WEEK 2

Dr Bruce Redman’s lecture in second week focused on the differences between traditional media and online media. Traditional media encompassed everything before the internet (newspapers, magazines, radio, and tv) while online media was pretty much everything accessed on the world wide web.  Dr Redman began by examining ‘web iterations’ (Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0).  It was fascinating to learn how online media had morphed from a straightforward marketing tool into something extremely interactive and complex over the course of 15 or so years.

I loved Dr Redman’s use of video in this presentation. I am always delighted to see an IT Crowd epsidoe and he used two hilarious segments that effectively satirised a number of issues around social networking nites (this was from the Friendface episode).  The segments parodised the more absurd elements of facebook, as well as the more terrifying (ie the fact that all your details are now available for the government or companies to access).

The second half of the lecture looked at the death of the newspaper due to news being available for free on the web, and attempts in the present day to make people pay for the news (ie through tablets, ipads, and subscriptions).  Dr Redman suggested subscription model are probably the most effective strategy to keep news profitable, as this was in fact the method employed by newspapers in the earliest days of print media. Dr Redman went on to make some funny jokes at Rupert Murdoch’s expense, and gave some interesting facts on how Murdoch makes a bulk of his cash.