Translating old media to new: from The Guardian to guardian.co.uk.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the translation of the old media (practices) of print newspaper, The Guardian, to the new media (practices) of the site, guardian.co.uk, one of the world’s leading on-line newspapers with 37 million monthly unique users.
Manovich states that simply, “comparing new media to print, television or photography will never tell us the whole story” (46). In theorizing new media, he defines “two distinct layers - the “cultural layer” and the “computer layer” ”(46). The former is the cultural content, the latter the computer’s logic and operations- its data, infrastructure and interface: “We can say that they are being composited together.” (46).
The paper argues that guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/) has innovatively composited its cultural and computer layers to converge media and converge cultures, and each with the other, as it has paradoxically fostered an open participatory culture, but not without critical tensions between control and freedom, empowerment and exploitation of users, unprecedented in old media. This paper further argues that this necessitates users to be hyperaware and critical in new media (practices) relative to the old.
Turning first to media convergence, Jenkins, citing McChesney, points out that in the entertainment industry there has been an increase in “synergy” between different divisions of the same company (4). This holds with new media more generally. The Guardian Media Group (GMG), owned by The Scott Trust, to which guardian.co.uk
belongs, has various divisions, including its sister paper The Sunday Observer[1], regional radio stations, interactive Emap, and B2B data applications. In the past decade, GMG has increasingly focused on using the guardian.co.uk site’s technological infrastructure to increase “synergy” and move content and services fluidly across its media channels (Jenkins, 3) and divisions. The site has, also, networked its extensive multi-media services[2] across a range of cultural content and “…enables multiple points of entry into the consumption process” (Jenkins, 5). Once accessed, the site helps link users to other cultural interests and artifacts internal to it, but as Scholz points out regarding Amazon.com, this also erodes the process by which people discover things on their own (3), and keeps them within the site’s control and enclosure. This supports the argument for the need to be critical as “computerization affects deeper and deeper layers of culture” (Manovich, 27), weighing freedom of access against control.
The parent company and guardian.co.uk also joint venture with major partners, including YouTube: Guardian Television, Twitter, Facebook and iPad apps, emphasizing its “newness”, increasing mobility and blurring lines between “real space” and “networked/embodied space” (Cohen, 248), while further enclosing users within its networked system. The user needs to be critically aware of the positioning and the boundaries of control within the network conglomeration. (See slide below from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform).
Regarding fostering participatory cultures, the guardian.co.uk site’s operating system, Open Platform, is a major part of its infrastructure/cultural convergence internally, and externally brings down walls for users. It permits three levels of access and revenue[3]. So as other newspapers put up paywalls, the guardian.co.uk is doing the opposite. Thus, this paper argues, the site is contributing to a participatory culture whereby users “average citizens” become involved in, “the archiving, annotation, appropriation, transformation, and recirculation of media content.” (Jenkins 6). As further evidence of fostering participation and empowering users, the guardian.co.uk site operates seven niche, networked blog sites and has a unique site entitled “Comments are Free” which encourages citizen journalists. Executives rightfully claim the site is altering conceptions of community building and social participation[4]. However, this is not done without self-interest. As Lovink, citing Landman, points out, “People are getting bored with the existing formats… Mainstream media… have to search for new formats to attract readers (read: advertisers)” (8). Moreover and pertinent to this paper’s argument, as Scholz explains, “The motivating carrot for the participation of networked publics is the “free” service that does, however, come with the hidden price tag of utilization.” (2). As the Guardian’s editor-in-chief elucidates, the site’s participatory culture is useful in, “asking help from readers to write the article; you can then use it to market the article; and finally, you can use it to collect feedback on your article.” [5] So while participating in the public sphere is empowering, this process raises three areas of user exploitation, distinctive in the translation from old media newspapers to new media: free labour, free marketing, and surveillance.
Regarding free labour, Shirky asserts, “There are a trillion hours a year of participatory value for grabs… organizations designed around a culture of generosity can achieve incredible effects without an enormous amount of contractual overhead.” Chris Thorpe[6], of guardian.co.uk, provides concrete examples of how they put out calls to their users to solicit their knowledge in reporting a story, with overwhelming response. Regarding free marketing, a classic example lies in the second tier of the Open Platform, wherein when an article is remediated in a new site, “The Guardian embeds ads, performance tracking and a watermark within the articles it makes available.”[7] This takes the brand into new populations and increases its marketing power. Thirdly, regarding surveillance, user performance is tracked and guardian.co.uk data is searchable and downloadable for its own feedback and marketing purposes for partners’ applications. This exemplifies Scholz’s point, “Many of the “free” services on the Social Web intrude into the personal life of the users” (3) and stands as further evidence of the tensions between empowerment and exploitation.
This paper has argued that the innovative composite of the computer and cultural layers, exemplified by guardian.co.uk, to converge media and culture, whilst simultaneously fostering a participatory culture, is fraught with tension and paradoxes, and requires vigilance. Deleuze presciently argued two decades ago that a transition in the social environment from industrial age (old media) “disciplinary societies” (3) and computer age (new media) “societies of control” was underway (4). It is now ushered in. If ignored, new media (practice) has the potential to appropriate its users into, in Deleuze’s terms, “ …a new system of dominance,” (7). He asserts that the technological evolution has co-evolved with a “mutation in capitalism” (6) wherein “Marketing has become the center or the “soul” of the corporation.” (6). The analysis of the guardian.co.uk site suggests marketing is not far from center for new media, too. For users, as Scholz states, “Being used is one thing: not knowing that your attention is monetized is another.” (4).
To summarize, in the translation from print to new media (practices), as exemplified in guardian.co.uk, there is a lot more at stake than simply the format in which we read. Bolter and Grusin’s notion of ‘transparent immediacy’ refers to the lack of intrusion of the means of mediation, hiding its logic. It is the very success of this immediacy that can hide submerged levels of control and exploitation. Such a site as guardian.co.uk can be “a space of domination or a space of critical practice depending on who keeps the boundaries and controls the permission” (Cohen 248). New media users need to better understand this, how they are being used as they are being empowered, and make critical and informed choices with respect to when, how and with whom they want to participate in this or any new media social space.
(1198 words).
Bibliography
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Cohen, Julie E. (2007). Cyberspace as/and space. Columbia Law Review (Vol. 107:210)
http://www.columbialawreview.org/articles/index.cfm?article_id=850
Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the societies of control. October 59, 3-7.
Demptos, G. (2010, Sept 16). The Guardian embraces social media. Retrieved March 18th 2011 from http://www.ifra.net/blogs/posts/2010/09/16/the-guardian-embraces- social-media
Jenkins, H. (2003). Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital cinema, media convergence, and participatory culture. http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/starwars.html
Lovink, G.(2007). Zero comments: blogging and critical internet culture. New York: Routledge.
Manovich, L. (2002). The language of new media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Rijswijk, Z.H. (2009, Dec 10). Interview with Chris Thorpe (The Guardian) Retrieved March 19th 2011 from http://vimeo.com/8150670
Scholz, T. and Hartzog, P. Toward a critique of the social web. Re-public: re-imagining
democracy. http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=201
Shirky, C. (2010). How cognitive surplus will change the world.
[1] The Observer is first Sunday paper in the world.
[2] These include: video, audio and podcast, pictures, images and interactive guides
[3] Keyless, free access to the headlines and data, Approved, license to publish full articles provided ads are embedded, and Bespoke for revenue sharing and custom solutions for licensing content. From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform
[4] Interview with Chris Thorpe: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/20/guardian-says-its-open-platform-is-now-open-for-business/
[5] Keynote talk : http://www.ifra.net/blogs/posts/2010/09/16/the-guardian-embraces-social-media
[6] Interview with Chris Thorpe: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/20/guardian-says-its-open-platform-is-now-open-for-business/
[7] Interview with Chris Thorpe: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/20/guardian-says-its-open-platform-is-now-open-for-business/
