Networks

This week we discovered the difference between the internet and the web after we moved to online due to the Coronavirus fears.

“The Internet simply describes the collection of networks that link computers and servers together” (Lister et al. 2009, p. 164). whereas the web is an accumulation of data reached with the internet. The internet is one big decentralised network of computers talking to each other, but how does communication happen on the web?

Web 2.0 / User-Generated Content

After the dot com bubble crash, we saw the rise of Web 2.0 with a heavier focus on user-generated content in the form of blogs.

The blog you are currently reading is a good example of user-generated content. Blogging gives me the power to voice my opinions and views that would normally only be exclusive to media giants and newspapers and “this incursion of the ‘ordinary person’ into the bastions of media privilege is experienced as both opportunity and threat by the industries themselves…” (Lister et al. 2009, p. 221).

When I was studying politics we called this participatory democracy; not only do large players get a voice but so do the general public and this has given rise to sites like Instagram. 

New Media 

Unlike blogging Instagram has a heavier focus on image: sharing, liking, reposting and interacting with others to create an image “network” Niederer, S (2018, p. 7) where algorithms pick up and distribute content to as many target markets as possible (Niederer, S 2018). This type of targeting has given media giants a way to gain back control with “hybridising forms of new media [that] emerge through the interaction between existing forms and the new distribution technologies of the net” (Lister et al. 2009, p. 165). They are now once again the dominant players in content production and distribution on the web, resulting in the ability to target vast quantities of audiences they could only have dreamed of using traditional forms of media.

References 

Niederer, S 2018, Networked images: visual methodologies for the digital age. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, pp. 164, 165, 221

Lister, M et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, New York, p. 7