Exam Question - Chloe Barlow

Reflecting on your research from the summer and from the BBC news app: What have you learned about your own media use and how you access news content?

Reflecting on my research from the summer and from the BBC news app. I have learnt that the media is becoming more democratic. This is because Big media organisations are now adapting to use social media apps. This, allows me to access news from different countries from around the world through my handheld telephone device. However, before this transformation, the headlines were only visible in only newspaper’s such as the ‘Sun’ or the ‘Daily mail.’ Although, the Sun is still the most popular print newspaper with over a million copies sold per day, it lost over 3 million purchases in 2010 and now it is over £60 million. Therefore this is evidence to support the view that most people nowadays are conducting their research on the news through apps on social media, such as the BBC news apps or even through news updates on snapchat. For instant, after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the slow decline of local newspapers was seen as perhaps one of the reasons why residents concerns have never really received the hearing that they should have. Most predict that the newspaper in its printed format will disappear over the next 30 years. Gilmore predicted ‘The spreading of an item of news, or of something much larger, will occur - much more so than today — without any help from mass media as we know it. The people who’ll understand this best are probably just being born. In the meantime, the beginnings of this ‘shift’ are forcing all of us to adjust our assumptions and behaviour.’ This indicates that, media will gradually adapt over time into something ‘much larger’ and is further evidence to the fact that eventually all newspapers will go completely online due to a lack of paper sales. 

In addition, people can now create their own media or Youtube channel’s or broadcast live on Facebook and various other platforms. This evidently means that the media is becoming more democratic, as we can now conduct our own forms of media rather than just being told the news by organisations who may have their own bias, agenda and interest in what they are showing us. The popularity of vlog’s and youtube demonstrates the changing nature of media use. Morozov, the author of ‘The Net Delusion’ argues that in reality most people use the internet for ‘sex, shopping and entertainment’ and is more sceptical of the internets ability to change the world. However, the available technology does mean that somebody can broadcast their views and ideas without them being edited or misrepresented by someone else. Therefore, we can indicate that humans use the internet for several different reasons one being entertainment and the other being for news. This suggests that people can now access news content online, which causes platforms such as Facebook and Youtube to become huge multinational companies. 

Furthermore, the rise of citizen journalists has increased. These are the people who perhaps do not even see themselves as journalists, but instead start a campaign about an issue they believe in or become an eyewitness. For example, many pictures or video footage that now get used on the news channels, are from main footage which has been filmed by people on their smartphones, who often get there before the news crews or may be a victim when something dramatic occurs. For example, the first terrifying footage from the 2001 September 11th attacks were captured by people on their personal cameras. This therefore is evidence that, as time is progressing our generation has adapted to different regimes of media, for example an increase in citizen journalism allows for us to see the footage with our own eyes, from people just like us, which gives us an accurate representation of what has gone off.

In my opinion, my media use has differed overtime, in a society which is constantly changing. For example, throughout the duration of my childhood I had access to the news through the TV. For as long as I can remember, I used to sit in-front of the TV and watch the ten o’clock news, there I used to take in what the news had to offer, in order to gain a correct representation of our society at that time. However, now I get my news through social media apps, either on my phone or through using the world wide web. For example, I have recently found out through updates on the BBC sport act that the snap general election cost approximately £140 million. Therefore, it is evident that the transformation of media has massively changed overtime, this is because we have gone from a world consisting of papers to a world consisting of internet.