Explain the notion of the ‘long tail’ with respect to product purchasing.
- our culture and economy is shifting away from mainstream products at the head of the demand curve toward a number of niches in the tail
- cost of production/distribution decreases and therefore there is a decrease in products and consumers that fit into moulds
- no shelf-space constraints
- goods are narrowly targeted
- demand for online products is potentially as big as store products
- small markets with small variety of goods may rival large market goods in the future
- niches are where new growth is coming from now and in future
- stores stock hits because shelf space is expensive
- available niche products out-number hits by orders of magnitude.
- when consumers are offered choice, true shape of demand is revealed
- niche allows people to satisfy narrow interests
Define the long tail and discuss the merits of selling specialised products to niche audiences.
- most media businesses focus on large audiences for profits (e.g. hit song or blockbuster film)
- there’s a value in selling specialised products to small, niche audiences because there are so many of them
- profitable in the digital age
- new economic model for media and entertainment industries
- unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service
- people are discovering that their taste is not as mainstream as they thought
What are the benefits of the long tail in todays age.
- there’s the back catalogue, older albums still fondly remembered by long term fans or rediscovered by new ones
- there are thousands of niches and mixed genres
- there is a lot of rubbish on hit albums (people skip over it) on CDs but they can easily be avoided online
- the long tail market is bigger than the hits market
- market for books that aren’t sold in the average bookstore is bigger than the hits market
- the most successful businesses online are those that are aggregating the long-tail
Define free/open-source software.
- approach software development
- based on shared effort in non-proprietary model
- depends on individuals contributing to a common project within a variety of motivations and sharing their respective contributions without any single person or entity asserting rights to exclude
- participants retain copyrights in their contribution but license them to anyone - participation/stranger
- this makes it difficult for a single contributor/third party to appropriate the project
- this model of licensing is the most important institutional innovation of free software movement
- free apps on phone ie FB or WhatsApp
Apply the 3 functions Benkler identifies to the process of peer production using example.
FIRST
Initial utterance of humanly meaningful statement eg writing an article or drawing a picture
SECOND
Mapping initial utterance on knowledge map - must be relevant and credible (both functions are NB)
THIRD
Distribution how one takes an utterance and distributes it to others who find it to others who find it relevant and credible
With respect to Benkler’s concept o ‘uttering content’ discuss 3 characteristics pertaining to Wikipedia.
FIRST
- collaborative authorship tool (enable anyone to edit)
- changes are easy to make and visible all changes are transparent
SECOND
- self-conscious effort at creating encyclopaedia
- governed by collective, informal undertaking (neutral point of view)
THIRD
-all content generated is released under GNU-free Documentation License (an adaptation of the GNU GPL to texts)
Explain the relevance/accreditation concepts
- commercial businesses use peer production ie Amazon
- use a mix of mechanisms to get in front of the products their users are likely to purchase
- use the users themselves to produce relevance and accreditation
- simple example: ‘people who bought this item also bought …’ (mechanical means of creating relevance or accreditation)
- users can create tropical lists and track other users as their ‘friends’ or ‘favourites’
- allows users to rate products they purchase, generating a peer-produced rating by averaging results
- corporations that have successfully acquired and retained users, have harnessed peer-production
- enables users to find what they want efficiently and effectively
Explain why Benkler considers peer-production to be in conflict with the current economic model.
- peer production model is free
- used to fill a gap in the market and not produce profit
- economic model focuses on like-minded individuals coming together to create product where there is a need, but not to gain anything. (profit)
-some writers praise peer-production model, others believe that audiences will want media content created by experts and professional media practitioners
Debate advantages of peer production and professional viewpoints
PEER-PRODUCTION
- free
- has relevance because it is made by like-minded people
- convenience
- variety
- if you don’t like it, you can delete it (free app)
PROFESSIONAL
- credible
- exclusivity (only some will house it)
- guarantee (contact someone if it doesn’t work)
- quality
- can contact app developers
- authentic
- copyrighted
Critically discuss Johnson’s view that video games could be good for people.
GOOD
- some researchers found evidence against the widely held belief that playing video games had negative effects
- stimulate creativity
- concentration improves
- interactive
- enhances critical thinking and learning processes
- cognitive
- -improves ability to focus on task
- -improves patience and goal-setting
- -develop willingness to delay gratification
- -understand how and why to protect scarce resources
- -promote social interaction
- -playing pro-social games makes you more likely to help others in real life
- -fast-paced games improve: vision, attention and cognition
BAD
-video games make children aggressive and more violent
Explain the competence principle with respect to video games compared to other popular media.
- video games use the Regime of Competence Principle
- movies don’t start with simple dialogue/narrative and then steadily build in complexity depending on aptitude of individual viewers
- books don’t confirm that their reader’s vocabularies have improved enough before progressing to more complex words
- training structure of video games dates back to origins
- only a fraction of today’s games involve explicit violence and sexual content is rare
- the regime of competence is everywhere in video games
How can video games cognitively change how people perceive the real world.
- evidence showed games were making people perceive the world more clearly
- learning that occurs due to video game playing occurs quite fast and is translated in real life
- whatever gamers learn transfers to situations that use different tasks and stimuli
- games teach generalised skills that apply in real world situations
- improved hand-eye co-ordination and depth perception
- the gaming population turned out to be consistently more social, more confident, more comfortable solving problems creatively and no evidence to show reduced attention spans.
Explain ‘media convergence’
- new media ownership and production = increased pressure toward the technological integration of various content delivery systems
- technological convergence - attractive media industries because it will open multiple entry points
- allows media industry to enter into consumption process
- enables consumers to easily find the popular narrative on different platforms
- consumers can view/buy products that have been ‘placed’ within the narrative universe
Discuss what types of media products are most likely to attract audience participation and appropriation.
- consumers can take part in media culture
- new media technologies that enable average citizens to participate in archiving, annotation, appropriation, transformation and recirculation of media content
- new style of consumerism
- consumers have learned new ways to interact with media content
- technological developments can’t keep up with participatory culture ie make demands that studios aren’t able to satisfy
- consumers demand to participate in creation and distribution of media narratives
- consumers want to become media producers, while producers want to maintain traditional dominance
- camcorders and digital cameras empowered more people to enter into the filmmaking process
- portable technologies enable us to carry media from place to place
- see ourselves more connected within networked comm environment
- computer and video games encouraged us to see ourselves as active participants in work of fiction
- digital photography and audio sampling technology made it easy to manipulate and rework sights and sounds of our contemporary media environment
- alter ways that media are produced and consumed, breakdown barriers of entry into media marketplace
- internet opened up space for public discussions of media content
Debate appropriateness and ethical merits of using YouTube to promote artists who already have record deals such as those discussed by Smith and Lattman
-
Use StarWars to explain media convergence.
- concept of ‘merchandising’ came from SW.
- Lucas decided to defer salary for 1st SW film in order to maintaining share of excess profits
- Kenner’s SW action figures were media products in the toy industry
- Soundtrack albums were reinvented
- SW produced images, icons and artefacts that could be reproduced in a variety of forms and sold to a group of consumers
