategies one form of contemporary media is using to fund its operations in face of the digital economy. Reference three sources.

Media: Radio

Strategies that modern radio uses to fund its operations in the face of the digital economy: Most would probably say that radio is dead; that there’s just no need for it in the digital age. Well, that’s not entirely true. In fact, many radio broadcasters are thriving due to two things:

1)      Offering online content to internet users.

2)     Having an interactive presence in social media.

How do these keep radio afloat? Advertising. By keeping up with the times, radio can keep businesses interested; and keep the money flowing.

Online Radio: By spreading content beyond the radio medium and offering alternative, internet-based accessibility, radio stations can expand the range of people that can access their content. By offering online content and on-demand playback, their reach extends to those that cannot be available (or simply prefer not) to listen at the time of the initial broadcast. As well, utilising the internet (and thus, computers and computer-like devices) allows for traditionally audial radio content to be complimented with visual, and furthermore, increases audience interactivity (Friend 2012). This allows for a broader range of listeners, and offers businesses new and more financially viable areas within which to advertise (and, more importantly, produce revenue for the station).

Social media presence: A strong social media presence can expand a station’s audience even further than online radio options alone. It allows them to share their content beyond the scope of their own frequencies and websites, and gives people a familiar area within which to interact with it. An increased rate of audience interaction promotes further reach for the station and, thus, helps to increase ad revenue (Man, 2013). Furthermore, being able to spread information further due to social media means that notification and information about promotional events can be received by more people. This makes doing promotional events more attractive as advertising opportunities for businesses, who then fund the stations in greater sums due to the wider reach.

While ad revenue has largely been the key player in keeping the radio funded, keeping up with the latest digital opportunities helps it to maintain itself as a relevant medium for businesses to want to advertise through long into the future (Wright, Won, & Trott n.d.). And, we can then deduce that radio is, in fact, not dead. It’s evolving with the times ;)

References: Friend, M. (2012). Radio is Thriving in the Digital Age. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio/entries/9b5fb23e-5010-3040-82c6-f70b51d209b8 12/09/2016

Man, A. (2013) Radio and Social Media: Where to Next? Retrieved from http://rthk.hk/mediadigest/20130911_76_123037.html 12/09/2016

The selected two music videos are Beyoncé - Super Bowl and Taio Cruz – Dynamite. In Beyoncé - Super Bowl, this is a song presented on Beyonce’s live concert (Moises NYC., 2015). There are a number of female dancer danced together with Beyonce on the stage. All of whom wore very sexy cloth, dark makeup, and have a variety of sexy gesture and activities. All of the dancers are around 20 to 25 years old who also have long hair and sexy body. Thus, in this video, it emphasizes the physical characteristics of female and emphasizes the sexy characteristics of female. It can consider that female is portrayed as sex object in this music video that emphasized the stereotypes and traditional social roles (Byerly & Ross, 2006). The media in this aspect acts as a platform that propagates, reproduce and reinforce the stereotypes of female and reproduce the social role of female in the old days (Byerly & Ross, 2006). It also emphasizes the narrow concept of beauty of female – young, slim, sexy, long hair, and wearing sexy clothes.

In contrast, in Taio Cruz – Dynamite, the singer Taio Cruz is a African American who have the typical physical characteristics of this ethnic group (short black hair, and black hair) (TaioCruzVEVO, 2014). He wears denim and leather jacket, and wears sunglass. The music video portrays him as a typical playboy as he is the only one male character in this video who is surrounded by more than 30 young and sexy female. There are lots of scenes depicting fire, car, and dance that make the male character looks very strong and powerful who is admired by all of these female. The single also shows his Tatoo and behave in an exaggerated way to show his authority. Thus, in this video, it expresses two ideas about identity. The first factor is about the negative stereotype of African American who is dangerous (e.g. drunk, and tattoo). The second factor is the portray of male as the figure who control the dominated authority and power while females are substitutes (Byerly & Ross, 2006). Thus, this video also reproduces and reinforces the social stereotypes on gender and ethnic groups.

References

Byerly, C. M., & Ross, K. (2006). Women and Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Wiley.

Moises NYC. (2015). Beyonce – Super Bowl. Retrieved on 10th September, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp2cBXvuDf8

Task: Identify, describe and investigate a significant global media corporation. You need to briefly describe who controls the business, where it is based, what major media interests it owns (and what market synergies this allows), and what it profits from. Wherever possible, you should identify any media interests it may own or control in New Zealand. Corporation: CBS Corporation

Who controls the business? National Amusements, Inc. (Owned by Sumner Redstone (80%) and Shari Redstone (20%))

Where is it based? Norwood, Massachusetts, USA.

Major media interests it owns (and what market synergies this allows): CBS owns a wide range of media interests, hence its significance as a global media corporation. CBS has control of assets across the board, including radio, broadcast and cable television, television production/distribution, news, publishing, and they even have a record label for music associated with their other media. Notable subsidiaries of CBS include (but are not limited to): CNET, TechRepublic, Metacritic, GameFAQs, Gamespot, Last.fm, and CBSNEWS. With such a wide range of ownership, synergistic control of the market can be easily achieved; allowing the means of production, distribution, and marketing for any media they want. For instance: by being involved in the production of TV shows; the advertising; being able to air them on their own networks; and then even having a record label to distribute tracks from shows as a separate product, CBS and large corporations like it are able to control most of the income that that media can produce. As of the Q2 2016, CBS appears to profit from most if not all of the assets it controls.

“The Company’s operations span virtually every field of media and entertainment, including cable, publishing, radio, local TV, film, and interactive and socially responsible media.” – CBS Corporation.

In New Zealand, CBS doesn’t seem to have a great deal of direct reach. However, content created or produced by CBS does make its way into the NZ media. Particularly in television broadcasting; with titles such as Survivor, The Amazing Race, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Elementary all being aired in NZ. The reason for this is likely due to the fact that because shows produced by large corporations like CBS tend to have higher budgets than those from smaller groups, they tend to garner more favourable view counts than, say, a small media company with a significantly smaller budget. Airing these more popular shows from other countries is a sure-fire way for television stations in New Zealand to draw in the masses, and costs a lot less than producing their own content and having to pay for marketing that a larger company could otherwise easily cover due to the nature of internet access and social media.

News Corporation (News Corp) is an American multinational mass media company which focuses on newspaper and publishing. It is funded by Rupert Murdoch in 2013. Its publishing operations was split in order to form a new and publicly traded news company due to the scandal the former company had in hacking celebrities’ phones and the damaged reputation. News Corp current holds a number of companies specialised in different areas in the news reporting, media and publishing. It initially sold the newspapers group, while acquired companies specialising social networking and user-generated content services. It also owns a number of publisher, establishes subsidiaries in Australia, acquired radio station group in UK.

 Due to its close link with Fox Entertainment Group (which is also owed by Murdoch) and the newspapers owned by Murdoch (such as Sun, the Australian, and The daily telegraph), News Corp has businesses and influences on publishing, news reporting, entertaining, and social media news service areas. With the extended network in news reporting and publishing, Rupert Murdoch's long-time business strategy is to use reporting as blunt weapons of influence people. One key area is about political and social issues and activities such as election and the reports of social events and crises as well as international issues and events reporting. This creates the marketing synergy of News Corp that uses different channels to present the similar voices on news and social issues. This strategy creates greater and consistent influences on viewers and promotes the view of points that the company and the owner Murdoch wants to promote. In New Zealand, News Corp also controls Independent Newspapers Limited, INL, New Zealand's largest publishing group. This therefore makes the company to dominate and greatly control the country’s publishing and reporting industry in terms of power, positions on reporting, and contents. As the network of News Corp not only include traditional media platforms such as TV and newspaper, but also include new media such as social media, and internet. This influence would be even greater as it can reach large number of people including different age groups.

In today’s society, selfies are photoshopped and manipulated to the point where the individual portrayed is almost unrecognisable.  I am guilty of this, as before I upload a selfie as my profile picture on Facebook, I ensure I edit it to perfection.  This is so I will reach a high amount of ‘likes.’  Many people edit their selfies before they upload them online so that they can create better versions of their original selves and subsequently receive more attention.  Wendt (2014) states that people view the visual aspects of themselves as the entire sum of their identity and as a result, ignore their non-visual traits.

  This means that the lack of authenticity is becoming an issue.  Are people portrayed online really who they say they are?  How can we trust the images we see online when majority of them are not a representation of the real?

  For my experimental selfie, I exaggerated the conventional manipulation process using Adobe Photoshop, to segregate my Facebook profile picture into one hundred triangles.  I then placed an opaque version of my original selfie in the background to disorient the viewer as they attempt to apprehend my identity.  This is because I wanted to destruct my identity to the point where I was unrecognisable.  But instead of making myself unrecognisably perfect to conform to society’s expectations of beauty, I made myself perfectly unrecognisable to form an ambiguous identity.

  I not only destructed my identity because of my concern for individuals failing to represent authentic versions of themselves online through manipulation by editing software.  I also did it for reasons of privacy.  Privacy is increasingly becoming more of an issue, with online users have less and less control over their private information.  Halavais (2009) explains that search engines are now able to provide our private information “exhibitionist technologies” such as blogs and social networking sites.  As this blog is available to the public, I do not wish do reveal my authentic identity for my own protection.  As a result, I have experimented with my identity in such a way so that my private information can remain hidden.

  References

Halavais, A. (2009). Search engine society: Digital media and society series.  Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Many music videos in existence today are prone to warping the representation of cultural determined stereotypes to reflect the norms of society.  As a result, audience members feel as if they fully comprehend the identities of these people, when really they are just warped aspects of reality.  For example, the specific stereotype of hyper-sexualised females in music videos can cause women to develop issues regarding their self-image.  These hyper-sexualised stereotypes are also powerful in the way that they influence peer pressure among women, and the desire to fit in.  But does it always have to be this way?

 Perhaps not, as androgyny in music videos counter these specific stereotypes, through challenging mainstream models of identity, and raising questions of gender performance.  Butler (1988) argues that gender is not a stable identity, but one that is constituted overtime through a “stylised repetition of acts.”  The androgynous males that star in the following music videos analysed, are exemplary of how gender can be performative.  This is because each artist freely executes their own performative acts, contributing to the transition of their gender to the middle ground of androgyny.

  The music videos I will analyse include:

o   “Life On Mars?” - David Bowie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ

o   “If I Had You” - Adam Lambert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmXQFwlD7vk

o   “Tous Les Mêmes” - Stromae

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAMWdvo71ls

In the 1970s, David Bowie pioneered ‘glam rock,’ a fun, accessible genre that countered traditional rock culture, and contributed to the stability of gender orientations (Sofer, 2007). The androgynous persona Bowie adopts, ‘Ziggy Stardust,’ is an iconic figure of glam rock, and an example of how gender can be performative. The music video for his song, “Life On Mars?” shows androgyny in its most extreme form.  Bowie is dressed in a sky-blue suit, platform heels and a striped tie complete with a flaming orange mullet.  His make up consists of chalky white foundation, extravagant blue eye shadow and metallic pink lipstick, giving off the impression that Bowie is an alien.  This represents the idea that Ziggy Stardust exists in a liminal cultural space, deciding not to portray himself as either gender, but instead, an alien (Sofer, 2007).  This is confirmed through the lyrics at the end of the chorus that refer to the identity Bowie inhabits in outer space:

  “Is there life on Mars?”

  Butler (1988) states, the body is not “merely factic materiality,” but a set of possibilities from which we can choose how we present ourselves.  Bowie chooses to avoid the predetermined ideals of male and female stereotypes, and chooses to adopt characteristics from both.  David Bowie’s video differs to those of Adam Lambert and Stromae, as their androgynous characteristics are not as strikingly bizarre as Bowie’s. 

  In his music video, “If I Had You,” Adam Lambert follows in Bowie’s footsteps with his flamboyant, androgynous appearance.  Lambert (2013) himself stated that Bowie was a dominant figure that inspired him to communicate his identity in a way that differed to mainstream music.  As opposed to Bowie, Lambert takes a more punk rock and modernistic approach with his look.  At the beginning of the video, Lambert struts confidently through a forest, dressed all in black, with black leather high-top boots and black leather gloves.  He flaunts a black mullet similar to Bowie’s, wearing thick black eye liner, and black nail polish with chunky silver chains hung around his neck.  The identity Lambert wishes to communicate is confirmed through his outfit description in the opening verse:

  “So I got my boots on,

Got the right amount of leather

And I'm doing me up with a black colored liner.”

  Lambert’s appearance is representative of how Lambert wishes to perform his ambiguous gender and avoid conforming to hegemonic gender roles.  Lambert is seen dancing with both genders, and the male and female dancers in the video are also presented in an equally sexual way.  Male dancers are shirtless or in skimpy vests, and females are wearing provocative crop tops, enforcing Lambert’s performance of gender ambiguity.  Bowie and Lambert challenge the internalised sets of assumptions associated with conventional gender stereotypes in their music videos.  As a result, this allows gender to evolve by pushing its hegemonic boundaries.  

 Stromae takes a completely different approach with his androgynous identity; splitting his appearance equally into part woman, part man in “Tous Les Mêmes.”  Stromae takes the form of two personas, ‘Stromaette,’ his female persona on one half of his body, and ‘Stromae,’ his male persona on the other half.  The interpretation of the song is aided by the use of lighting in which green lighting represents Stromae and pink lighting representing Stromaette.  Stromae plays on the stereotypical traits and behaviour women associate with men and vice versa, through non-verbal cues made by the actors (for example, Stromae scratches his face and picks his nose). These stereotypical traits are also conveyed through lyrics such as these that blame men for the hyper-sexualisation of women:

  “Take one last look at my ass,

It’s right next to my suitcase.”

  Stromae uses androgyny in order to make a statement toward the negative stereotyping of women and men alike.  He does this so the audience reflects upon the narrative of the destructive relationship portrayed through the lyrics to encourage ethical treatment of both genders.  This differs greatly to the work of Bowie and Lambert, who use androgyny as a means to perform masculinity and femininity in new ways.

  In their videos, Bowie, Lambert and Stromae transition their gender to the halfway point of androgyny to challenge conventional stereotypes often portrayed in mainstream music.  Artists such as these are influential as they challenge the black and white assumptions toward gender and contribute toward the concept that gender is performative.  This is important, as it allows gender to evolve, challenging gender inequality and the stereotypical norms of males and females.  The androgyny these artists portray is also an accessible identity to audiences who do not wish to conform to conventional male and female stereotypes.

  References

Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519-531.

Lambert, A. (2013). My Bowie: Adam Lambert. Retrieved from http://www.out.com/entertainment/music/2013/03/12/my-bowie-adam-lambert