About Impact The Old Media To The New Digital Media (Essay Sample)

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IMPACT OF DIGITAL MEDIA
Introduction
YouTube. Twitter. Reddit. Facebook. Wikipedia. Digg. MySpace. LinkedIn. BitTorrent. The list of digital media tools could likely run for pages. This is how much the digital media is growing by day due to the dynamic nature of technology. Today’s audience needs to choose what to read, watch and listen as well as contribute content and opinion. Dimmick, Chen & Li (2009) Believes that this shift in the audience has led to exponential growth of digital media as it meets contemporary aspirations and needs the audience, and this has led to what can be called as digital media revolution.
The rapid growth of digital media has greatly affected traditional media channels, such as television, newspapers, radio amongst others. To understand the impact of digital media on traditional media, before rise of digital media, television media giants had an average of 75 million viewers worldwide, this has been dwarfed by sheer size of digital media such as Facebook with over 1.3 billion members worldwide as documented by Creeber, & Martin, (2014).
Several traditional media and news organizations have been seriously affected in their operations by the rise of digital media. Not only digital has affected the economics of traditional media, but also has greatly affected the content and the delivery system of information. It has led to the birth of democratic movement emphasizing on honesty, transparency as well as giving voice to the voiceless, journalism key factors. This has greatly affected the user through increased freedom of expression.
Impact of new media
Over the past decade, digital media, mostly internet based, has become a very widespread tool enhancing information sharing and communication tasks globally. The growth of the new media as a medium of communication has taken a massive toll on the traditional media. Considering the theory of uses and gratification and niche theory, a new medium grows, survives, prospers and competes due to provision of gratification or utility to consumers as argued by Weber, Loumakis, & Bergman (2003). Hence, this affects traditional media by provision of new solutions to traditional needs or to contemporary needs. Over the last half a decade, according to Dimmick, Chen & Li (2009) digital media has been shown to have competitive displacement effects on traditional media more so the displacement has been felt on television and newspapers. Digital media also has been shown to have the broadest niche on gratification opportunities niche, making it to provide satisfaction to users with numerous needs as compared to any other traditional media.
Economics
Unlike traditional media which are owned by multinational corporations, digital media is owned by individuals. For instance, CNN, an American cable and satellite television channel is owned by Turner Broadcasting System a division of the Time Warner as written by Kim, Sohn & Choi (2011). The same case is replicated to majority of traditional media such as BBC, CNBC, Aljazeera, Fox News and many more others. Majority of digital media outlets are individually owned, Facebook for instance, one of the biggest digital media outlet has individual ownership with Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter developed and owned by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass.
The current dominance of digital media of traditional media has greatly affected the economic base of traditional or conventional media channels such as newspapers. For instance, Kim, Sohn & Choi (2011) currently just only a third of Americans prefer traditional media of which more than half believe that traditional media would be phased out in in decade’s time. Revenues for the traditional media has greatly declined leading to personnel cut back in a bid to survive the turbulent economic times. The reduced revenues have been attributed greatly to reduction in ad revenue and reduced subscriptions.
Culture
Digital media content has come under great criticism over a period of time as to a large extent, it is not authentic. Victoria & Gilbert (2002) argue that most of the digital media content is based on rumors. They argue that, most of the digital media outlets carry out personal opinions which to some extent are not supported by any kind of evidence. This has been attributed to the fact that, majority of these media outlets are not run by professionals but rather by entrepreneurs. Also it has become very had to control the sources of news or information. Unlike the traditional media who to some extent are guided by laws and run by professionals, it is becoming harder each day to control digital or new media publishers by the day to the large numbers. For instance, it will prove impossible trying to control information passed through a digital media such as Facebook with over a billion users. On the other hand, content of most of the new media is in the raw format and may contain some harmful information and sometimes, very graphic photos.
Delivery of digital media is very dynamic. For instance, sites such as YouTube, has been used in live stream of events. Such avenues as Facebook and twitter have enabled very rapid pass of information worldwide. For instance, it will take less than a minute to pass information on an event taking place in the Middle East to audience in South America. This is made possible with increased access to internet and mobile devices as documented by Creeber, & Martin (2014). Unlike print media which will involve several processes before reaching its audience, it takes a click of a button to share information between different people through digital media.
Freedom of expression
Traditional media has for a long time been accused of being less interested in freedom of expression. For instance, Victoria & Gilbert (2002) states that before any article is aired on television or published in newspapers, the contents are thoroughly scrutinized and edited to suite the requirements of the government authorities where they are based. This is due to the fact that if they publish any material that is seen as undermine the authority, regardless how true it is, and they stand to lose their operation licenses. In some countries as reported by Rice (1984), live shows are banned or restricted in televisions and radio stations so as to control the content and filter out sentiments that may land them in problem with the authorities.
This has led to digital media such as Facebook, twitter, online video sharing platform YouTube and blogs to become favorite spots for people and activists to air their opinions. These has largely increased space for freedom of expression, though a big question of whether posts on such media as Facebook and Twitter can be considered as journalism. For what it stands, these are just platform like any other traditional media platforms. With this understanding, authorities that are restricting freedom of expression have always cramped down digital media platforms that are not singing to their tune. Report from Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found out that 69 journalist have been imprisoned for content that appeared.
Digital media unlike traditional media are so hard to shut down, and even if authorities managed to shut down a platform, it takes a few days before another one is developed as well is it is almost impossible to shut down internet fully. Traditional media editors sometimes cannot allow some information be published due to political, persona...