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The Forum > Article Comments > The real power in the media landscape > Comments

The real power in the media landscape : Comments

By Michael Anderson, published 20/10/2006

Young people are the real players in media deregulation.

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Good luck to the You Tube billionaires who were bought out last week by Google. However...

...Whether it was the Gutenberg press, the telegraph, radio, or the internet, the first blush of a new media format often leads to epoch-making claims of the kind seen in this article.

While movable type may very well have shattered the medieval church's monopoly on knowledge, the printing press has evolved simultaneously into a symbol of democratic freedom of speech; and the oppresive engine of state propaganda and media monopolies, which even this week were given extra muscle by law reforms.

Slowly but surely, those with their hands on serious capital are waking up to the fact that they can aggregate the readers of thousands of blogs into a large audience to sell to advertisers.

Where creativity flourishes, commerce will not be far behind...
Posted by Mercurius, Friday, 20 October 2006 3:33:30 PM
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I would hope that most people see through this empty arguement.

Yes, blogs and alternative media have grown drastically, but they are not even close to the MSM in terms of influence and agenda setting.

People who can be bothered getting onto to the internet to read a variety of news sources can think for themselves, its the brainless lemmings that believe things like Iraq has WMD that we need to be worried about, and their news sources are TV media or pathetic rags like the Herald Sun or Telegraph.

Of all the low down, dirty rotten , self interested, couldn't give a rats a*s about future generations things this govt. has done these media 'reforms' are just about the lowest.
Posted by Carl, Friday, 20 October 2006 7:28:44 PM
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Carl, to your short list of pathetic rags, might I suggest you include the SMH and The Age - all the papers are trash - and they're all slowly dying just as all print media will, but for the moment, where else can we go for our news? Reuters? AP? It's all the same rubbish anyway. Except of course different sub-editors put different spins on the same facts, depending upon which side of the political fence they sit.

And to Mercurious, please forgive me that I didn't get back to you about that issue of Japanese language syllabus - too busy. Sorry mate.

But this author here, this Dr Michael Anderson, has got to be joking. Apart from the fact that the article is an unashamed promo for his own damn book - gosh I hate that - I ask, who is he trying to kid?

I've seen school productions from drama class in NSW and they suck!

I've seen teachers and parents clapping and besides themselves with joy that their little children created their own frightful garbage and everybody is just soooo happy about little Janeie's new oratory and Beckie's new art-dance-performance. But only a school teacher or a mother could love it. The stuff is shocking!

It's just like the Australian movie industry. Everyone in the business thinks they're all so FIGJAM, but nobody ever goes to see them. The movies don't get box-office.

On the other hand, the author is completely correct about the (slowly) shifting power of the little people in media. Never before in the entire history of mankind have so many people had so much power at their finger tips when it comes to communication and self expression. It's absolutely awesome. And I would imagine that the youngest generations will adopt it as being just a normal part of their daily lives and extend themselves into it.

But whither the future. With the good, will come the bad. With power will come controls. Something this good, this cheap and so free, won't be permitted to go uncontrolled for long - or untaxed.
Posted by Maximus, Friday, 20 October 2006 8:46:38 PM
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Yes, I completely agree Maximus, they are all garbage, and now they are only going to get worse.
Posted by Carl, Friday, 20 October 2006 10:17:56 PM
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BB1
A search for the Dinkum Truth?

It seems much is being hidden about the real truth in Iraq, especially as branches of Coptic-style Christian churches who had been getting on with the Muslims have been forced to leave?

Below is a brief on a deep perusal of America by Dr Denis Kenny, former tutor at Harvard and Fordham universities

The United States of America has long been regarded as the most generously endowed piece of real estate on this planet. It has inherited from Mother Nature, and appopriated from the Indian nations, an immense wealth of natural resources. The first nation in history, moreover to promise its citizens a basic right to the pursuit of happiness, a promise unprecedented in the annals of previous social orders.

Why, then, since the close of the 19th century, and the closing decades of the 20th century, has the US in the name of defence, freedom and democracy, continued to kill men, women and children, the latest in the supplying of heavy ariel bombs to Israel to destroy Lebanese buildings, the bombs also filled with scatter grenades to kill or maim the occupants.

Why, as many US patriots have asked over the last two hundred years, have not US governments remained contentedly within their borders and not endlessly wrangled with the less endowed nations of this world?

(Maybe colonial Pax Britannica could have been accused of the same thing, Anglophonic Americana having only inherited from the Brits?)

According to Dr Kenny, perhaps more than any other culture or nation, the US is a product of a complex, but identifiable configuration of memetic influences. To list the most important of these and the role they have played in the shifting sagas of US foreign policy.

The Puritans of New England were the first to encase within a political framework not only a deep commitment to success in this world, but that such an achievement was an assurance of religous salvation.

Unlike the secularising tendencies of European culture, the Americans have periodically engaged in religous revivals to maintain the religous spirit of the first settlers.
Posted by bushbred, Saturday, 21 October 2006 1:54:56 PM
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BB Part Two

Dr Kenny has two other memes contributing to the complex configuration of US culture and consciousness. The first of the two - Rational Enlightenment. The main early actors - Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. All were not Puritans, but Unitarians, Deists, and even outright agnostics or atheists.

The third consists of the frontier meme, but as adventurers and pirates et al, were and are still common to Western advancement, we might suggest that in the US they could have evolved from both of the main US historical personas.

Further, as regards the above two main US memes or personas, we might suggest we now have similar in Australia. John Howard and Peter Costello’s often published interests regarding the Hillsong Church - which does imply that different to the teachings of the early Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, now to many Australian Christians, success in business, could be seen as an assurance for a ticket to Heaven.

We Australians having had so much regard for America as explained in a previous Post, one wonders what the future now holds? While some blame America’s overdone role in Vietnam, as well as over-reach in the Middle-East, others blame the atomic arming of Israel in the 1970s, for helping to bring on Arab suicide bombing. Also as social philosophers point out, suicide bombing is not only related to the Islamic psyche. The Tamil Tigers hold the record by far, well over 400 cases, in fact.

Finally, as open-minded students do we need to discuss Dr Kenny’s targetting of a US Christianity which obviously favours more the Old Testament - any means to an end - doctrine which unfortunately is all too similar to the mindset of a Lutheran bishop in Nazi Germany who suggested to certain outspoken members of his worried clergy, that if you do really believe in the Almighty, your Spirit will be cleansed after death, despite all.

The above makes one glad that he has been trying to temper some of these worrying new Christian beliefs with Socratic Reasoning.
Posted by bushbred, Saturday, 21 October 2006 6:38:47 PM
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The "New Media" is a joke. It will never have and power and investigative abilities as the "old media".

The "New Media" is a bunch of internet nerds who have a inflated sense of worth when it comes to their medium. Where do these faanatastic blogs get their info from? The "Old Media". How do they get information overseas? The "Old media" based overseas.

Radio,TV and newspapers are still king.

On a General Note : I sick of people prattling on about the young generation being somehow more savy and intelligent then prvious generations(Generation Y). I have never seen such a group of ill-informed, consumeristic, narcasistic people before. They generally care about one thing, themselves. Country, Community and ideals don't matter.
Posted by Bobalot, Tuesday, 24 October 2006 10:16:06 AM
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Yes, Gen Y are typically self-obsessed, overly-protected, and oblivious to much of the world around them. But to say that country, community and ideals don't matter to them is a little harsh, if not downright wrong. For example, levels of volunteerism among young people are the same for other age groups in Australia. Studies report Gen Y'ers as generally showing high levels of respect for authority and older age groups -- particularly seniors (witness renewed young peoples' presence at Anzac Day ceremonies). I'm sick of people dismissing the creative potential of Gen Y. Despite their many "faults" (ie differences), they offer a fresh (different) way of looking at storytelling and the media. Prattling on about old and new media (a flimsy basis for argument by the way - a medium is a medium and they all have to be "new" at some point) is generally pointless.
Posted by Macbeth, Tuesday, 24 October 2006 11:59:02 AM
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There is a frightening lack of critical analysis in this piece.

The vast majority of stuff on YouTube is garbage, in anybody's language.

Kids "engaged in an animated discussion about mise en scene, character arcs and what sound level is required for the next shot" are, I humbly suggest, extremely few and far between. Even those that do exist in some isolated corners are... just kids, playing with some neat gear. To deduce that they are the "power in the media landscape" just because they fill the blogosphere with amateur videos is stretching our credulity more than somewhat.

The author's belated qualification - "[t]eachers have a responsibility here, to educate students to look critically at the materials they are consuming on [sic] daily" - is at least an admission that this is conspicuously absent at the moment.

There is also no connection made in the article between this essentially "playtime" activity and the future of mainstream media, only the assumption that such a connection exists. There seems also to be a tacit assumption that this will have some kind of impact on news media, as well as entertainment, a theme picked up by some of the previous comments.

The trendy stuff of today - YouTube, MySpace etc. - are, in my opinion, simply fads, and will quickly go out of fashion. And the reason will be that kids are quite discerning, and once the novelty wears off will notice the lack of quality and switch off.
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 24 October 2006 11:28:10 PM
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"Studies report Gen Y'ers as generally showing high levels of respect for authority and older age groups -- particularly seniors (witness renewed young peoples' presence at Anzac Day ceremonies)."

Really? To be honest, I felt it's the opposite, respect for older people (or anybody teachers etc.) has gone down the toilet from my own daily experience. Then again that could be just Sydney.

Anzac day has turned into a carnival. Once upon a time it used to be a solemn day to remember the fallen. Now it's turned into a massive celebration complete with MacDonalds and other retailers trying to make money out of it.

People wave flags and go on about patriotism (I thought loud mouth patriotism was the refuge of Americans, unfortunately it has spread here. Anyway how does waving a flag make you patriotic?) and in recent years groups of yobbos run around forcing people to kiss the flag on the day.

It has become a day where we as a nation collectively pat ourselves on the back. Twats like Koshie and his braindead mates goto Kokoda and make the situation even more farical.

Although this isn't the fault of generation Y, I admit.
Posted by Bobalot, Wednesday, 25 October 2006 7:49:38 AM
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Pericles, we'll see, but I suspect the events of the next 20 years will give you cause to reconsider your opinion that YouTube and MySpace are passing fads. Google just bet $1 billion on the possibility that they are more than Dutch tulips. The cultural effect of an entire generation sharing experiences this way will most likely be profound (though how this will manifest specifically remains a question for the "futurologists", of which I am not one).

Bobalot, nice whinge about the state of the world. Now, if you think the world's stuffed, it certainly wasn't Gen Y who made it that way. They're just left to clean up the mess - so why exactly should they be nice to you?
Posted by Mercurius, Wednesday, 25 October 2006 11:02:36 AM
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Mercurius, $1.6 billion dollars (in Google shares, incidentally) means as much to Google in financial terms as a night at the theatre means to me. I couldn't afford to do it every day, but once in a while is ok.

As you say, time will tell. But just between you and me, I was consistently correct in my prognosis of the last dotcom rise and fall, and I suspect I will be about this too.

Eyeballs are fine, and that is what both Google and News Corp were buying. But monetizing those eyeballs is a completely different task.

Bear in mind that I am not saying that online communities and video-sharing will die out. But I am saying that they will cease to be leading-edge. When they become "just another function of the internet" the ability to make money from the vast numbers of users will cease.

Email is a classic example. Despite the fact that every man + dog has at least one email address, nobody is able to make money from it. Except spammers and Nigerian widows.
Posted by Pericles, Wednesday, 25 October 2006 12:31:38 PM
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You make the assumption that I'm apart of the boomer generation. Im not. I am apart of "generation y", and trust me, this lot won't get anything fixed.
Posted by Bobalot, Wednesday, 25 October 2006 8:04:06 PM
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I completely disagree because the landscape has totally changed from what was their in the 1998-2000 as the companies have consolidated. Video, streaming, tv, ads and movies via the Internet, wireless and phones is the biggest thing since the Internet really hit in the mid 90s.

Noone thought it was possible back then to monetise search engines but Google and Yahoo put pay to that. Similarly with chat and voip but eBay's purchase of Skype and the offering they have are showing up that too. The smart ones out there on the big scale are definitely making money and video will be the next big thing.

I mean Google was the first 100 billion company to have never advertised on TV. (and still hasnt I think).

It because of all the little people all over the world making money themselves online and bypassing traditional media via blogs etc. that is causing this. Google and check out an Chinese Aussie immigrant called Tom Hua ( he does speaking engagements all the time) and see why this is the case. I found he explains it really well with a great sense of humour :) Or just check out this blog that I found http://retire-online.blogspot.com as it seemed to best explain to my why the online world is heading this way.

There is a reason why News Corp is buying My Space and PBL us venturing away from traditional TV and into online gambling. It is all about the huge databases and yes email addresses. This is where I most beg to differ while no is making money specifically on the sending/receiving of emails there are millions big and small the world over making money from emails.
Posted by quiver, Wednesday, 1 November 2006 11:50:27 AM
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