(Left) Karin Fleming, Communications and Administration Officer at EMMA/the Future Media Lab..
The Future Media Lab. is the place where media innovation and media policy intersect, with the goal to aid in the exchange and accumulation of information. The Future Media Lab. team has decided to start publishing every two weeks a feature on the Future Media Lab. blog that shares articles about innovations and developments in the media sector including references to relevant media policy debates. Future Media Minds and the team are invited to inspire/challenge/inform you, the reader, about some of the recent advances in the media sector - as they see it.
Today Karin Fleming from our team in Brussels shares her recent findings with you:
To the stay informed about the changes within our sector – and also because such topics overlap with my interests in media, consumer behaviour, and media policy – I often read news articles that illustrate how technological advances, policy decisions and shifts in consumption patterns could potentially impact the standard-operating-procedure of media today. Without further ado, these are the stories I’ve been thinking about recently:
1) Axel Springer’s CEO Mathias Döpfner asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt if he is planning on establishing a digital ‘superstate’ free from the laws of nation states in an open letter. This letter, which was initiated as a reaction to Schmidt’s open letter in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, spells out exactly why it’s so troubling that Google has all the power in the relationship.
2) Has the Federal Communications Commission just killed net neutrality in the United States? Tim Wu, who helped define net neutrality, thinks so. New rules will allow companies to pay Internet providers more for a “fast lane” that will get their content to consumers more quickly, the costs of which would be transferred to the user. The Atlantic is summarising the ongoing debate on the subject, and Stanford Law School explains why you should care.
3) Is news becoming more partisan and thus audiences more segregated? Economist Matthew Gentzkow recently won the John Bates Clark medal for his work analyzing the economics of the news business. His work includes research into the consumption habits of consumers which found that while readers want to remain informed, they have a tendency to self-segregate by consuming news from the channels that share the same biases.
4) Facebook and Storyful recently launched the FB Newswire that targets journalists and are now working on “deepening” their relationship with news organisations. How will such partnerships affect the gatekeeper role journalists play? Is news still news if it’s not on Facebook?
5) The shape-shifting smartphone: An iMinds prototype could change the way consumers interact with their devices. The prototype interestingly is able to mimic the flexibility of the digital world by having a device that is equally flexible. The next step in digital devices?
6) World Intellectual Property Day was globally celebrated on 25 April, acknowledging the importance of copyright for music, films, newspapers, games, apps, magazines, etc.
7) Former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts has joined Apple as head of retail to tackle the problem with wearable technology: creating something people actually want to wear. Will the person responsible for Burberry successfully embracing technology in their marketing techniques be able to get people reluctant to embrace wearable technology to try in on for size?
8) Looking at how American teens use social media one thing becomes clear: they are increasingly aware of the value of their privacy/anonymity. What does this mean for the companies looking to connect with them?
Read something that you think needs to be shared? Please send me an e-mail: [email protected]
