(Left) Karin Fleming, Communications and Administration Officer at EMMA/the Future Media Lab..
In the third edition of our bi-weekly news roundup (the first can be read here), Karin Fleming shares the news that caught her eye in the past two weeks. The news round-up is a way for the Future Media Lab. team and members of the Future Media Lab. network to share articles about innovations and developments in the media sector, including references to relevant media policy debates.
Here are Karin’s choices for this week:
1) In the aftermath of the European Parliament elections, the Pew Research Center analysed the conversation on Twitter (in French, German and English, finding that anti-EU parties got the most attention on Twitter, with only moderate attention paid to the EU Commission presidential candidates. Another study based on Twitter activity around the 2012 US presidential election found that substantial media events actually dissuade users from engaging with one another, and instead focus attention on existing stars.
2) Google has been inundated by requests to delete information in the wake of the EU Court of Justice ruling on 13 May. In response, the German government is considering setting up arbitration courts to help establish mechanisms to determine what information can be deleted. But the case also begs the question: what is your right to privacy on the Internet?
3) Has Frozen loosened Disney’s grip on intellectual property control? As Frozen fans flock to YouTube to share fan-created content appropriating Disney characters or doing covers of copyrighted songs, Disney has moved away from its history of cracking down on this non-authorized use of its content and instead embraced the cross-promotional marketing to the extent that it’s coordinated some itself.
4) Programmatic advertising enables media buyers today to be able to use ads to target virtually any audience segment with unheard of precision. However, these ads generally target who the person is and not the context in which they are viewing the content. John Battelle argues that this divorce of ad space from its contextual editorial content lessens the impact of ads.
5) Mobile devices have made news more accessible than ever, but how does the 4-inch screen of your smartphone impact photojournalism? One photojournalist says that while mobile devices aren’t the ideal medium for viewing powerful images, in the end people are seeing the images and “that’s what it’s all about.”
6) As parents debate the amount of screen time their children should (or shouldn’t) have, a new start-up tackles the schism between the digital and real worlds by creating games that can be played on the iPad that also include tangible shapes and other physical forms. These games address the disconnect that occurs when glued to the screen for long periods of time, and aim to improve creative thinking.
7) A new Facebook feature uses your phone’s microphone to listen to your surroundings to add data to posts about the music you are listening to or TV show you’re watching. By aiding the “frictionless” sharing of data – and thereby removing a layer of thought between you and your social network – Facebook has just made it easier to share even more information online.
8) Would you be able to survive a mobile cleanse? I’m involuntarily going through this process now and it certainly makes you think about how mobile devices and apps have re-wired the way our brains think or how they process information.
Bonus: Google changed their logo. Didn’t notice? Me neither, until I saw this gif.
Read something that you think needs to be shared? Please send me an e-mail: [email protected]
To see previous editions of this round-up, please click here.
