Has new and digital media had an impact upon ownership and control of the media institution(s) involved in your case study area? Explain in detail any impact and what exactly has changed.
In terms of my case study and news institution that has been hugley affected by the new and digital media, that has contributed to new techonology and its audience is News Corp. In the recent problems with phone hacking, this has caused big problems for Rupert Murdoch and we are now seeing his corporation at stake. Citizen journalism is contributing to the fall of media institutions causing proffesional journalists to go to the extreme to get their news. Due to the rise in modern technology it has become possible for anyone to report news, from taking a normal mobile phone, recording a peice of footage and simply posting it up to a social networking site or youtube for example. Many stories in the news in recent times has come from this, with videos on youtube causing huge news stories such as "My tram experience" of a middle aged white woman who was racist to people on a tram, this made big news and eventually appeared on nearly all news stations.
Due to simple actions of the public, their stories are becoming more popular and wanted by the audience than what news institutions are actually providing us, their own material is simply not good enough anymore. Perhaps this is because journalists are simply not in the right place at the right time but citizens are, and therefore they are having to take other peoples material. This can cause huge desperation for media institutions such as News Corp, the phone hacking that had originally started with the death of a young girl Milly Dowler had caused a downward spiral for Rupert Murdoch and his empire as it was revealed her phone was hacked in order to get information for the news. A Leveson inquiry has been carried out for the past few months starting in September 2011, this has revealed that many people have been phone hacked with celebrities giving evidence to their phone hacking.
It seems that phone hacking was carried out in order to get more news for institutions, with the recent decline in newspaper sales, many of the journalists have been desperate for news, and this had all originally started with Rupert Murdochs newspaper "News of the World" that was forced to shut down in July 2011. This is what began the decline of Rupert murdochs empire.
"The phone-hacking firestorm will significantly weaken Rupert Murdoch’s hold on the News Corp empire, says Murdoch's biographer." A headline from the new zealand listener, reporting how news corp is declining, many believe that it will affect his hold on his empire and it has been suggested to him that he should sell his news international, which would release 40% of British newspapers. Journalist Michael Wolff says that the British newspaper industry "so poisoned"
http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-decline-of-the-murdoch-empire/
New technology has also forced news institutions to try and keep up with it, again News Corp is struggling with this, newspapers are in decline and rupert murdoch is straining to keep up with it. In response to this newspapers are now widely available on the internet, rupert murdoch recently launched an online only newspaper in America called The Daily. This has failed hugely for Rupert Murdoch as it did not get as many sales it needed to even break even. Last year he annouced that he would "redefine the news" inthe words of Apple executive Eddy Cue. However, Rupert Murdoch had only achieved 80,000 subscribers, just 1/6 of what he needed to break even. This showing that keeping up with new technology is getting difficult, he has now joined Twitter in an attempt to keep up with technology.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/03/rupert-murdoch-daily-subscribers
Another media institution that has been effected by new and digital media is Google, however unlike News corp, google has been impacted in a more positive way. Google has grown hugely over the past fews years, since 2010 it has almost doubled its revenue in one single year from $29,321,000 to $37,905,000 in 2011, making a profit of $11,742,000 in 2011. They had bought YouTube in 2006 for £1.65billion, by doing this they have allwoed them self to advertise using google to make some of their revenue. Youtube is a huge media institution that is used all over the world by millions of people, it holds billions of videos that are made up of artists and consumers. Every day people have been able to post their own videos of anything they wish onto youtube and some have even become incredibly famous.
http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
Google chrome is currently the new web browser for google and the second most used browser there is, and it is now been available on Android. Although google is available on all phones, chrome has only just been available on Android phones such as HTC's and other smartphones in an attempt to become more popular and used by media audiences. This has been in spite of the new technology that is available and how they have to keep up with it in order to appeal and keep its users.
Since the change of the layout of facebook in 2011, Google decided to take advantage of the amount of complaints that Facebook had recieved from its users and realyl began to market their new social networking site Google+, although it was already available it was widely unknown and due to the changes of facebook, the number of users surged and has now "crossed the 90 million mark in one year". Facebook still has nearly 700 million users however, google were quickly catching up as people migrated to google+ "The Google+ has friendly layout and it is much conveniant to use in comparing to Facebook"
This shows that google are constantly coming up with ideas to help promote themselves and showing that they are keeping up with the technology and also keeping in with what audiences like, producing things that make them happy.
http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1823/users-outraged-at-facebook-new-layout-many
http://technorati.com/social-media/article/google-plus-crosses-90-million-user1/#ixzz1lmfNscxq
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