Category: BCM110

PROPUBLICA AS A MODERN AND INNOVATIVE NEWS SOURCE

The growth of digital publishing and new innovative technologies is allowing journalists to reach wider audiences and allows for wider engagement with their content. Propublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that digs deep into important issues producing investigative journalism. In January of 2019, David Sleight from Propublica wrote “Propublica’s year in (mostly) visual Journalism.” Celebrating their first year of “fearless investigative journalism with engaging and inventive presentations” in which he wrote “the stories we report are told not just with words, but also with data, design, photography, illustration, audio, video and more.”

The emergence of visual and convergent media is prominent in todays society and the ways in which we find our news have emerged and become more modern and accessible whilst still keeping traditional news techniques to ensure reliability and simplicity. Propublica’s use of social media allows their audience to engage with their news stories in other ways rather than just their website. Readers are given a direct link to their Twitter and Facebook pages where readers can get consistent updates on news that Propublica covers. Social media in relation to the news has also proven to be emerging and becoming a source of news for many individuals. In a Forbes article written by Nicole Martin How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News it is stated that “Social media has become the main source of news online with more than 2.4 billion internet users, nearly 64.5 percent receive breaking news from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram instead of traditional media” displaying the ways in which news sources such as Propublica clearly display the new trends in journalism production and sharing. This article also proves that internet users get the latest news from social media before hearing it on a news station meaning that those news sources that keep up to date with news via their social medias are more likely to get viewed. 

This is also proven in Reciprocity and the News: The Role of Personal and Social Media Reciprocity in News Creation and Consumption by Avery E. Holton, Mark Coddington, Seth C. Lewis, Homero Gil de Zúñiga where it is stated that “In the developed world – individuals draw upon a growing array of devices, apps, sites, and social media services to both access information and amplify their own capacity as creators and distributors of content.” Supporting the innovative techniques that Propublica utilises in order to engage with their audience allowing them to share news stories across all platforms making them distributors.

Propublica is a highly innovative, modern news source that displays the attributes and techniques of a traditional news source but modified and fit to todays society. The modernised techniques allow for further audience engagement and interest making news stories heard and shared across the globe more effectively. Their use of social media ensures this and also ensures that their audience feels included in the stories they produce and that they are gaining insight into global issues that less modern news sources wouldn’t be able to provide.

Who Controls the Media we use for News? Does it really matter?

(images from http://acma.gov.au)

As majority of us may or may not know, Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch as well as Fairfax Media now owned by Channel Nine are some of the major media owners that we as viewers trust as a news source the majority of the time. Who owns the media and who we get news from is something that is needed to be looked upon, so having a variety of media owners is vital since different companies get first access to different events.

We as individuals cannot control who owns and who can publish ‘news’ since the media is such a wide concept, but what we as individuals do have access to is social media. People post, share, comment and news spreads. Social media allows for this which can be both good and bad in ways of sharing news and getting news stories to wider branches quickly, but whether it is reliable can be the kind of things we have to worry about when viewing sources. The amount of articles that I see when scrolling through facebook (majority of Facebook is owned by Zuckerberg) that I know are complete bogus is actually surprising considering they can actually be surrounding issues that are actually occurring.

Media ownership can be a complex theory and difficult to understand and it is different in different parts of the world. There are many rules and regulations to ensure that media ownership is fair such as the two-to-a-market radio rule, one-to-a-market TV rule and number of voices rule. Who owns what is definitely a difficult concept for me to grasp and what I find hard to explain so rather than me explaining, here are some fun graphs and mind maps showing media ownership in Australia to give everyone a break from reading so much.

These snapshots show aspects of both media ownership and how different areas find and can watch or listen to their news.

Personally I trust the news sources I know for a fact know the facts of a case. I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing the Channel nine Chief Editor who discussed with me that happened within Channel Nine during the time of the Christchurch attack. What she had told me about how they collected the information and utilised only what they needed me made aware of how trustworthy these news sources like channel nine can be, and how some media outlets may use credible sources, but exaggerate and show things that aren’t needed just for publicity. So do I trust my news sources? Yes I do the majority of the time, but I am now since starting my course am realising how important it is to know who owns the media I am trusting sources from and how to differentiate fact from fiction. 

Complex Images

(image is from http://www.historybyzim.com)

 All images can be complex and have deeper meaning depending on the audience and the depths at which they go to in order to decode an image. Complex images usually have many meanings depending on how far one can go in the process of decoding and their societal or cultural background.

For example, this 1950’s advertisement for cellophane displaying a stalk carrying a baby wrapped in cellophane and a young boy also wrapped in cellophane can be seen in many different ways and have a variety of different responses both good and bad. This company had many other advertisements involving small children wrapped in the cellophane which raised questioning as to why they were wrapping children in such a dangerous way in something they were trying to sell. The quote above the first image “everything’s at its best in cellophane” and the second image “the best things in life are wrapped in cellophane” to me seems like they’re trying to say that the best thing in life is a child? And children are at their best when wrapped in cellophane? Yeah children are great but so are cakes, why not have an assortment of cakes on a nice little platter and wrap them up in cellophane? To me putting children in there seems a little morbid and quite abominable. Makes me wonder who came up with the idea for DuPont back in the day thinking “lets show how great this cellophane is by showing it can suffocate children yay!” No but seriously I’m sure there could have been other ways the advertisers could promote their product without probably causing people to think they were nearing killing children for the sole purpose of advertising.

All jokes aside this is a complex image that would definitely raise a lot of questioning and a lot of complex conflict within todays society especially now because people go really deep into things (we all know this), but then again a lot of controversial and even non controversial advertisements get released in the media everyday and always have second meanings for different individuals, but some are always more shocking than others. How I would love to get into the minds of some of the people that come up with advertising ideas.

Being Part of an Audience

Being apart of an audience means more than just sitting watching something; you’re part of a group who are all there for the sole purpose of being entertained or educated by something – concerts, tv shows, movies, seminars even university lectures you’re part of an audience.

The most logical reason I would be part of an audience by choice is to watch a concert or performance, one recently being a Foo Fighters concert at the beginning of 2018. With the band being so popular with the “oldies” it was very amusing to watch middle aged men scramble to get to the front like a mass of teenage girls fighting for a front row seat to see Justin Bieber. Once the concert actually began it was a mess of drunk parents who had left their kids with grandma and grandpa for the night and some parents who actually brought their kids not embarrassed at all to be fangirling (or fanboying?) in front of them which for me was one of the best things about that experience. But seriously being a teenage girl in that kind of scene was kind of weird for me. I never thought that people in their 40’s would have that type of energy and that much power in them to literally push to get as close to Dave Grohl as possible, but never the less it was great.

Being apart of an audience at a concert like that  is something that a lot not people don’t see as extraordinary. You’re all there to support and be entertained by one sole person or group that you all enjoy and the interesting thing is, you may have never known there were this many people who have something in common with you. Everyone knows the negative aspects of being within an audience is that sometimes there may be conflict or something not agreed upon. Even if it isn’t at someones performance you’re still apart of their audience because you’re constantly watching them whether it be on the news or on social media there will always be conflict or disagreements when it comes to being part of an audience; there with always be something that some will see as non ethical or something they don’t agree with. Never the less we are all going to experience being part of an audience in our everyday lives and there is always going to be the perks and the downfalls but the experience is worth it.