New media

Question 1

Define new media

Answer 1

new media is any media; from newspaper articles & blogs to music & podcasts - that are delivered digitally

Question 2

Evidence of new media replacing the old press

Answer 2

• impact on young people - 63% of 16-34 year olds use the internet to get their news e.g. the Leave campaign’s use of online videos in 2016 especially via Facebook
• Labour’s use of Snapchat ads to reach young voters in 2017; Momentum’s online videos that were much more shared than Tory ads
• Tories spent £100k a month on FB advertising
• emergence of news platforms that only exist online e.g. Huff Post
• The Independent: in March 2016, The Independent closed its print edition to become a pure play digital media company; suggests newspapers are aware of the growing change & influence of new media

Question 3

State impacts of new media

Answer 3

• it is argued that the new online media & social media create an “echo chamber” which means people live in their own “bubble”
• news stories that reinforce their views rather than challenge them
• e.g. The Guardian web-site gets far more hits than it sells newspapers:just because people are getting news from the internet does not mean they are not reading articles from newspapers - they are just reading them from the paper’s website rather than in hard copy
• i.e. The Guardian has 655k monthly subscribers that donate money to the Guardian: a further 300k people made one-off contributions in the last year alone
• in the UK, The Mail website is read very widely: 12m readers across its daily & Sunday print version & the MailOnline website
• 13.5m people read The Sun or the Sunday version either in print or online every week
• important to add that only 18% of people 65+ use the internet for news & they are far more likely to vote