Slashdot Mirror
The New Mediascape
These kids devouring information online are re-working the mediascape in cyberspace, creating an enormous generational information divide. Although we often talk of technology in sweeping terms, when it comes to real-world changes, technology-driven changes are highly selective. They sweep away some forms of media like a tidal wave, and inexplicably leave others standing unchanged. In the case of commecial broadcast news, dying for years, the Net is polishing it off.
A new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press documents two significant trends: Internet news is becoming ever more mainstream, yet growing numbers of Americans are losing the news habit altogether. Fewer people say they enjoy following the news regularly, at least as news is traditionally defined; more than half pay attention to national news only when something important is happening. More Americans than ever watch the news with remote control in hand, ready to flee stories they consider boring or irrelevant. This finding underscores the importance of that little wireless zapper, proving it to be one of the most political pieces of technology ever.
Regular viewership of network news has fallen from 38% to 30% in the past two years, while local news viewership declined from 64% to 56%. Yet fully one in three Americans go online for news at least once a week, compared to 20% two years ago. And 15% say they receive daily news reports from the Net, up 6%.
Among younger, better-educated American news consumers, the Internet's impact is even more dramatic. Many more college graduates under 50 hit the Net daily for news than regularly watch a nightly network newscast. In fact, the Pew survey finds that people who are interested in the news and go online tend to watch less TV news all the time (The rise of Net news and related formats have less impact on non-broadcast news, apparently. The Pew Center found little evidence that Net news significantly drives down regular use of cable news, daily newspapers or radio news.
It stands to reason, though, that as many of these traditional news media appear on the Net and Web themselves, their use among younger Americans is also likely to decline.
The survey underscores the impact of two powerful factors that drive Net news: interactivity and the rise of Open Media news outlets.
Younger Americans who've grown up using interactive technologies -- the zapper, Sega and Nintendo systems, cable channels, the Net -- are increasingly accustomed to tailoring their news consumption: they want information of particular interest to them, at the times they choose to receive it. They demand the right to alter the media they receive. Older Americans raised on passive, pre-interactive media -- papers, newsmagazines, TV news that offer few choices and little control -- are much more likely to stick with traditional news. Thus, the across-the-board aging audiences of TV, newspapers and many magazines.
The growth of Net news has had a stunning impact on the way Americans, particularly those with access to technology, get information on business and financial matters. According to the Pew study, for active investors -- those who have traded stocks within the past six months -- the Net has largely supplanted traditional media as the leading source for stock quotes and investment advice. Here, the power of Netizens to tailor their own media is enormous and profound. 58% of active traders told Pew pollsters that they have customized stock portfolios online.
This is a staggering statistic -- such portfolios didn't even exist a decade ago. Now they're one of the primary tools for a completely new kind of financial transaction -- e-trading. And a significant percentage of financial sites online also offer breaking news and commentary, reflecting and affecting the markets they deal in.
The generational divide concerning media has been speculated about for years, but it's now quite measurable: Fewer than one in three young adults (31%) say they enjoy keeping up with the news, while more than half (57%) of those age 50 and over say they do. Though younger consumers say they don't like the news as much, they say they do like having a wide variety of information sources from which to choose. Older Americans say they often feel overwhelmed by the increasingly crowded media landscape.
(Caveat: I think serious terminology problems arise when it comes to describing younger Americans' tastes in news. Just as many pollsters and journalists don't consider gaming a significant part of culture, entertainment and technology often aren't considered news. My own belief is that younger Americans, especially those on the Net, are actually information junkies, but the kinds of news they like and the form in which they receive it is very different from their parents' tastes and from the way news is defined by journalists and educators. The kids I encounter online devour enormous amounts of information on a daily basis. That makes sweeping descriptions of their information habits suspect.)
Commercial broadcast news has less function all the time; its looming demise should have been obvious for years. Cable, much more interactive, offers many more options, often in the informal, even satirical (you could watch the convention coverage of Comedy Central's "the "Daily Show" every night and learn much more about the political conventions than on any network), and flexible format that interactive news consumers expect and, increasingly, have grown up with. With news their primary offering, cable-news channels don't have to toss out expensive entertainment programming or advertising to present news. Cable news also pays less homage to outdated anchor formats that have suffocated traditional news presentation for years.
Open source, though a movement in software rather than media per se, has sparked much of the evolution of successful open media, because it introduced the idea of information sharing online. The Net, however, is spawning many new kinds of news media: Web logs, specialized sites like this one, information-sharing exchanges from Napster to Gnutella, messaging services relaying one-to-one news; wire service- like news providers like C-Net. Some are not considered "news" in the traditional sense. But they are very journalistic. They do offer news and information, not only daily but continuously, and about everything from finance to culture to quilting to pet care.
Since the dinosaur-like TV anchors ruled the media world a decade or so ago, the mediascape has become unrecognizable, a rapidly changing work-in-progress. The past decade demonstrates that nobody can predict the media future, only try to hang on and watch while it continues to evolve, and while younger news consumers construct a radically new kind of information system for the first time in centuries.
New Open Media i-news lets you ignore all that 'boring stuff' about irrelevant people!
This great technology allows you to simply never even know about millions of other people and events!
Fed up with old people talking on the news about shit like economics? Don't give a damn because you earn 35,000 quid a year sitting on your arse doing Flash movies? Just cut it out with i-news!
"I used to get fed up with old people talking about, like, foreign affairs and stuff", says newly liberated media consumer Natalie. "It's like I don't care about some old Korean people getting worked up about some border somewhere. I wan't even born when the Korean war happened - it was like so dumb, I can't relate to it. But I never see anything about how Napster is the new American Revolution and how the MPAA are doing so much evil in this world."
And that's not all. By ensuring you _ONLY_ use i-news you can live in an entirely me-centric info-verse. Only stuff that directly affects your wealthy techno-cool urban-hip lifestyle will ever reach you! And That means:
MORE colour pieces on cool kids like you!
MORE pseudo philosophical guff about how YOUNG COOL PEOPLE are really way more important than, like, everyone else.
TOTAL coverage of pointless stupid events like the pre-release demo of naff Doom clone computer games.
ENDLESS ranting by self appointed pundits on how the Internet is JUST SO WONDERFUL.
But, remember, i-news also means:
NO people who use long difficult words.
NO lusers in suits who 'totally don't have a clue'
NO pictures of poor people in far away places.
So, get rid of your t.v. don't buy the papers, and tune in to our short-lived open media web site, where you will be guaranteed to:
DISAPPEAR UP YOU OWN BACKSIDE
as you consume endless, meaningless crap while desperately pretending that because you post shit to some bulletin board you are actually part of a community in any meaningful sense.
Hurt
Maim
Destroy
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The nightly news is too heavily influenced by advertisers, politics, and personal bias. The networks are more interests in holding the attention of the vast majority, than report relevant information to its community.