Weekly NDM

Social media use 'does not increase stress', study claims

This article is about a study that suggests social media does not cause as much stress as the non-users of social media but happen to be more aware of stress' in their friends lives.

• However, social media users are more aware of stressful events experienced by their online friends, which has been described as the “cost of caring”.
• The research also found that women who use Twitter, email and share digital pictures on a daily basis score 21% lower on the stress measure used in the study compared with those who did not communicate digitally
• “The social aspect of these technologies makes people more aware of stressful events in others’ lives. Learning about and being reminded of undesirable events in other people’s lives makes people feel more stress themselves. This finding about the cost of caring adds to the evidence that stress can be contagious.”

This shows however social media can cause stress by finding out certain things in others lives if not their own stresses. Therefore there are positives and negatives about social media.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/15/social-media-use-does-not-increase-stress-study-claims

Weekly NDM

WikiLeaks demands answers after Google hands staff emails to US government

This article is about how Google had handed over staff emails to the US government and how WikiLeaks wants to know why.

• In the letter, WikiLeaks says it is “astonished and disturbed” that Google waited more than two and a half years to notify its subscribers, potentially depriving them of their ability to protect their rights to “privacy, association and freedom from illegal searches”.
• Google revealed to WikiLeaks on Christmas Eve – a traditionally quiet news period – that it had responded to a Justice Department order to hand over a catch-all dragnet of digital data including all emails and IP addresses relating to the three staffers.
• Harrison, who also heads the Courage Foundation, told the Guardian she was distressed by the thought of government officials gaining access to her private emails. “Knowing that the FBI read the words I wrote to console my mother over a death in the family makes me feel sick,” she said.
• She accused Google of helping the US government conceal “the invasion of privacy into a British journalist’s personal email address. Neither Google nor the US government are living up to their own laws or rhetoric in privacy or press protections”.
• “This is basically ‘Hand over anything you’ve got on this person’,” he said. “That’s troubling as it’s hard to distinguish what WikiLeaks did in its disclosures from what major newspapers do every single day in speaking to government officials and publishing still-secret information.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/25/wikileaks-google-staff-emails-us-government

Riot Questions

1. The images had created a representation of youth as being from a poor council estate as they wore tracksuits and were shown vandalising.
2. David Buckingham believes that the riots and the actions of the youth during them were a very strong as it shows the lower classes to being criminals and violent.
3. The IPSOS/MORI survey had found 40% of articles that involved young people contained violence. 71% of them involved negativity in youth.
4. Stanley cohen had stated that the media had portrayed the riots as a disturbance and an even bigger moral panic.
5. Some of the media such as rap, violent games, social media, television, and other sources were blamed for the riots.
6. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter,  and the phone messenger of Blackberry's was also used in the communication to organise the riots. In turn this caused at the time for blackberry to shut down temporarily.
7. The hyperdermic needle model links as the media had injected the information that people were stealing tv's and other expensive goods which allowed people in poverty to go out and perform similar acts. Also, the two step flow model can be used as opinion leaders took to facebook and were followed by others.
8. Henry Jenkins had seen the riots as a shift in power from the government to the people and as democratisation finally coming into power.
9. the right wing response is that the rioters are criminal thugs who have not been educated well and brought up poorly.
10. the left wing response would be that the rioters come from an underprivileged background where they feel that society is against them with the raise in fees. 
11. In my opinion the riots were an excuse for many young adults to perform criminal acts.
12. Capitalism can be blamed for the riots as money is the goal for everyone and individuals saw this as an opportunity to loot as many valuables as they could.
13. People involved in the riots hardly got a chance to explain themselves in the media.
14. The causes happen to be opportunism, lack of money, unemployment, an increase in student tuition fees and how they felt they were treated compared with.

Weekly NDM

Viber banned in Bangladesh

This article discusses how the voice/video calling app called Viber has been banned in Bangladesh. It discusses the reasons as to why it had been banned.

• Bangladeshi telecoms authorities have shut down smartphone messaging service Viber, which had become a popular communication medium for anti-government protesters.
• He did not give reasons for the decision, but local television station Channel 24 said Viber was shut down to prevent protesters from “exchanging information” across the country.
• At least 25 people have died in the latest violence including about a dozen burned to death after protesters firebombed buses.
• The government has deployed thousands of police, paramilitaries and an elite anti-militant force to crack down on the protesters. But the violence has continued unabated, disrupting transport services and shipments of garments, the country’s biggest export.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/19/viber-banned-bangladesh-smartphone-messaging-service

Weekly NDM

Telegraph Media Group made £55m operating profit in 2014

This article is about how the telegraph has made £55m operating profit in 2014 alone. It discusses how the company has gone on to achieve such numbers via redundancy and cutbacks.

• The Telegraph Media Group (TMG) made an operating profit of £55m last year, according to unaudited figures leaked to the Guardian.
• That represented a £6m fall on the previous year’s operating profit but should also be seen in the context of one exceptional item, an £8m digital investment.
• Print advertising revenue fell in line with the overall market decline but this was partially compensated by “a high” double-digit rise in online ad revenue.
• It is understood that TMG’s management, led by chief executive Murdoch MacLennan, is “quietly pleased” with the achievement, regarding it as “healthy”.
• That pleasure may not extend to journalistic staff who have been made redundant over the past couple of years. Last October, TMG cut 55 editorial jobs some 18 months on from cutting 80 jobs.

This shows that although newspaper is on the decline in the form of print, newspaper institutions could stay in profit via the digital transition and NDM technology. 

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/19/telegraph-media-group-made-55m-operating-profit-in-2014

Weekly NDM

Uber promises 50,000 new European jobs

This article is about how the taxi hire firm Uber is planning a expansion in Europe and are in turn promising to create 50,000 jobs in 2015.

• create 50,000 new jobs in 2015.
• Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, told a conference in Munich: “We want to make 2015 the year where we establish a new partnership with EU cities.”
• Kalanick said Uber’s expansion would take 400,000 cars off the road in cities that welcome the company. He added: “Uber is committed to establishing new partnerships with Europe’s cities to ensure innovation, harness powerful economic benefits and promote core city functions.”
• Uber has been hit with court injunctions in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain for violating taxi licensing rules. 
• Kalanick also told mayors in Europe that if they relax regulations that prevent the firm operating, over the next four years Uber would create 10,000 jobs in each of their cities.
• Those new jobs would not be Uber employees, by and large. As a leading proponent of the “sharing economy”, the company’s drivers are legally independent contractors in the cities, such as London, where it operates as a minicab firm.

This article is interesting as it shows how the NDM app has rapidly expanded and become a hit ever since its creation.








http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/19/uber-new-european-jobs-taxi-app

Learner Response

Learner Response: 
New/digital media has allowed the audience to interact with the news and access it more freely. A new concept that supports this is citizen journalism which has been on the rise ever since one of its first examples being the Rodney King video of the police beating him up after a high speed car chase; which in turn started  riots in LA in America. This had shown how effective citizen journalism is as ordinary people now are able to break news and report on things they may have seen or heard. A theorist in support of the pluralistic argument is Al Gore as he states that “the internet is an empowering tool.. and exciting and revolutionary prospect.” In many ways Al Gore is right as it has empowered many ordinary people into reporting news. This shows that NDM has allowed audiences to become more democratic and equal.

Weekly NDM

Michael Fertik: online reputation is becoming more valuable than money or power

This article discusses how online reputation may be more powerful and more valuable than money for instance. It explains how Michael Fertik, an entrepreneur had started his business solely based on reputation.

• Online reputation of 1.6 million customers who pay upwards of £700 a year to have their most flattering activities showcased to the world via search engines
• He has a staff of 240 in California and in 2013 he acquired the British company Reputation 24/7 and launched uk.reputation.com.
• He writes, “Reputation is becoming more valuable than money or power.”
• The amount of information you give away about yourself – your “digital footprint” – increases exponentially every time you go online.  

This is interesting as the rise of NDM shows that it is becoming so much more relevant and important in today's society that people are willing to pay to have their reputation showcased.

Weekly NDM

Google searches for a way to avoid Microsoft’s fate

This article is about how Google has recently had a dip in the search engines market share making it their lowest share since 2008. Analysts have studied whether or not this is just a blip and if Google could be on path that Microsoft had found themselves on.

• Google’s market share dropped to 75.2%, compared with 79.3% a year earlier. 
•  its share of the European search market ranges between 90% and 96%
• makes its (colossal) revenues from search-driven advertising. (Advertising provided $51bn of the company’s $56bn revenues last year.)

This article is interesting as it shows a sudden blip in one of the largest media institutions in the world and how Google are trying not to follow the path of ~Microsoft.  

Weekly NDM

Hacker fakes German minister's fingerprints using photos of her hands

This article is about how a hacker replicates the German minister's fingerprints using photos. This shows that technology is advancing so much so that by using a few photos of a persons hand you are able to take their identity in essence.

• That’s no longer an abstract fear: a speaker at the Chaos Communication Congress, an annual meeting of hackers in Germany, demonstrated his method for faking fingerprints using only a few high-definition photographs of his target, German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen.
• Starbug is no stranger to taking on biometric security. In a high profile stunt in 2013, he spoofed Apple’s TouchID sensors within 24 hours of the release of the iPhone 5S.
• And Starbug agrees, telling Zeit in 2013 that “I consider my password safer than my fingerprint… My password is in my head, and if I’m careful when typing, I remain the only one who knows it.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/30/hacker-fakes-german-ministers-fingerprints-using-photos-of-her-hands

Weekly NDM

Who’s taking control this year? Google, BBC, Facebook, or even North Korea?

This article is about how 2014 ended by north korea hacking into sony and dumping all their information on the internet due to a recent movie about them. This begins to question who is in power and who will take control in 2015.

• As the owners of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram accept that they are not just “neutral platforms”, but actually shaping and controlling media, as well as owning and supporting a great deal of it, we can expect to see them become more active in this area.
• The Googles and Facebooks of this world could liberate a billion dollars from the glovebox of their Teslas and change the dynamics of media investment overnight. Will they do it? Not overnight, but maybe over time.
• There is plenty of life in “legacy” media, like broadcast television, but it will only ever play an ancillary role now to social and distributed media.
•  Facebook is valued at over $220bn, CBS at $27bn, this is not just a bubble or a rounding error but a reflection of how the world and advertisers behave. To remain relevant, existing media brands will have to understand technology and perpetual change in the context of cultural institutions.
• Or perhaps the North Korean government will give us all something to think about and buy Google?

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2015/jan/04/google-facebook-bbc-north-korea-control-media-industry

Weekly NDM

The #bellfie to #Growvember: what will be the charity social media phenomenon of 2015?

This article is about how social media also contributes towards charity fundraising and has revolutionised the way charities receive money.

• In August, the #icebucketchallenge – where, you guessed it, people threw buckets of ice and water over themselves all in the name of charity – raised £7m for MNDAssociation.
• In 2014, social media changed the way that charities fundraise. In March, the#nomakeupselfie campaign emerged and raised £8m for Cancer Research UK in six days.
• The big craze for 2015 will be the #bellfie. The concept will really chime with the public, who will take selfies of themselves next to any kind of bell, be it doorbells, hand-held bells or even bluebells. This will signify ‘ringing the changes’ in their chosen campaign. The craze will kick off in London on New Year’s Eve with a record number of selfies taken with Big Ben (the #belfryselfie).

It also shows what could come and peoples different ideas to start up new charities that could take off in 2015.

http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2015/jan/01/charity-social-media-phenomenon-2015

Weekly NDM

Intel trains sights on Google Glass with $25m investment in Vuzix

This article is about how intel are now also investing in new wearable technology by paying $24.8 million for a 30% stake in US firm Vuzix. This shows that wearable technology may be the future with all large companies such as Google heavily investing in the new technology.

• The latest is Intel, paying $24.8m for a 30% stake in US firm Vuzix, which has made its name with devices aimed at consumers and workplaces – for example hospitals, warehouses and call centres – alike.
• Vuzix says it will use the investment to speed up the development of its next line of “fashion-based wearable display products”, following the launch of its M100 device in 2014 through a partnership with another tech firm, Lenovo.
• “We are trying to bring technology companies and fashion companies together,” said Bell.
• Sales of Vuzix’s existing devices have been growing, albeit from a small base: the company reported revenues of $664.6k in the third quarter of 2014, up 96% year-on-year.
• “We’re making a very big bet on wearables. We have announced we have a family of chipsets coming out in the next year that are wearables specific. It’s a pretty safe bet … Our plan is to partner with the best people, and have them teach us.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/05/intel-google-glass-vuzix-investment

Weekly NDM

Sony hackers may still have access to computer systems

This article is about how over the christmas period the Sony Network for gamers was hacked leaving people unable to play online. It was attacked by a group of hackers called the Lizard Squad.

• The PSN, which has 110 million users, was not restored until 28 December. Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service was also targeted by the Lizard Squad’s attack but service was restored by Boxing Day.
• The hackers took the gaming service offline on Christmas Eve, preventing new users from connecting and registering their new PlayStation consoles, as well as blocking existing users access to online games and on-demand video streaming services.
• “Since access to PlayStation Network was impacted during the holidays, we wanted to show our appreciation for your patience by offering all PlayStation Plus members that had an active membership or free trial on December 25th a membership extension of five days,” said Eric Lempel, vice president of Sony Network Entertainment in a blog post.
• “In addition, sometime this month we will announce that for a limited time, we will be offering a 10% discount code good for a one-time discount off a total cart purchase in the PlayStation Store as a thank you to all PSN members.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/02/sony-hackers-may-still-access-computer-systems-the-interview

Weekly NDM

2014: a good year for democracy?

This article is about how last year in 2014 a record breaking amount of votes of 1.5 billion votes were taken. It discusses whether 2015 will be any better.

• More than 1.5 billion people voted around the world in 2014 in over 100 elections that endorsed the appeal of democracy as an idea, if not always as a system of government.
• On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, fewer than 3,000 people cast ballots for a new legislative assembly, but they represented almost three-quarters of eligible voters.
• In India, by contrast, the presidential election was such a huge logistical challenge that it went on for weeks, allowing more than 500 million people to take part – a full two-thirds of citizens with the right to vote.
• “Nations with a sceptical public actually have a more effective and accountable government because citizens press government to be responsive and perform,” 
• “For the eighth consecutive year, [we] recorded more declines in democracy worldwide than gains,” the 41st annual edition of its Freedom in the World report found, warning of serious setbacks in “large politically influential countries” including Egypt, Russia, Turkey and Indonesia, and the rise of “modern authoritarianism”.
• “Even if citizens see democracy as a positive feature, political elites in these nations do not want to yield power. So elections are used to give the appearance of democracy without the threatened loss of power to elites.”

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/dec/30/2014-a-good-year-for-democracy

Weekly NDM

From YouTube to Facebook

This article is about how in the past year video has been of the themes.

• We sell 7m national newspapers a day in the UK, plus 3m local, so that’s 10m in total.
• There will undoubtedly be a bit of a shakedown in 2015 as the new owners push for synergies to drive the bottom line.
• I often get asked if Facebook’s video business will take away from YouTube. But people go to Facebook for many reasons, not just to watch video. People go to YouTube to watch video, and that’s part of its strength.
• Digital video advertising is growing faster than any other form of digital advertising, but at the same time – in the US at least – TV is still getting more new dollars per year than all of digital video.
• In the multi-channel network space we’re going to see a lot more specialisation. We’re seeing it already. When these companies first appeared in 2009 to 2011, they were trying to aggregate as many channels and views as possible, to attract advertisers.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/04/youtube-facebook-video-year-ahead

Weekly NDM

Is a profit worth the price of the Times’s paywall?

This article is about how the times are now after 13 years beginning to generate a profit once again via their paywall

• The Times and Sunday Times together reported an operating profit of £1.7m – the first profit in that quarter over 13 long years. 
• The print circulation of the Times actually edged 1% up year-on-year. Digital subscriptions went up as well, by 8%.
•  He decreed – five years back, when the Times and the Sunday Times were billed as losing nearly £70m a year between them – that all his journalism must command a fair price.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/07/is-profit-worth-price-times-paywall

Weekly NDM

Could Facebook be a factor in the next election? 

This article is about how Facebook could possibly have the power to influence people into voting and in taking part in politics. It also discusses how manipulative social network sites are and how their algorithm is used to show you what they want you to see.

• ...Facebook graphic directly mobilised 60,000 voters, and, thanks to the ripple effect, ultimately caused an additional 340,000 votes to be cast that day. 

In my opinion this article is interesting as it discusses how Facebook is very powerful in leading others and influencing them. It also shows that their is an imbalance in politics due to Facebook as it is not regulated as broadcast platforms are.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/04/could-facebook-be-factor-next-election

Weekly NDM

Jeff Bezos: I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon

This article is about how Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, admits that he has made billions of dollars out of the failures at Amazon including the fire phone. He then continues to go on to say that without those experiments then the company wouldn't be where it is and that embracing failures is key to a modern business' survival.

• “I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at amazon.com. Literally,” Bezos told the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York, saying that it would be akin to having “a root canal with no anaesthesia” to dwell on them.
• “None of those things are fun, but they also don’t matter,” said Bezos. “What really matters is that companies that don’t continue to experiment – companies that don’t embrace failure – they eventually get into a desperate position, where the only thing they can do is make a ‘Hail Mary’ bet at the very end of their corporate existence. I don’t believe in bet-the-company bets.”
• “If you’re going to take bold bets, they’re going to be experiments,” Bezos said. “And if they’re experiments you don’t know ahead of time if they’re going to work. Experiments are by their very nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn’t work.”
• The Fire Phone is one such experiment that has not lived up to expectations, failing to sell and leaving Amazon forced to write off $170m on unsold Fire Phones.
• “I didn’t know anything about the newspaper business, but I did know about the internet,” said Bezos of the purchase stating that he is “very optimistic about the future of the Post” despite seeing it as “hopeless” from the outside.

This article is interesting as it contains many interesting quotes from the CEO of Amazon about the institution. It shows that Amazon is an institution that has grown significantly over the years that they may in fact experiment and lose money, but it doesn't take away from how large of an institution it is.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/03/jeff-bezos-billions-dollars-failures-amazon