David Gauntlett's ideas

According to Gauntlett, what was "the media" like in the past and what changes have now occurred?

In the past, media was very hard to consume as people weren’t given a choice to when they could consume it. These decisions where made by the media institutions not individuals. You can see that the media has a dominant role as people weren’t given a choice to how they consume media. Also in the past you needed big recording devices which were very expensive, and also you needed a big broadcasting company in order to distribute the media. This was very hard for people as they didn’t have sufficient amount of money in order to fund expensive equipment.

David gauntlet refers this as “The Media Gods” who distribute their media to “The little people”. However nowadays we can distribute media in a cheaper and easier way using things like laptops and mobile phones and uploading this to free websites such as YouTube where everyone can see. Here people upload videos about their life or whatever they want and everyone all over the world can access it. Media can now spread worldwide in a matter of seconds. YouTube, twitter and Wikipedia are new sources of information. Before the broadcaster would send out its messages however, now it’s different users.


2. How far do you agree with Gauntlett?
I agree with gauntlets ideas of new media as now people are not restricted in what type of media they can consume. People are freer to how they distribute and consume media. Websites such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are big sources of media, where people can view and upload videos. This has created big competition of new media and traditional media. This all allows media to become more democratic.


3. How might Gauntlett's ideas be applied to the music industry?
In the past where Gauntlett came up with the idea of Web 1.0 where people created their own work, the music industry realised music through big record labels as this is the only way it could have been heard by the public. These record labels would then distribute the music through their media source. However with the development of web 2.0 more people are able to upload their videos in a much easier and quicker way. Sites such as YouTube allowed people to upload videos within minutes thus allowing the public all over the world to view it. These artists can then be discovered by record companies more easily.