Sample MEST 3 Question

A2 AQA MEST3 Revision New and Digital Media Example Question

Jeremy Orlebar | Saturday May 22, 2010

Categories: Courses, A Level, AQA A Level, AQA A2, New Media, Digital Media, New Technologies, Other Topics, Revision, A2 Revision, Hot Entries

Question

“Digital media have, in many ways, changed how we consume media products”.
Who do you think benefits the most – audiences or producers?

Benefits for Audiences

With ‘convergence culture’ audiences benefit because:

• They have a wealth of information available at all times via broadband, wi-fi and multi platform mobile devices such as the iPone and Blackberry.
• Availability of interactive features - Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook, and the 140 character blog Twitter, and internet blogs. Also Skype for long distance phone calls, and email.
• On demand media content means music, feature films, radio and television and all the content of the internet are available on a laptop with wi-fi.
• News comes from newspaper online sites, RSS feeds, blogs, and news organisations website such as BBC News who also supply podcasts
• Missed a television programme – no problem it is available for at least a week on the BBC iplayer, and the other mainstream channels have similar devices
• Convergence means that all digital content can be accessed in one place for the cost of broadband or subscription via Sky or Virgin or on the move via a device such as an iPad or notebook computer.
• Want to show the world your latest video – just upload it to YouTube and it is there for all the world to see
• Trying to break into journalism – think about Citizen Journalism –send your report and pictures of a newsworthy event to a news organisation or dedicated site such as the Huffington post and they are more than likely to publish it – no fee but plenty of kudos. This is a way of democratising the media and making content free from traditional gatekeepers
• Podcasts, forums and blogs allow ordinary people to have an interactive relationship with the media offering more democracy
• New developments include the hybrid television where SNS, emails and the internet are accessible on your TV screen – so watch the world cup, comment to your friends via Twitter and keep an eye on your emails all from the comfort of the armchair – at last accessing the internet becomes a ‘lean back’ activity
• Want up to the minute sports or business news – just pay a few pounds for an ‘app’ for your phone, or another ‘app’ will list all the restaurants in your neighbourhood wherever you are.
• Downsides for audiences are that some of this content that may appear to be free won’t be for much longer – content is costly – see newspapers below and copyright issues to do with music and films have yet to be solved

Benefits for Producers

Media producers benefit because:

• They have more platforms to distribute their products which can be linked to provide a multimedia product line up e.g. a feature film is distributed to cinemas, then very quickly is available for internet streaming and on DVD, then bought by television. A low budget film can be initially published on YouTube, and one producer has published a serialised film just on mobile phones.
• Content - Music, video, data, news, and text are instantly available at all times
• Online shopping is becoming very popular with ebay and other auction sites making the process entertaining as well. one click internet shops such as Amazon and iStore are able to sell media products from centralised warehouses cutting distribution costs
• Online video games and avatar sites are extremely popular, profitable and accessible through gaming units such as Wii
• They are able to market their products to many different audiences using digital methods like viral marketing where word of mouth recommendation becomes text, blog or Facebook recommendation to thousands of viral linked groups rather than one mass audience
• Online advertising is effective although it has not yet replaced print and television advertising. The advantages are online advertising is well focussed using video, banners, pop ups, and other internet advertising devices to carefully selected groups.

The Downsides for Producers of Convergence Culture

• The main problem for producers is how to generate serious money out of digital content. Because of copyright issues, and the sheer cost of running and supporting online content, new media is expensive. Online advertising does not yet produce enough revenue to compensate for the loss of advertising revenue from the print editions of magazines and newspapers, or the sale of CDs and DVDs.

• Copyright problems – it costs over $100,million dollars to make a major block buster film such as the new Ridley Scott Robin Hood – if consumers are downloading the film free via file sharing sites then the film producers will lose a lot of money – digital content is easily copied.

• Copyright theft is a very serious problem for the music industry who has still to recover from the – as they see it – disaster of napster style music sharing. One site Spotify is offering a new legal model to distribute music via a sort of internet radio station where you choose your own songs – even this model has had to start charging new customers.

• Newspapers suffer disproportionately as they are still running with costly and unwieldy ‘old media’ print distribution. There are approximately 55,000 shops and outlets with a delivery of heavy newspapers early every morning.

• As well as keeping their print editions all newspapers have online editions which are costly to set up and support – effectively newspapers are running two separate operations and until now the online sites have had to be free because of the competition.

• From June 2010 Rupert Murdoch has decided that he cannot sustain the losses of £57 million a year from his UK papers, and is putting up a paywall so that online editions of The Times and Sunday Times will cost the same as the print edition - £1 a day.

• In a recent radio discussion on the BBC Media Show newspaper editors admitted that no one knows if there will be print newspapers in 10 years time. Possibly everybody will be reading their newspaper on a Kindle, mobile phone or iPad – maybe!

Further Reading

Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins (New York University Press 2006)
A grade A/B answer to the above question would require:

• a confident and appropriate discussion and evaluation of the question
• reference a wide range of examples
• it needs to provide detailed illustration
• it needs to show comprehensive application of knowledge and understanding of current ideas, debates and information about digital media and its advantages and disadvantages.
• it needs to be an engaged and sophisticated response that is clearly written and well structured, with clear evidence of critical autonomy.
• at the top of this level (grade A), it needs to be an articulate and stimulating response which demonstrates evidence of an independent and informed approach and references a variety of appropriate and relevant media texts.