The New Media

For decades the media as we know it has been run and dictated by economic giants, media corporations with more money and influence than we even like to think about. Today Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is one of the largest media giants with its media covering everything, from radio and TV, to newspapers and websites, throughout the western world as well as being one of the major players in Asia. His control of what media is produced, dispersed and consumed is almost absolute.

This oligopoly of the media could be closer to it's end than anyone would expect. The huge media corporations which for so long have controlled not only what media we can consume, but also how and when we consume them, are loosing a little bit of that precious control.

A furious digital and technological development has given the general western citizen the tools and means to produce media and broadcast it. The Internet today is facing it's largest revolution since its inception, called 'Web 2.0' by those who focus only on the technological aspects of what is happening. The biggest trends and websites are those which empower the common man, giving them the keys to both the production and dispersement of information and entertainment.

The tools to do it ourselves

YouTube is a newborn giant on the Internet, giving people the tools to spread and share their 'televised' media in the form of small shows, documentaries, insightful reports and discussions. Flickr does the same but for photographs while DeviantArt empowers the digital and traditional artists, both contributing together to give the common man the tools to spread their views, their information and their work. Blogs, like the ones available through Blogger, allows everyone with access to a computer an easy tool to publish their ideas, their information and entertainment.

So, how is this revolutionizing the media world as we know it? Because the media corporations are no longer the sole providers of information and entertainment. Today we are seeing more and more sources for news, documentaries and investigative reporting than ever before. Blogs are becoming the newspapers of today and the televisions of tomorrow through the use of easy access online video.

Podcasting, creating downloadable audio files for blogging, is quickly becoming a new source for audio information and entertainment for a whole generation. This development might potentially lead us towards a new form of radio where we choose our own mix of music and hosts, created at home or through subscriptions online.

The Internet has become an integrated part of the everyday life of the western youth. Young adults are downloading movies and music while the industry is in a tumult trying to halt the natural evolution of cultural media as we know it. But whereas they see it as infringing on their immaterial rights, are we not simply seeing an old dinosaur raging at how evolution has cheated them? New and more dedicated ways of sharing information and entertainment not only takes away power from giant corporations, it empowers the common man.

More and more musicians and authors are given a chance to be heard and read by a larger audience as the Internet spreads. They have been given the tools through computer programs not only to create their own personal brand of cultural media, but to spread what they have created. The musician now has programs which help them record their own music at home, without having to toady to corporations. Corporations with no interest for music in itself but with an inhuman interest for what can generate revenue.

The recent uprising in so-called "pirate movements" and their organisation using the Internet as a foundation is a testament to how much the common western citizen cares about how media is dispersed throughout the globe. If these pirate movements are even somewhat successful we will see a monumental change in how media is shared between the consumers, once again undermining the current traditional ideas of media is meant to be consumed.

Other non-profit organisations like the Creative Commons and Free Software Foundation work within the confines of current copyright laws to promote a change in how people think and act when it comes to most types of media, including software like the operating systems of the PCs most westerners use today.

This new evolution of how the different types of media is produced, dispersed and consumed will affect a great change in the economic aspects of the media industry as well, changing how the media conglomerates of today are organised and how they generate profit. Advertising will most probbaly become the major revenue source since the media giants will no longer be the ones controlling the copyright of the media which is being consumed.

Since the economics will no longer be based on copyright but on advertising it stands to reason that it will become more important for the media companies to support a wide base of media which the consumers can utilize, while at the same time taking advantage of the Long Tail syndrome detailed in the last decade by Chris Anderson. The basis of the Long Tail is that the aggregate of lower popularity items is greater than the total of the more popular items, no matter what kind of media they are.

The shape of things to come

Even though the shape of media isn't changing since we are still listening, reading and watching, the form and content of the media is. With more and more sources of information to consider and consume, we are forced into a situation where we must learn how to filter media once again. Once we start filtering for ourselves it is we who determine who we trust, it is our choice which defines the information we receive, not that of a news corporation or media conglomerate.

To learn how to filter the increasing amount of information coming to us from multiple sources of media will be like a child learning to filter out the myriad sounds his ear picks up. It will probably not be a conscious filtering, but rather a subconscioous filtering predetermined by our existing morals and views, who we trust and distrust.

But even if the filtering in itself will be subconscious, the simple existance of such a filtering will make people less inclined to believe everything they hear, see or read. The new generations will hopefully be able to distinguish better between propaganda, no matter it's form, and more unbiased information produced without a specific idea to promote.

This, in and off itself, is the one most important revolution we will be facing in the future, the first steps of giving the western citizen the tools to begin thinking more for himself and stop accepting the information he receives without a critical eye to who is giving him this information, who produced it and for what purpose.