W8. Task 1. Who cares about Digital Immigration? (2)

Another context in which digital immigration was mentioned was by Rupert Murdoch in a speech in 2005.

He made the point that digitality is changing the face of journalism. There is a whole generation who access news in a completely different way, preferring online methods as they are deemed to be more entertaining, flexible and even trustworthy. This is bad news for owners of traditional paper newspapers, like Murdoch himself, as readership is rapidly falling.

To combat this trend Murdoch suggests that digital natives,

“…want to be able to use the information in a larger community – to talk about, to debate, to question, and even to meet the people who think about the world in similar or different ways.” (http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html)

His main priority seems to be the re-dsistrubution of advertising revenues, with it now increasingly going to web-sites rather than newspapers. Murdoch has obviously noted this, and true to his reputation as a savvy businessman, will be the first to get his hands on the cash potential that is news online through taking advantage of people’s need to create a cyber society in which thoughts and information can be shared instantaneously across vast distances. (Steve Jones)

Shultz

From reading Lister this week something which seems to be a prominent topic is the idea that online communication is able to generate democracy. For example, in the case of web journalism, Shultz suggested that the ability to leave a comment about a news piece on your favourite newspaper’s web site marked a change from passive consumption of mass media, to more active participation. (p. 177) Shultz argued that this gives us the opportunity to speak back to the media and have a more participatory role in debate.

However, in a study conducted by Shultz he found that journalists paid little attention to reader online forums, so the ability to comment on news pieces merely created the illusion of being able to participate. I would argue that whilst this may mean that the readers opinions and responses weren’t being used by the journalists themselves, this does not necessarily mean that they are completely redundant and it is not worth contributing at all. Rather, the ability to comment and leave a response means that people are becoming used to more actively consuming the news and offering an opinion about it, rather than not forming an opinion on it at all.

In addition, web journalism does mean that the public are able to gain unadulterated access to documents which previously they would have only seen through the media, in a more condensed and edited form. Therefore giving them the ‘real deal’ without having to wade their way through the changes made by journalists which would inevitably involve a change in the slant of the document in varying degrees.