Social media is bringing new developments what has big influences on audiences and companies. One of the things we never seen before in a medium is so much interactivity. In the past television, radio and printed media were instruments that communicate on a one-to-many based level. Today with the advent of social media people have the technical ability to intervene in computing processes and see the effects of the intervention in real time (Lister et al 2009: 424). Not only can people give their own interpretation and meaning to things what they see in the media. They could also interact with other people to recommend selected programs to each other and start discussions on topics they have seen in the media. Interactive media are constructed as a potential improvement on passive media in that they appear to hold out the opportunity for social and political communications to function in a more open and democratic fashion which more closely approaches the ideal conditions of the public sphere (Lister et al 2009: 51).
Not only for the public life but also for companies interactivity of social media is important. A company, for example the media company BNN, should interact with costumers to know what the needs of the audiences are. A media company such as BNN should have to watch constantly what the interests of the people are, which programs are fashionable or dull and what kind of people watch the same kind of programs. But more important to listen to the needs of the audiences. What kind of programs they want to see, which programs get high or low ratings, which topics do audiences prefer to see in shows.
Television is shelving form mass to niches. People are not interested anymore in a media what is one way and has limited channels. Also people want to choose when and where they watch a program (Bloem et al 2008: 173). BNN could respond to this and could based on profiles and interests of users apply their programs to the individual users (narrowcasting). This not only attracts more people with different interests, it also prevents audiences to zap away quickly from one to another channel.
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Interesting, also some critical notes. First, try to be a bit more critical yourself, for instance on the extent to which people want personalized media. Second, just out of interest, how do you think the move towards openness and democratization relates to the gathering of user data by corporations?
ReplyDeleteGood article and I totally agree with the fact that television is shelving from the mass to niches. You say that BNN should response to that, but aren't they already doing that with digital television formats like 101.tv? I wrote a peer review about this blog. You can read it right here: http://mediafruitcakes.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/short-peer-review-on-the-blog-regarding-the-bnn-social-media-case/
ReplyDeleteThierno