Audience and Institution

1) What are the key statistics relating to the influence of new and digital media?

In terms of news consumption 75% of UK adults use TV as a source of news. The 

16-34 age group use internet or apps for news and has increased from 44% in 2013 to 60% in 2014. 16-24 year olds consumed only 27 hours of news on television in the same period, compared to 196 hours for those aged 55 and over. 16-24 year old are interested in specific news categories such as crime, sports, technology and science/environment fall into the top ten topics, while the over-55s are more likely to nominate, general world news and UK and regional current affairs.

2) Come up with an example of an institution that has benefited from the changes new and digital media has brought to the news industry. Explain how new technology has helped the institution and try to find statistics or financial figures that support your point.

A prime example of an institution which has benefited from the changes in new and digital media is Sky. Skynews.com is the channel's main website. It provides news, sport, weather, showbiz, and business stories with help from other divisions such as Sky Sports. The Sky News website is rated by 62% of its users, the BBC site by 61%, the Guardian/Observer site by 59% and YouTube by 58%. This is solely down the fact that E-Media has helped Sky News by making it easier and efficient to access news at any moment in time. Sky News has an online website, a Twitter account reporting live events/breaking news and in recent years have developed a Sky News app for Apple and Android users. 

3) Find an example of an institution that has suffered as a result of the changes new and digital media has brought to the news industry. In what way has it had a negative impact? 

An institution which has suffered as a result of the changes to new and digital media is The Sun. The Sun is an example of a traditional tabloid newspaper and has been involved in many controversies: the main one being the News of The World scandal. With the advances in technology, the newspaper industry overall is making less money from print. As a result, The Sun online has started to charge users a £2-a-week fee to access full news stories. This is a new revenue stream for The Sun to make some money, not a large amount because audiences have the freedom to go to competitors such as The Daily Mail for free news.  The Daily Mail has a significant 45.348 million users, whereas The Sun has 225,000 paying subscribers at this very moment. 

4) Who has benefited most from the changes new and digital media have had on the news industry - audiences or institutions?

With the advances of technology the method in which audiences receive their news has massively changed over the last 20 years. As a result of this, audiences have benefited by having the option to access news anywhere at any time and institutions have increased their platform is which they give out news. 

The first main reason why audiences have benefited is because they can now gain news for free. This can be done through the internet: social media sites, mobile web and news apps which can be downloaded for free, such as The Daily Mail and Huffington Post. Accessibility is better and more variety of content is available as audiences can choose which category of news they would like to stay updated on, for instance on The Daily Mail app you can choose if you want the news stories to all be on one particular category such as sports or politics. As more sources are available more quickly and easily, audiences are always constantly updated on world events and is beneficial as it's making audiences more knowledgeable. 

Furthermore, it's noticeable that audiences are benefiting more as e-media news is encouraging engagement with a younger demographic to stay updated on news affairs. An example of this was the Scottish Referendum which allowed 16 years olds to vote. This developed discussions across social media sites and proves that younger audiences are becoming more intact with world events as they probably went to websites such as BBC to gain updates of the Scottish Referendum.

Also, institutions are benefiting because they are able to be on multiple platforms and e-media in particular has brought many institutions a new method of revenue stream. The Sun for example, charges users a £2-a-week fee. However, it's established that the newspaper industry is declining as e-media is dominating the accessibility to news, especially social media sites. Search engines, such as Google, social media sites (Twitter and Youtube) allow audiences to gain information on news too. Especially now that members of the public are providing UGC citizen journalism that it may prevent them from going to actual news sources as audiences may believe what they read straight away online from other people.

To conclude, audiences are benefiting with the changes in new and digital media as they are becoming more knowledgeable. Whereas institutions are losing money because th newspaper industry is declining.