The
Effect of Social Media on Media Consumption and Distribution[1]
Sim
Jia Hui, Daniel
(daniel.sim.2013@economics.smu.edu.sg), 1st Year Economics Student,
Singapore Management University
Executive Summary
The advent of the Internet and in
recent times, social media has dramatically changed the way media is consumed
and distributed, as much as the invention of the Printing Press has revolutionized
the spread of information. Social media has empowered consumers to become media
producers and distributors much more easily. Media, and consequently ideas and
knowledge are more freely accessible, thus opening up vast new opportunities
for a great number of people, changing our way of thinking and proliferating our
access to media as well as the people we are connected to. Yet, it presents new
challenges for media production firms and advertising companies that depend on
the traditional means of media distribution.
1 Introduction
Since
the past, until as recent as the early 21st century, the consumption of media
has followed the traditional pattern: Producers would create content for
consumers. Furthermore, technology has all along greatly empowered the means of
media distribution of producers, from the invention of the Printing Press, to
the Radio and Television, and finally, the Internet.
This
paper seeks to explain how the proliferation of Social Media has caused a
paradigm shift in the media consumption
pattern into one of user-generated content, freely available to almost anybody
connected to the Internet. This transformation is by no means complete since
traditional content such as: Newspapers, Hollywood movies and television programs
are obviously still existent. However, this paper will also cover the effects
(both positive and negative) that Social Media has had on these traditional
media giants. Furthermore, it will cover the political ramifications, as well
as future considerations for people to take note of, as Social Media becomes
ever more pervasive in our lives.
2 Historical Perspectives
Throughout
history, media has relied on technology to be broadcasted and shared with its
audiences. The first movable type printing press was created by Johannes
Gutenberg in Mainz in the mid 15th century. By allowing books to be mass
produced, it was partly responsible for the spread of ideas and scientific
knowledge during the Renaissance (Dewar, 2005). Terrestrial Broadcasting, in
the form of wireless transmissions, enabled media to be sent nation-wide live
to anybody tuning in, unifying them to into a single audience as opposed to
print media. As a dominant form of media during WWII in the USA, radio
(ThinkQuest, n.d.) was able to provide up-to-date news of the war faster to
concerned relatives of soldiers fighting in the war. Furthermore, radio was a
household entertainment, providing live music, variety shows, soap operas and
comedy (CyberCollege 2012). Yet, it was the television (TV) that defined the
20th century, capturing major happenings around the world and broadcasting to
viewers who have access to it (Anthony, 2013). For example, the historic Apollo
11 Moon Landing of July 1st, 1969 was broadcasted to an estimated 530 million
people around the world (Apollo 11, 2009). The television opened up a whole new
media platform of TV news, entertainment TV, and even making sports viewable to
audiences around the country.
It
was not long before the Internet came onto the scene. Its predecessor, the
ARPANET, commissioned by the US Department of Defense allowed computers to
exchange information with one another, paving the way for the Internet. The
World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 (History of the web,
n.d.). Later on, especially with the onset of Web 2.0, did media content
distribution really start taking place on the Internet. With infrastructure,
more and more were people being connected to the Internet. Furthermore, due to
the advancement of technology, faster Internet speeds became possible, from the
dial-up to broadband to today’s fiber broadband, making it easier and faster
for companies to sell and distribute media across the Internet rather than just
through brick and mortar stores. Apple’s iTunes Store in 2003 allowed users to
buy music online and Netflix in 2007 enabled on-demand Internet streaming of TV
shows and movies primarily in North America.
That
being said, it was really social media in the 2000s that revolutionized and
fundamentally altered the pattern of media consumption and distribution,
because it relied on user-generated content and allowed for users to
communicate with one another more fluidly. For example, YouTube was launched in
2005 as a video sharing website and has grown phenomenally as one of the key
drivers of change in media consumption and distribution (see Section 3.1).
Facebook
(launched by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4th, 2006) and Twitter (launched by
Jack Dorsey in 2006), both social media giants today greatly improved and revolutionized
the way people network, interact and share memories, photographs and videos together.
Facebook displayed rapid growth from just 1 million users in 2004 to 1.11
billion users in 2013, which encompasses more than 1 in 7 people on Earth today
(Number of active, 2013). From the
mundane, to poetry, comedy and even citizen journalism (see Section 3.2),
Twitter has taken on a role of a rapid, interactive information disseminator.
In such a relatively short period of time (even less than a decade), social
media has become so integral and central to people’s lives; some may even argue
inseparable from them.
3 Current Situation
3.1 User-Generated
Entertainment (YouTube)
Unlike
traditional TV programs, videos are on YouTube are not heavily bogged down by
advertisements. However, it is a subject of much contention when copyrighted
content gets uploaded onto YouTube without the copyright holders' permission.
Instead of going against YouTube, there are media companies that collaborate
with YouTube, such as VEVO, which provides sites such as YouTube with music
videos. YouTube also has an in place a “Content ID System” that scans videos
that are uploaded and cross-references them to a database. If they are
copyrighted material, the copyright holders are alerted and can have control
over their content by blocking them or even sharing the revenue from YouTube
advertisement (Youtube content id, 2010). In doing so, YouTube is able to act
more as a partner in distributing copyright holders’ content rather than as a
competitor.
YouTube
has been successful in leveling the playing field for amateur content producers
such as singers, filmmakers and educators. Amateur content producers can become
very popular in a short amount of time at very little cost, without the
traditional process of seeking distribution companies to make their content
available to the masses. Natalie Tran from Sydney owns a YouTube channel:
CommunityChannel, and typically produces comedy videos to over 1.3 million
subscribers. Receiving widespread media coverage for her creativity and
popularity, she has also partnered with Lonely Planet to produce travel videos (Lowe, 2012). While major
TV networks in Australia have been criticized for not being inclusive to
Australia’s ethnic mix, YouTube has allowed a more accurate portrayal of ethnic
diversity. YouTube has created a democratic forum for cultural groups across
Australia, unlike mainstream media, according to Andrew Jakubowicz, Professor
of Sociology of the Sydney University of Technology (Whyte, 2012).
Even
professional music artists have leveraged on social media like YouTube and
Facebook, and on online markets like iTunes. For example, Macklemore managed to be the first independent artist in two
decades to reach number one on US Billboard Charts without a major record label
(Feeney, 2013), perhaps setting a future trend.
Content
producers are also able to earn money from producing their own content by
taking part in the YouTube Partner Program. Such monetary incentives open up a
whole new realm of creativity, empowering online citizens to create videos for
other people just like them.
However,
by allowing people to upload any content freely to YouTube, controversial
content that provokes racial or religious hatred and intolerance can be spread.
In 2012, the video “Innocence of Muslims” was uploaded, besmirching the Prophet
Muhammad, sparking outrage and riots in the Muslim world, culminating in the
deaths of over 50 people (Stone, 2012); a bounty was even placed on the head of
the man responsible behind it. This is a poignant reminder that there will be
people ready to abuse the freedom of expression, even by using social media.
Even if such a video is eventually taken down, damage would have already been
done, and in the case of “Innocence of Muslims”, lives were lost when they
would not have been.
In
an effort to rake in more profits, YouTube has poured millions of dollars to
bring in professional content, amateur producers felt that they were being
undermined (Shih, 2012); ironic that the purpose of YouTube in the very
beginning was to share videos made by amateurs. With the competition, these
producers may not be able to match up to the professionals in terms of budget,
advertisements and connections. Instead of levelling the playing field for
video distribution, the structure of the big budget Hollywood and TV industry
today may simply just be replicated into the YouTube community in the future.
3.2 Citizen
Journalism
While
print technology has allowed newspaper companies to dominate news reporting in
their respective cities or countries for the past 300 or so years, in recent
times the Internet has allowed blogs to flourish, covering a range of topics,
including news and political commentary. Such blogs pose direct challenges to
the traditional news media companies that rely on newspaper sales and
advertisement to make money. While many newspaper companies try to ride the
wave of technology by providing a subscription service for readers to pay to
read the news on their tablets or phones, few people are willing to pay for it.
A research done by Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that only
10% of adults in the US who use mobile apps to access the news pay for it
(Choney, 2011). To exacerbate the situation, many Americans do not trust
traditional media news. According to a report by Gallup, in 2013, only 23% of
Americans have confidence in newspapers and television news (Mendez, 2013).
The
freedom and zero cost to set up a blog, accessible for anybody on the Internet
to see, has empowered ordinary non-journalists to post their own reporting or
political commentary. Notable blogs for news include The Huffington Post,
offering news coverage and US politics. Blogs also cover a wide range of other
topics, from personal reflections to cooking recipes, comics and travel guides,
readers no longer have to purchase a physical (or digital) magazine but can
search through a wide range of blogs free-of-charge.
3.2.1
Microblogging
A
smaller, swifter version of blogging: Microblogging, is also making headway in
society. Twitter is the best example of microblogging today. As in the case of
Twitter, microblog posts or tweets
can be no longer than 140 characters; tweets take just mere seconds to be read
and can be retweeted to other people,
as opposed to blog posts. Small bits of information can be spread around and
disseminated at rapid speeds. A survey conducted in 2012 showed that the
percentage of Twitter users using a mobile device increased to 71% while that
of computers declined (Mercer, n.d.). The proliferation of smartphones and
tablets and growth in mobile networks, and the fact that browsing through
Twitter requires short attention spans mean that users are more inclined to
access Twitter when they are on the go.
It
is unsurprising that Twitter is perfect in sharing and disseminating
information, in some cases: the news and latest happenings at an extremely
rapid rate, by the people there “on the ground” to witness it happen around
them, or simply to participate as a mass virtual audience of spectators able to
broadcast their own opinion on major events as they unfold live. When news
broke of Michael Jackson’s death in 2009, the number of tweets doubled to 456
per second (Holt, 2013), even causing Twitter to shut down temporarily (Bates,
2009).
3.2.2 Political
Ramifications
A
more pressing issue is that such freedom that social media entails mean that
alternative views are easier accessible and suppression of information more
difficult. Being out of the reach of governmental control, it is easier for
dissidents to stir political unrest, such as in Iran's 2009 Presidential Election
protests (Grossman, 2009), or outright anarchy such as in the case of the 2011
London Riots, inflamed by participation on Facebook pages and Twitter (Mathew,
2011). It is thus unsurprising that such platforms are banned in countries such
as China.
 |
|
Real-time Twitter feed during Iran’s Presidential
Elections. Reproduced from Time World (2009, June 17) |
In
2009, the Communist Party in China banned access to Facebook, in addition to
Twitter, in the wake of deadly riots in Xinjiang (Wauters, 2009). This is a
testament to the potency of social media. The Chinese Communist Party feared
that its power may be at risk if dissidents were successfully able to launch an
uprising on the backs of social media. However, even as Western social media
sites are blocked, Chinese copycat versions have emerged, such as Renren, Weibo and Youku, showing
that people would still want to be connected on social media platforms. While
having said that, blocking Chinese Internet users from Western social media
sites inadvertently alienates and isolates them from the rest of the world. For
example, a Chinese user would be unable to access videos on YouTube or connect
with foreign friends who are only using Facebook, thus limiting his global
outreach.
More
importantly, however is that such empowerment can mean that hoaxes or
inaccurate reporting can be easily circulated around social networks. On 23rd
April 2013, the Dow Jones plunged sharply, losing $136 billion of market
value after a Twitter hoax claimed that President Obama was injured in an
explosion at the White House. This raised concerns of the use of trading
algorithms to analyze information from sources like social media (Chozick & Perlroth, 2013).
It
is worth noting that while there is plenty of excitement and talk of the power
of social media to bring about political change, and indeed a number of
political and social movements have sprang out from social media, many have not
matured into coherent, viable political movements (Keen, 2012), and are merely
just aggregations of individuals trumpeting the same views. Take for instance,
the Occupy movements that failed due to a lack of clear goals (Anil, 2011) and
strong leadership despite the strong coverage they received on social media.
3.3 Collaboration
Despite
the threats that citizen journalism seem to pose to journalism, rather than
compete with news companies, citizen journalism can instead enhance and bolster
traditional news reporting. Richard Sambrook, then Director of Global News at
BBC writes that on the day of the 2005 London Bombings, photos, videos and
reports from eyewitnesses came pouring into BBC, which they used to report the
story. He added that, enabled by consumer technology, especially the camera
phone, news coverage of major events from now on would be a partnership with
the public (Sambrook, 2005).
Russia
Today (RT), a Russian-based television network is extremely popular on social
media, such as YouTube, recording nearly 1 million views on an average day.
Rather than just deliver information, it posts videos with the aim of provoking
responses and sparking debates. The videos are also in a variety of formats,
such as documentaries, interviews or even user-generated videos. Furthermore,
RT looks at the comments left by users to see which stories are of most
interest (McAthy, 2013).
RT is therefore an excellent model of engagement with the community, using
social media to its fullest advantage and delivering the news that challenges
viewers’ thoughts and perspectives on the world around them.
Figure 2: Advertisement by RT challenges viewers to question
more. Reproduced from The Guardian (2009, December 18)
4 Future Considerations
4.1 Education
While
most students in developed countries receive formal education, students have
inherently different learning speeds and thus schools everywhere face the
problem of not being able to cater to every student’s learning speed, leaving
slower students behind while holding faster students back. However, education
can be a very viable industry to be transformed by Social Media in the future.
Currently, the Internet, especially sites like YouTube and Khan Academy contain
a wealth of educational video courses for free, on demand to suit any topic
that students or teachers would want to go through. In the future, it would be
tremendously beneficial to students that a Digital
Aristotle (Grey, 2012), a computer program is developed that can tap on
this wealth of resources to teach students, test their knowledge and adapt to
their learning speeds. The democratization of information by social media means
that people would be able to contribute such resources very much cheaply and
easily through social media. Furthermore, in such a knowledge-based economy, a
better education would mean better opportunities for students in the future,
who may not have the financial means or ability to afford tutors or an
expensive education.
For
subjects like the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, the diversification of
viewpoints that students are exposed to would be beneficial in that their
knowledge on national history would no longer be limited to their textbooks,
which may have be biased in their points of view. It is not surprising that
conflicts between countries have emerged in the past because of content in
their textbooks. Yet, it is also worth noting that the proliferation of
viewpoints may be too overwhelming to students at a young age.
4.2 Consumer
Gadgets
Social
media has already seeped into everyday life, due to the mass availability of
consumer gadgets such as smartphones, tablets, and even smart TVs. While people
are able to watch online videos and surf their social sites on their
smartphones now, with the release of Google Glass in 2014, the possibilities
for consumers would be virtually limitless. With wearable technology possibly
paving the way, people would be empowered with the ability to record photos and
videos from one’s actual first-person view, allowing for more personal
experiences to be shared with friends and family on social networks. More ambitiously,
entertainment in the form of augmented reality may be very viable in the near
future, together with gesture technology already present today, providing an
even more immersive experience.
4.3 Future Effect
on Consumption Patterns
One
effect that most people should be able to observe recently is that more and
more of the devices that being used are designed and marketed towards
participation in social media, such as those mentioned above, and even smart
cars in the future. It is as Andrew Keen, author of the book Digital Vertigo puts it: Everything is
becoming social (Keen, 2012). Even today, many popular games thrive on social
networks, and it is likely that society is heading in the direction that every
form of media that is consumed in the future would have social media embedded
in it, from e-book readers that can share one’s favorite books with friends, to
smart TVs that can recommend TV programs based on what one’s friends are
watching. This raises a whole debate on whether social media has become too
pervasive in our lives and whether our personal privacy may be in jeopardy.
Another
point worth considering is that, with consumers increasingly being constantly
bombarded by fast information (as mentioned previously in the case of Twitter),
or images and videos such as Instagram, it is likely that, for better or worst,
social media could shorten future consumers’ attention spans, especially for
the most tech-savvy in developed societies, such as Generation Y. Many children
today already have access to smartphones and tablets, and this could lead to
the effects discussed above on the future generations. An online survey on
about 2500 teachers in the US by Pew’s Research Centre has shown that 87% of
them feel that these technologies are creating an easily distracted generation
with short attention spans (Jefferies, 2013). This change in appetite could
lead to changes in the type of media produced in the future, such as smartphone
or tablet games that are short and require minimal bursts of attention, not to
mention that such games, videos and music obviously can be accessed and
downloaded that much easily and quickly in time to come.
4.4 Filter Bubbles
With
people increasingly relying on the Internet and social media as their primary
source of news of concern, whether it be from a Google search or through one’s
Facebook or Twitter newsfeed, a worrisome trend has emerged that may restrict
their exposure to a balanced worldview. Increasingly, sites like Facebook and
Google track users’ behavior on their sites by keeping track of what they click
on, and thereby filtering news stories to tailor-display what they think is
best for us using algorithms. Other social media sites like YouTube and Twitter
are also using such algorithms and recommending content based on one’s behavior,
not to mention retail sites like Amazon. Yet, people may end up unwittingly
trapped in filter bubbles where they are not exposed to content that challenge
their opinions and broaden their perspectives (Pariser, 2011). Earlier in this
paper I discussed about how social media has liberated people from information
control, but it is chilling and ironic to think that in the future, people’s
information access may instead be controlled by these algorithms belonging to
these social media sites in the first place.
While
using such algorithms does bring more relevant information to the people who
want to see it, while bringing people with similar views together, it should be
such that users should be given the personal choice to opt out of such
filtering, and even then the filtering should not be so drastic as to polarize
the community. Functions should be put in place in these filtering programs to
provide alternate views on a particular issue.
5 Conclusion
In
conclusion, the Internet and Social Media has transformed the landscape of
media and the relationship between the producer and consumer dramatically.
Consumers will stand to benefit since more content is freely available to them.
Yet with more uncensored and unverifiable user-generated content, consumers and
producers alike need to practice greater discernment. Though it is highly
unlikely or even impossible for all media consumption to be transposed onto
social media, traditional content producers, such as film and news companies
need to remain open to change and new ways of collaboration, rather than purely
seeing them as competition. As social media opens up new opportunities for
people to broadcast their talents, and likewise to be open to a diverse range
of content to broaden their perspectives and appreciation, it is important that
people do not become overly preoccupied with social media and become
unwittingly trapped in their own filter bubbles.
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[1] This paper was reviewed by Quah Yi
Yao Cedric and Siddarth Sethi
