Friday, 16 September 2016

Impacts Of Technological Advances

Technological advances have had a massive impact on print media. For example in the last 10 years the industry has changed a lot because magazines are now available through online platforms which has taken away some of the profit from the printed versions, and now getting a magazine has never been simpler. All you have to do is subscribe to the magazine and they will send you the online version upon release, meaning you don't even have to get out of bed in order to purchase this magazine. Although this is a very popular way of viewing the media platform, more people choose to stick to the printed copies, personally I would rather hold something in my hand and read it rather than view it online. For me it just gives it more of a real feel to the magazine.

Advances have also seen the rise in celebrity involvement, as they can now be advertised online for everyone to see not just the niche audience a printed version will attract. This work both in favour of the celebrity and the magazine company as the celebrity will bring more reader through their fanbase and other readers that have maybe not heard of them before now know who they are and may follow their career. 

Technological advances have also had a negative effect on the magazine industry because it has seen a massive decrease in how people spend their time for example a study showed that people spend around 5% of their media time reading magazines, whereas they spend between 30% - 50% of their time on phones, watching television and listening to the radio. Which consequently has seen a decrease in shares within the media platforms with magazines, books and newspapers being the lowest on the list.

Gauntlett (2007) goes as far as to say that new media (and new media technologies) erodes the boundary between producer and audience to the extent that it makes little sense to talk about media audiences at all anymore. It now means that anyone who knows anything about media creation could become a producer as technological advances has made it the easiest its ever been.

1 comment:

  1. Good research again Tiegan.
    You;ve focused on the impact of digitalisation on distribution - what about the impact on production?

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