Rebellion takes hold of iTunes

Photo by Tessa Angus (​www.​tessaangus.​com)​

Here's an interesting story, that my student Tom brought to my attention. 

Over the last week or so an unsigned London-based band called the Boxer Rebellion have managed to come from nowhere and storm the online charts of iTunes, in both the UK and USA.

The band self-produced and published their album, and on its creative merits alone, had one of their songs designated as an iTunes' Free Single of the Week.

The response has been huge and it's a sign of how far the relationship that's existed traditionally between the institutions of the music industry, the performers looking for funding to create good songs, and the audiences who purchase them, has changed and evolved.

You can listen to the Boxer Rebellion's songs and watch videos here, and if you're interested in their background story, then read more here.

Eyeless in Gaza

I was reminded of the lines from Milton's poem, Samson Agonistes, when reading about the following news development today:

Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves ...

The surprising news that caught my eye in the media world was the announcement that the BBC would not be televising an advert by the DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee) to raise funds for humanitarian aid in Gaza. The DEC is an umbrella organisation for 13 aid charities.

The BBC says that it was concerned about how aid would get through to Gaza, and given the fact that the story is still current and being reported on, felt it might damage its impartiality were it to air the ad.

It's a convention that either all or none of the broadcasters carry DEC appeals in the UK, so shortly after the BBC announced it wouldn't be lending a hand, all the other major players fell into line.

I'd like to say I feel disappointment, outrage, or some other meaningful emotion at this decision. But having lived in Israel and visited Palestine on a number of occasions while there, I know that the complexities of the situation are so challenging, that I must admit to a sense of bewilderment.

So what does this tell us about the media, in terms of representation and institutional issues? Probably that nothing is ever as simple as it seems on the surface, and what we see and consume on TV won't necessarily have a logical reason for being there. Just as importantly, it's crucial, as observers of the media, to keep tabs on what gets left out of the schedules. The gaps, the silences, and the omissions, can be as revealing, important and worthy of study and debate, as the programmes we deconstruct and textually analyse.

Data Overload and the need for screens

I've come across two interesting reports in the last day.

The first is one from the charity Childwise that suggests young people now prefer their computer screens to those of their TVs. And what's more, when asked what object they could not live without, a majority now cite their computer. 

The average 5-16 year old now spends 6 hours a day in front of a PC screen.

All of this points to a major cultural shift taking place, as work/leisure boundaries blur. 

Young people now consider interactive communication to be a cornerstone of their daily social activities. Whether it be watchin YouTube videos, making content to upload, reading/writing a blog, sharing information or photos, the current generation consider the sit-back system of traditional TV consumption to be passé. 

You can read about the report here.

The second is a posting on a BBC blog by the technology writer Bill Thompson, who notes how a tendency to keep too many communication apps open on his computer is making it impossible to get any proper work done. Read it, empathise, then let someone else know about your frustrations on Twitter. 

A Man for Our Time - captured by multimedia

Apart from being inspired by the rhetoric and passion of President Obama yesterday, I was struck by the fact that this was the first time I had watched a huge news story unfold live using the internet. 

I was working at school, I had stuff that needed doing, and so the ideal solution was to use the BBC's live feed from BBC1 online. What struck me was how good the streaming video looked, the fact it didn't crash at all, and also that below the video window were live rolling comments from BBC correspondents and viewers.  It certainly made me feel like I was part of a global village.

I suspect that most people watched the inauguration on the TV, because frankly at this moment in time that's the best medium for such an event. But that didn't stop the various media outlets innovating in the online arena.

I particularly liked the 3D rolling panorama offered by CNN who partnered with Facebook. The technology was supplied by Microsoft's Photosynth software. The end result provides what none of the newspaper photos quite managed this morning - some idea of the scale of the event in the Washington Mall. 

Over at the BBC, technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones tried out as many ways of watching the event as he could. His report makes for interesting reading.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a great online app called Wordle.net. You put in text, it analyses it into a word cloud - a visual representation of the text, based on the frequency of key words. Since then I've noticed it creeping into the mainstream media, and by today both the Guardian and the BBC were serving up word clouds of the President's speech, plus those of former leaders. 

So, a magnificent day for the new President and the nation he leads. An interesting glimpse too into the changing nature of media communication.

Twitter and News

The day before last I was showing my students Twitter, the micro blogging service. If you imagine the 'what am I up to?' part of a Facebook profile then you'll pretty much get what Twitter is.

In effect, it's short bursts of information about what someone is doing. The problem with it is that what a user tends to receive is an unadulterated stream of information without context or any easy means of verifying facts.

This has been the main issue regarding its use as a news tool. The terror attacks in Mumbai late last year were heralded as proof of Twitter coming of age, as a news feed from so called citizen journalists. However, a number of claims made during that event by Twitter posters turned out to be false.

The benefit of Twitter, when it comes to News and audiences, is the speed with which headlines can be conveyed.

Most of my students found themselves being driven to distraction within a few minutes of using the service. They couldn't see what the point was. 

However, with remarkable timing, yesterday's miraculous ditching of a plane in New York's Hudson river showed the power of instant audience-led news feeds.

A man by the name of Janis Krums was on a ferry when the plane came down. As he watched the incredible event unfold he posted a line to Twitter - 'There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.'

As he had an Apple iPhone he also took a photo, and posted that to Twitpic, a service that adds imaging functionality. As you can see, it's an atmospheric photo, made all the more impressive by the fact it was taken on a 2 megapixel camera.

Within minutes his photo was being shared around the world, while traditional broadcast news outlets were still organising themselves to get down to the crash site.

At the time of writing the photo has been viewed 252,583 times! 

So, maybe Twitter is showing a new paradigm for news gathering and sharing, in which anyone can be a headline breaker. Just don't expect what you get to always be trustworthy, relevant, or reliable.