Digital media

Disruption in industry[edit]

Compared with print media, the mass media, and other analog technologies, digital media are easy to copy, store, share and modify. This quality of digital media has led to significant changes in many industries, especially journalism, publishing, education, entertainment, and the music business. The overall effect of these changes is so far-reaching that it is difficult to quantify. For example, in movie-making, the transition from analog film cameras to digital cameras is nearly complete. The transition has economic benefits to Hollywood, making distribution easier and making it possible to add high-quality digital effects to films.^[43] At the same time, it has affected the analog special effects, stunt, and animation industries in Hollywood.^[44] It has imposed painful costs on small movie theaters, some of which did not or will not survive the transition to digital.^[45] The effect of digital media on other media industries is similarly sweeping and complex.^[44]

Between 2000–2015, the print newspaper advertising revenue has fallen from $60 billion to a nearly $20 billion.^[46] Even one of the most popular days for papers, Sunday, has seen a 9% circulation decrease the lowest since 1945.^[47]

In journalism, digital media and citizen journalism have led to the loss of thousands of jobs in print media and the bankruptcy of many major newspapers.^[48] But the rise of digital journalism has also created thousands of new jobs and specializations.^[49] E-books and self-publishing are changing the book industry, and digital textbooks and other media-inclusive curricula are changing primary and secondary education.^[50][51]

In academia, digital media has led to a new form of scholarship, also called digital scholarship, making open access and open science possible thanks to the low cost of distribution. New fields of study have grown, such as digital humanities and digital history. It has changed the way libraries are used and their role in society.^[31] Every major media, communications and academic endeavor is facing a period of transition and uncertainty related to digital media.

Often time the magazine or publisher have a Digital edition which can be referred to an electronic formatted version identical to the print version.^[47] There is a huge benefit to the publisher here and it's the cost, avoiding the expense to print and deliver brings an additional benefit for the company

Decline of Print ads over the years of 2008 US economic problem

Since 2004, there has been a decrease in newspaper industry employment, with only about 40,000 people working in the workforce currently.^[52] Alliance of Audited Media & Publishers information during the 2008 recession, over 10% of print sales are diminished for certain magazines, with a hardship coming from only 75% of the sales advertisements as before.^[47] However, in 2018, major newspapers advertising revenue was 35% from digital ads.^[52]

In contrast, mobile versions of newspapers and magazines came in second with a huge growth of 135%. The New York Times has noted a 47% year of year rise in their digital subscriptions.^[53] 43% of adults get news often from news websites or social media, compared with 49% for television. Pew Research also asked respondents if they got news from a streaming device on their TV – 9% of U.S. adults said that they do so often.^[47]

Individual as content creator[edit]

Average camera of a YouTube blogger, a Canon EOS

Digital media has also allowed individuals to be much more active in content creation.^[54] Anyone with access to computers and the Internet can participate in social media and contribute their own writing, art, videos, photography and commentary to the Internet, as well as conduct business online. The dramatic reduction in the costs required to create and share content have led to a democratization of content creation as well as the creation of new types of content, like blogs, memes and video essays. Some of these activities have also been labelled citizen journalism. This spike in user created content is due to the development of the internet as well as the way in which users interact with media today. The release of technologies such mobile devices allow for easier and quicker access to all things media.^[55] Many media creation tools that were once available to only a few are now free and easy to use. The cost of devices that can access the Internet is steadily falling, and personal ownership of multiple digital devices is now becoming the standard. These elements have significantly affected political participation.^[56] Digital media is seen by many scholars as having a role in Arab Spring, and crackdowns on the use of digital and social media by embattled governments are increasingly common.^[57] Many governments restrict access to digital media in some way, either to prevent obscenity or in a broader form of political censorship.^[58]

Over the years YouTube has grown to become a website with user generated media. This content is oftentimes not mediated by any company or agency, leading to a wide array of personalities and opinions online. Over the years YouTube and other platforms have also shown their monetary gains, as the top 10 YouTube performers generating over 10 million dollars each year. Many of these YouTube profiles over the years have a multi camera set up as we would see on TV. Many of these creators also creating their own digital companies as their personalities grow. Personal devices have also seen an increase over the years. Over 1.5 billion users of tablets exist in this world right now and that is expected to slowly grow ^[59] About 20% of people in the world regularly watch their content using tablets in 2018^[59]

User-generated content raises issues of privacy, credibility, civility and compensation for cultural, intellectual and artistic contributions. The spread of digital media, and the wide range of literacy and communications skills necessary to use it effectively, have deepened the digital divide between those who have access to digital media and those who don't.^[60]

The rising of digital media has made the consumer's audio collection more precise and personalized. It is no longer necessary to purchase an entire album if the consumer is ultimately interested in only a few audio files.

Web-only news[edit]

See also: Web television, streaming television.

US Philips TV Controller with built in Netflix Streaming button

The rise of streaming services has led to a decrease of cable TV services to about 59%, while streaming services are growing at around 29%, and 9% are still users of the digital antenna.^[61] TV Controllers now incorporate designated buttons for streaming platforms.^[62] Users are spending an average of 1:55 with digital video each day, and only 1:44 on social networks.^[63] 6 out of 10 people report viewing their television shows and news via a streaming service.^[61] Platforms such as Netflix have gained attraction due to their adorability, accessibility, and for its original content.^[64] Companies such as Netflix have even bought previously cancelled shows such as Designated Survivor, Lucifer, and Arrested Development.^[65] As the internet becomes more and more prevalent, more companies are beginning to distribute content through internet only means. With the loss of viewers, there is a loss of revenue but not as bad as what would be expected.

Copyright challenges[edit]

See also: Open data, Open access, and Open source

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Digital media^[66] pose several challenges to the current copyright and intellectual property laws.^[67] The ease of creating, modifying and sharing digital media makes copyright enforcement a challenge, and copyright laws are widely seen as outdated.^[68][69] For example, under current copyright law, common Internet memes are probably illegal to share in many countries.^[70] Legal rights are at least unclear for many common Internet activities, such as posting a picture that belongs to someone else to a social media account, covering a popular song on a YouTube video, or writing fanfiction. Over the last decade the concept of fair use has been applied to many online medias.

Copyright challenges have gotten to all parts of digital media. Even as a personal content creator on YouTube, they must be careful and follow the guidelines set by copyright and IP laws. As YouTube creators very easily get demonetized for their content.^[71] Oftentimes we see digital creators loose monetization in their content, get their contend deleted, or get criticized for their content. Most times this has to do with accidnelty using a copyrighted audio track or background scenes that are copyright by another company.^[71]

To resolve some of these issues, content creators can voluntarily adopt open or copyleft licenses, giving up some of their legal rights, or they can release their work to the public domain. Among the most common open licenses are Creative Commons licenses and the GNU Free Documentation License, both of which are in use on Wikipedia. Open licenses are part of a broader open content movement that pushes for the reduction or removal of copyright restrictions from software, data and other digital media.^[72] To facilitate the collection and consumption of such licensing information and availability status, tools have been developed like the Creative Commons Search engine (mostly for images on the web) and Unpaywall (for scholarly communication).

Additional software has been developed in order to restrict access to digital media. digital rights management (DRM) is used to lock material and allows users to use that media for specific cases. For example, DRM allows a movie producer to rent a movie at a lower price than selling the movie, restricting the movie rental license length, rather than only selling the movie at full price. Additionally, DRM can prevent unauthorized sharing or modification of media.

Digital Media is numerical, networked and interactive system of links and databases that allows us to navigate from one bit of content or webpage to another.

One form of digital media that is becoming a phenomenon is in the form of an online magazine or digital magazine. What exactly is a digital magazine? Due to the economic importance of digital magazines, the Audit Bureau of Circulations integrated the definition of this medium in its latest report (March 2011): a digital magazine involves the distribution of a magazine content by electronic means; it may be a replica.^[73] This is an outdated definition of what a digital magazine is. A digital magazine should not be, in fact, a replica of the print magazine in PDF, as was common practice in recent years. It should, rather, be a magazine that is, in essence, interactive and created from scratch to a digital platform (Internet, mobile phones, private networks, iPad or other device).^[73] The barriers for digital magazine distribution are thus decreasing. At the same time digitizing platforms are broadening the scope of where digital magazines can be published, such as within websites and on smartphones.^[74] With the improvements of tablets and digital magazines are becoming visually enticing and readable magazines with it graphic arts.^[75]

Sardor Turayev