Media

Definitions
Media refers to the main means of mass communication (television, radio,
Internet and newspapers) regarded collectively.

New media refers to on-demand access to content anytime, anywhere, on any

digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, and creative participation.
Another aspect of new media is the real-time generation of new and unregulated
content. The Old Media or Legacy Media are traditional means of communication
and expression that have existed since before the advent of the new medium of
the Internet.

Quotes
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.- Jim Morrison (20th
century American singer- songwriter, author and poet).
The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.-
Jon Stewart (American political satirist and media critic).
The Internet has been a boon and a curse for teenagers.- J.K.
Rowling
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire
hydrant.- Mitch Kapor (Former chairperson of Mozilla Foundation).
One of the Internets strengths is its ability to help consumers find
the right needle in a digital haystack of data.- Jared Sandberg
National borders arent even speed bumps on the information
highway.- Tim May (Electronic engineer and former scientist at Intel).
The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of
tomorrow.- Bill Gates (Computer programmer and founder of Microsoft).
Television: A medium- so called because it is neither rare nor well
done. Ernie Kovacs (20th century American actor and comedian).
[Television] is the menace that everyone loves to hate but cant live
without. Paddy Chayefsky (20th century American playwright and
screenwriter).
The triumph of machine over people. Fred Allen (20th century
comedian and radio host).
The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have
been presented in the entire history of television.- Andrew Ross
(Sociologist at New York University).
Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you
please.- Mark Twain (American author and humorist).
Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.-
Rebecca West (British journalist and literary critic).
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice;
journalism what will be grasped at once.- Cyril Connolly (20th century
literary critic and writer).
In the spider- web of facts, many a truth is strangled.- Paul Eldridge
(20th century American poet, novelist and short- story writer).
 Journalism is literature in a hurry.- Matthew Arnold (19th century
English poet and cultural critic).
A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether
there be any news in it or not.- Henry Fielding (18th century English
novelist and dramatist).
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.-
Napoleon Bonaparte (18th century French military and political leader).
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading
newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a
clock.- Ben Hecht (19th century American screenwriter and director).
Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a
bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. - George Bernard Shaw
(20th century Irish playwright).
The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is
no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.- David
Brinkley (20th century American newscaster)

Evidence
Censorship
Censorship can be defined as the suppression of speech, public communications
or other forms of information which may be considered objectionable, harmful,
sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments,
media outlets, authorities or other such entities.
Types of censorship: self- censorship, soft- censorship (most
governments engage in this type of censorship; also known as indirect
censorship) and direct censorship (not used by many, most countries
provide strong objections to censorship by law).
Censorship in Singapore mainly targets political, racial and religious
issues and the Government of Singapore argues that censorship of
political, racial and religious issues to a certain extent is necessary to
avoid upsetting the delicate balance of Singapore's multi-racial society.
All daily newspapers including the flagship The Straits Times are
printed by Singapore Press Holdings, whose management shareholders are
appointed by the government as per the Newspaper and Printing Presses
Act of 1974. The governments strong, active presence in the media
promotes and encourage self- censorship amongst journalists.
In 2008, Reporters in Borders ranked Singapore as 144th out of 173
surveyed countries in terms of freedom of press. The government
responded by saying that it was not ashamed of its low rank and that it
believed a non- adversarial press can report objectively and accurately.
At the inaugural forum A Free Press for Global Society in 2010,
Minster for Law Mr. Shanmugam stated that the media does not operate in
a vacuum and that Singapores society cannot withstand the harm caused
by giving our media the role that the US media has.
In 2010, a poll conducted by Gallup, an American research- based,
global performance management consulting company, showed that 69% of
Singaporeans trusted their media whereas only 32% of Americans trusted
their media.
 In 2006, popular Singapore blogger mrbrown wrote an article titled
TODAY: S'poreans are fed, up with progress! for his weekly opinion
column in Today newspaper concerning the rising income gap and costs of
living in Singapore. Three days later, the Ministry for Information,
Communication and the Arts responded by saying that mrbrown was a
partisan player whose views distort the truth and they suspended his
opinion column.
Recently, the political exile film To Singapore, with Love directed by
local director Tan Pin Pin was banned by the Media Development Authority
of Singapore on the accounts that the contents of the film undermined
national security in Singapore and refused to give it a rating.
In response to this rating, 38 members of the film- making and arts
community of Singapore sent a joint statement to MDA expressing deep
disappointment and suggested that the authorities release their own
version of the events portrayed in the film. They believe that the MDAs
decision was taken to reinforce the view that the government is limiting
discussion on Singapores history.
Islamic State trying to recruit on social media through rhetoric and
videos of beheadings
27000 pro-Islamic State accounts tweeting since
Foleys murder
Challenges: drawing the line between free speech and
extremism? Different motives for governments of different countries
when pushing for content removal
Government policy is such that posting or material that may have
national security implications and that are typically not in keeping with
these providers own policies are flagged
U.S. government asked social media sites to remove a video that
surfaced in August showing ISIS member murdering journalist James Foley
Facebooks policies ban posts that endorse terrorist groups like the
Islamic State, and companys employees use automated tools to flag
accounts related to terrorist groups, along with messages from users
reporting abuse
Twitter CEO suspend accounts posting graphic imagery related to
killings
However, flagging posts in the name of national security also can be
dangerous to political diversity, as Egyptian government labelled former
opponents the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, while the US
has not done the same.
However, in countries like India, Thailand and Vietnam, governments
have tried to remove posts from social media sites for political reasons.
In 22 of 60 countries studied, pro-government commentators are
paid to manipulate discussions about the government or request
takedowns of pages of political opponents.

Influence Of Celebrities
This section covers several aspects of media that influence or are
influenced by the lives of celebrities. This includes paparazzi, who are
photographers and journalists that take candid pictures of celebrities in
their daily lives and harass them in the process. This also includes invasion
of privacy, campaigns conducted by celebrities and their presence and
influence on the audience.
Celebrities lives are often invaded by the paparazzi, due to the
financial incentives and opportunities provided by the capitalization of
personal lives, private moments and candid shots of celebrities. In 2010,
famous singer Pink wrote an open letter to the media of America, calling
them out for the intrusiveness of paparazzi and their need to capitalize on
the pictures of the babies, infants and children of celebrities.
She said, why are celebrities/public figures having to
seek restraining orders to keep strange grown men with still and
video cameras from sitting perched outside of their children's pre-
schools and elementary schools, preying on little innocent kids?
After all, if a stranger was sitting outside of a school taking
photographs of random little girls and boys, wouldn't he be
arrested? But because it's the child of a celebrity, somehow it's
okay? This is due to the high consumption of tabloids, magazines
and gossip articles of the public.
On August 31 2014, a large batch of very personal and private
photographs of celebrities were released on 4chan, a famous English-
based imageboard forum website, which operates based on the anonymity
of all its users. These photographs were obtained through a breach in the
iCloud online storage services offered by Apple, which hackers exploited
and brute- forced their way through the celebrities iCloud accounts to
gain the pictures.
Many celebrities spoke out against the leaks, such as
Emma Watson who condemned not only the release of the photos,
but also the accompanying comments [on social media] that show
such a lack of empathy. Google was later sued by lawyer Martin
Singer on behalf of many celebrities for $100 million, for refusing to
respond to requests for the images to be removed and for [failing]
to act expeditiously, and responsibly to remove the images", and
"knowingly accommodating, facilitating, and perpetuating the
unlawful conduct.
Positively, celebrities can capitalize on the growing user base and
popularity of social media networking sites to advertise their
products/movies/campaigns. The celebrity/fan relationship has completely
changed from the one- way delivery channel to interactions on a more
personal level. A big trend this year was fans asking celebrities to join
them as dates to big events, such as school dances or proms. Amazingly,
some of these celebrities happily obliged and accepted their invitations,
such as Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis and some members of the public
view it as a publicity stunt to get more people talking about them.
There are several types of media out there which effectively serve
as a platform for personal, one- to one communication between celebrities
and fans. One popular method of gaining publicity and communicating
with fans at the same time is the Ask Me Anything (AMA) program on
Reddit, a social networking and news website which serves as a forum and
 platform for users to communicate with each other on a variety of topics.
Individuals such as Barrack Obama, Neil deGrasse Tyson and PSY, the
creator of Gangnam Style have engaged in AMAs before, in which users
ask them questions regarding any topic and celebrities often answer them,
boosting publicity and discussion.
Publicists are often hired by celebrities as well to maintain their
large presence on the several different media networking sites which exist
now, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, YouTube and Snapchat,
through which celebrities are able to promote their upcoming
albums/movies/products.

Pervasiveness of Mass Media

Numerous television series, such as Big Brother and Americas Next
Top Model, have been adapted and launched in dozens of nations, from
Bulgaria to Philippines
Acclaimed British film Slumdog Millionaire brought international
fame to child actors Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who hail
form the slums of Mumbai, India
Yahoo! Offers the worlds 1.6 billion Internet users customized
interfaces in more tham 30 countries
Associated Press, an American news outlet, reaches more than half
the global population every day, through more than 1700 newspapers and
5000 radio and television stations in the US alone.
Social media in the political scene
Indian politicians were grilled on Facebook for their General
Elections this year. For an hour, at a townhall meeting at a Delhi site, they
answered questions posed by members of a live audience, posted on
Facebook.
In many countries, especially India and Indonesia, two countries
with among the fastest-growing number of Facebook users in the world,
polticians are paying unprecedented attention to the use of social media
for the upcoming elections.
Out of 762 million voters in India, 93 million are Facebook users. And
out of 187 million voters in Indonesia, 65 million are Facebook users.
25% of Indian voters have access to social media. What makes
social media a game changer is that these users are not diffused but
concentrated in certain constituencies.
Social media also used for Internet campaigns, fundraising etc.

Social media in humanitarian aid

Devastating flooding in mountainous Indian Kashmir, social media
updates used to get information out, get information about locations of
loved ones and about rescue efforts and in some cases plead for help
Speed of action of social media increases speed of rescue response
Indias National Disaster Response Force teamed up with Google to
upload data to the search engine that can be accessed by anyone looking
for someone who has information about a person
Indian Army posting names of those rescued
Opposing Viewpoints towards Mass Media
 Mass media is a catalyst for protest and violence against the West.
Allegedly anti-Islamic American news, information and
entertainment is known within the Muslim world as a war of ideas

Advantages
Advantages of Broadcast Media
Most prevalent form of media
Formation of entire industries such as television
industry and film industry
Advent of film in theatres
Advent of satellite channels, broadcast TV
Coverage of world events within seconds, instant
availability of information
Great degree of penetration amongst consumers, used
for mass advertisement
Advantages of Print Media
Traditional mode of media, old media
Can be archived and be kept for future use
A reliable method of propagating information
Magazines and publications can build followers and
large readerships
Also used as a medium for advertisement
Advantages of New Media
Exponential rise in popularity of social networking sites
Ease of communication, rise in internet trends
Ease of access to information
Ability to start trends, campaigns is easy e.g. Ice
Bucket Challenge
Internet usage increased by 528% in the last 10 years
Easy and efficient method of relaying information
Global phenomenon
Low cost option for small businesses to advertise
themselves
Unlimited access, global outreach, high flexibility

Disadvantages
Information Overload
Media is an omnipresent force nowadays
Reduced scope for selective information from media
sources
In the old days, books and theatres were the methods
of transmitting information, creating a streamlined method of
transmitting information
Difficulty of filtering information
A variety of information from a variety of media
sources
Lack of specific topical focus
Propaganda/Influence
Can be used to broadcast inflammatory or negative
sentiments
Can be used to inflict terror, spread fear
 terrorist/anti- government organizations
such as ISIS
Information can be easily manipulated
People often accept information as the truth, do not
verify its truth
Clickbait articles to attract visitors to websites,
information itself is unreliable/untrue
Excessive Advertising
Revenue generation through media is a big focus
Advertisers pay huge amounts of money to display
flashy, catchy advertisements to viewers
Many websites have capitalized on user data and
information for advertisements, such as Google and Facebook which
both use and sell your data to display relevant advertisements to
you based on interests, location, etc.
The landscape of websites such as Youtube has
changed as well into excessive advertisements before and during
websites (which is both a pro and a con, as advertisements pay the
video uploaders but it is a nuisance to viewers)
Unsolicited bulk advertisement such as spam email
Inappropriate advertisements might end up on
unfiltered websites and displayed to younger, impressionable
children
Inappropriate Content
Inappropriate content is virtually everywhere and very
pervasive in media and the Internet
Easily accessible and might be harmful for younger
children
Ranges from extreme racially sensitive content to
violence to pornography
Might form the wrong impressions on impressionable
audiences
Grand Theft Auto, violent video games,
adult videos
Requires censorship through parents/authority figures/
government