Modern Mass Media Emerging Trends

Audience Segmentation

Mass audiences are becoming less “mass” and more selective. About 3 out of every four adults read a Newspaper in the 1960’s . Today that is down to one out of two.  Readers’s digest had a circulation of 18 million in 1976 today it is down to around 10million. All these numbers illustrate the segmentation or fragmentation of mass audience.

Reason for this situation

1.    Many in today’s audience time has become a scarce commodity.

2.    There are more media today to choose. In 1950’s only one TV network available in market. Now audiences can available hundreds of cable and satellite channels, DVD’s, Video games and YouTube.

Convergence

It means or defines as the process of coming together or uniting in a common interest or focus.

Corporate Convergence

This trend started in the 1980’s. As digital technology emerged convergence also initiated thus a vision of one company delivery is enough for the every service. ex: Production of SUN networks

Operational Convergence

This occurs when owners of several media operation combine together.

Advantages

It saves money, because rather than hiring a separate news staff for each medium.

Same reporters produce stories for the paper, web sites, and TV station.

Device Convergence

Combining the function of two or three devices converges into one mechanism. Apple     i Phone for example  a phone MP3 player and a camera and it can connect to the internet. All media seem to be converging on the internet as a major channel of distribution.

News Papers and Magazines have online editors. Music downloads are fast replacing CD’s as the preferred delivery method.  Movies and even books are also available in digital download forms.

Increased audience Control

Audience members are more in charge of what they want to see and hear. Recent technological advances have given more power to the consumer. The VCR allowed recording a program Audience can choose from 24 hours cable news networks. Internal sites such as CNN.com.  and aggregate news from different source.

If an audience is not content with the traditional media outlet  he can consume online media content such as blogs online papers

Multiple platforms

Recording companies realized that consumers were watching more videos on their computer screen than on their screen. Almost all major news papers and magazines have web sites for their digital versions that usually include video clips.

User Generated Content-UGC

It is a peer production. It has been the most celebrated  and popular trend over the past few years, because of its friendly technology.Creating content at FaceBook or a Myspace page is ridiculously simple.

From blogs to YouTube, from podcast to Facebook audiences were the founders and framer of the new digital democracy. Through it a audience can easily download or upload their content.  A person with just a minimum technical skill can use a blogging program.

70% of the world’d digital data will be created by individual not corporation.

Web.2.0 is proposed second generation of web based services. Such as social networking   sites, wikis, and communication  tools. Web 2.0 encourages sharing and collaboration.  Where as the old web 1.0 was about companies. Web 2.0 is about communities.

web 1.0	web  2.0
about companies	about communities.
About pages	About people
About down loading	About Uploading

society

Much of modern Mass communication involves People  looking at screens that is Tv Screen and computer screen. The movies have become mobile as well. Apple iPod contain enough memory for thousands of songs and photograph.

 Source 

Joseph Dominick