The document discusses several media theorists and concepts related to changes in media brought about by new technologies and the internet, including Web 2.0 enabling user interaction and participation, citizen journalism challenging traditional "Big Media", knowledge building communities allowing faster sharing of ideas, convergence across platforms encouraging participatory culture and collective intelligence, and the "Long Tail" theory describing how niche content is becoming more economically viable online. However, it also notes potential issues like lack of diversity on platforms like YouTube and questions around the ethics of citizen journalism.

1. Learning Objectives:
• Revise the media theories we are already
familiar with.
• Understand ‘The Long Tail’.
• Consider how to use media theory in an
exam answer.

2. Tim O’Reilly
and Web 2.0
• The term Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2004) is associated
with web applications that facilitate interactive
systemic biases, interoperability, user-centered
design, and developing the World Wide Web.
• A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and
collaborate with each other – dialogue, user-
generated content and virtual community, in
contrast to passively viewing content.
• Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking
sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted
services, web applications, mashups.

3. Dan Gillmor
and ‘We Media’
• For years ‘Big Media’ (corporations such as
Sky, Google and the BBC) have had control
over who produces and shares media, and
the information that people get. The people
who own these large corporations are not
representative of the diversity of society.
• The internet has allowed for the freedom of
citizen journalism.
• The audience is now the producer.

4. Neil Henry
and ‘American Carnival’
• Technology has caused a crisis in
professional journalism.
• Citizen journalism is prone to unethical
practises.
• Ethical professional journalism is
essential to an informed, free and
democratic society.

5. Charles Leadbeater
and ‘We-Think’
• The way we think and make sense of
‘knowledge’ is fundamentally shifting in the
online age.
• Open-access knowledge building communities
on the web allow ideas to be shared and tested
more quickly and effectively.
• More creativity and innovation, separate from
institutional constraints.

6. Henry Jenkins
and Convergence Culture
• Convergence - the flow of content across
multiple media platforms, the cooperation
between multiple media industries, and the
migratory behaviour of media audiences who
would go almost anywhere in search of the kinds
of entertainment experiences they wanted.
Convergence is a word that manages to describe
technological, industrial, cultural, and social
changes
• Participatory culture - circulation of media
content depends heavily on the active
participation of the consumer.
• Collective intelligence – combining skills and
resources (just like We-Think), which is enabled
by convergence.

7. John McMuria
and Youtube
• A participatory culture is not necessarily a
diverse culture.
• Minorities are grossly under-represented - the
most heavily viewed videos on YouTube tend to
come from white middle class males.
• If we want to see a more "democratic" culture,
we need to explore what mechanisms might
encouraged greater diversity in who participates,
whose work gets seen, and what gets valued
within the new participatory culture.

8. Chris Anderson
and ‘The Long Tail’
• The internet has transformed economics, commerce
and consumption.
• As broadband internet allows more people to look
for and share or buy a wider variety of material and
products, what happens is that people buy less of
more. Niche is no longer an expensive luxury.
• “The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to
this: Our culture and economy are increasingly
shifting away from a focus on a relatively small
number of hits (mainstream products and markets)
at the head of the demand curve, and moving
toward a huge number of niches in the tail. In an
era without the constraints of physical shelf space
and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly
targeted goods and services can be as economically
attractive as mainstream fare.”

10. Exam Question
What difference has web 2.0 made to the
media? Are the bold claims that ‘everything
has changed’ accurate?
Refer to at least two media areas.