Audiences reacting to new media technologies.

In recent years technology has boomed, especially within media. Now, 78% of Australians are connected to the internet (Internet World Statistics, 2007), 99% own a television set (Herr, 2007) and 2.7 billion people worldwide possess a mobile phone; a six million person increase over the past year (LiveNews, 2008). The question still remains who are the producers and who are the audience? Traditionally media has been controlled by conglomerates dictating what would be broadcast over radio and television or cited on the internet. The emergence of new media technologies however enables a once passive consumer to now influence content. The passive audience has become active and the active audience has become interactive.

The audience is changing with new media technologies. New media technologies occur when the boundary between producer and consumer are blurred (Sternberg, 2008). The introduction of Web 2.0 has seen the largest media transformation embodying convergence, DIY cultures and produsage, which will be explored further on. Users are able to create, produce and circulate content, use the internet to communicate or watch television and be viewsers and prosumers, all of which have become possible with the emergence of new media.This audience sub-culture includes “new media technologies, do-it-yourself media production cultures and economic trends favouring media convergence” (Banks, 2008). The shift from an active to interactive audience implies a greater connection to others, a greater sense of control over content and a greater sense of identification (Banks, 2008). A produser is a member of the Interactive Audience. A produser is someone whom produces and uses media content on the internet through websites such as Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube (Banks, 2008). This blog is a form of produsage.

Convergence is also prevalent, the internet can now be used to download music, watch television, communicate with people through Skype and read the latest news. A 22 per cent increase is expected in online growth by 2010 (Public Relations Institute of Australia, 2006). Television also experiences convergence, an example of this is reality television utilising mobile phone voting, concert tours, videogames, books and profits within the music industry to produce revenue; American Idol earned more than $260 million in profits by the end of its third season (Jenkins 2006). Convergence offers endless opportunities for mediums to be consumed in non traditional ways.

Advertising is also using convergence to better target a niche market. Bill Gates is forecasting in five years internet will attract $30billion in annual advertising revenues (Samuel, 2005, 10). According to Cunningham and Turner (2002, 5), industry convergence (where separate sectors of the communications industry merge) is an extension of technological convergence, increasing ability to carry and convert ‘content’.

Through utilising new media technologies, consumers are able to produse content they desire. The days have passed when consumers had limited options regarding the media they consumed, change has happened quickly and the forecast predicts more change to occur (Jenkins, 2002, 164).

Media landscape is changing, convergence is occurring within multiple mediums as technology develops, especially Web 2.0. Younger audiences are declining their television viewing and newspaper readership in place of rising internet usage. Traditional media companies are investing in new media technologies (e.g. News Corporation just bought MySpace) to accommodate the new audiences emerging (Croll, n.d.). This strengthens the relationship between producers and the consumer, therefore providing audiences with more social and cultural power over the media.

References (not linked)

Cunningham, S., G. Turner. 2002. The Media and Communications in Australia. New South Wales: Allen and Unwin

Jenkins, H. 2002. Interactive Audiences. In The New Media Book, ed D. Harries, 157-170. London: BFI Publishing.

Jenkins, H. 2006. “Buying into American Idol: How We Are Being Sold on Reality Television,” Convergence Culture. New York: New York University.