Throughout the first chapter, Gauntlett gives a quick overview of the
advantages, commodities and opportunities brought about by the emergence of
the Internet.  According to him, the Internet has given a much wanted new
life to media studies, due to its continuous changing nature.  Internet
provides space for diversity of content, conflict, new ideas and active
engagment  - it is a 'vibrant, exploding and developing' medium.

Following a brief history of the Internet, Gauntlett explains the
difference between the World Wide Web and the internet, two words which are
often used interchangeably.

Later on, the author also outlines the concept of web money.  Similar to
other media, the Internet receives most of its revenue  from advertising
and sponsorship.  Thus, the great challenge lies in developing a great site
which would gain alot of attention. There are various ways of making a site
popular, namely, by providing freebies, good content, up-to-date data, etc,
what the author has termed as the 'attention economy'.

Throughout the Internet's brief history, companies have come to realize
that access fees to certain services will simply help them lose their
clients.  People are reluctant to pay for information which they can get
for free.  Indeed, as soon as Netscape started charging non-educational
users for its browser, Microsoft dominated the market by giving its own new
browser away free to everyone. The only industry which has had success in
this respect is pornography.  Porn is something which people are willing to
pay for.  Indeed, porn merchants have taken advantage of this position
arguing that the credit card details ensure that no children are accessing
porn sites.

Towards the end of the chapter, Gauntlett outlines different aspects of the
internet which he will tackle in greater detail in his book namely: virtual
communities, anonymity and identity play, the web and the big businiess,
politics and international relations and provides some of the
ramifications.

The ideas presented by Gauntlett are certainly very interesting, as well as
informative, as yet, it seems that at times he is too optimistic about the
whole idea about the Internet.  Also, one cannot simply ignore the other
media just because a new medium has been born.  The other media still play
a major role in our everyday life and thus, one cannot simply ignore their
effects.

Lappin, Todd: ˛Déjà Vu All Over Again˛

Lappin compares the history of an old mass media which is the radio, with what is happening now with the internet and the future that this media could have.

He begins with the history of the radio, from its very first moments when amateurs were delighted to communicate using this new technology.  With this new media they were able to create their own entertainment. The radio as he says was a user-dominated and user-controlled media, but as it became popular, that precious interactivity was lost.

As the radio became more popular it started to produce changes on society. The programming tastes became more sophisticated, newcomers wanted to be informed and entertained, and with a professional-quality transmission. Of course the problem was how to finance a broadcasting station and all the expenses, which at the moment were owned by business people, public service organisations, etc. By 1923, 39% of the radio broadcasts were owned by companies that manufactured radio hardware, 14% by commercial business, 13% by educational institutions, 12% by publishers and 2% by churches and YMCAs.

They agreed that the way of finance the radio broadcasting shouldnąt be by the government or by advertisement. AT&T proposed the toll broadcasting which changed the one to one communication, to one to many communication. Big companies figured out, that there was good money to be made in networked broadcasting, and they started to team up to create their own network. By 1930 the commercial networks dominated the media and almost nothing remained for the amateurs.

As Lappin says, what began with this great concept of changing the way people relate to one another, a new interactive media, became just another commercial product. We are now in a similar situation, with similar problems. We have this time a second chance to use this new media in a better way, we are responsable to take advantage of all the potential that it has.

WEB.STUDIES - Rewiring media studies for the digital age (David Gauntlett)
online at: http://www.newmediastudies.com/webbook1.htm

by Malcolm Tam - DIGITAL MEDIA

SYNOPSIS

David initially talks about how quickly the internet has become a part of our lives and how media studies was dead until the web came along by listing some anecdotes as to how Śuseful, challenging and obviousą media studies had become.

He then goes on to talk about the historical origins of the web and its geography, what it is and how it differs from the internet stating that the internet is the physical network of hardware cables and wires and the web is the friendly interpreted face that we see.  Illustrations are then made about making money on the web by giving a couple of examples of success stories of people who have made their millions.

A brief section on how content providers initially thought they could get away with charging for content until they realised that the only content that people were willing to pay for was pornographical, before listing the benefits of giving away freebies and people who have had success with this such as Netscape, Vincent Flanders - WebPagesThatSuck.com and Linus Torvalds - Linux.

A good section on the importance of getting and keeping attention (by providing quality content), and how money is not everything on the web follows before he
then goes on to discuss basic ideas of expression, communities and anonymity on the web.  David finishes the chapter with a couple of paragraphs detailing how to understand the web more by trying it out for yourself and see how difficult it is to design, build, maintain and get attention on the web, with a few pointers as to where to go to get help.

CONCLUSIONS

Useful because:  A brief and easy to read extract from his book about a lot of the popular issues and questions the internets existence has raised.

Not Useful because:  Very basic, mainly obvious points are made with few unique ideas or perspectives, though I found some of the media studies anecdotes amusing.
 

DAVID GAUNTLETT'S INTRODUCTION TO WEB STUDIES

The Web allows people to express themselves

The Web offers people an opportunity to produce creative, expressive media
products (or texts, or art works, if you prefer) and display them to a
global audience. Without question, this is a new and significant
development. We may be able to produce a painting, or a poem, or an amateur
'magazine', but without the Web, most of us would not have the opportunity
or resources to find an audience for our work. We could force our family and
friends to admire our masterpiece, but that would be about it.

THEREFORE

The Web brings people together, building communities

Again, the internet changed all that. Now, regardless of where they are in
the world, people with similar interests, or with similar backgrounds, or
with similar attitudes, can join communities of like-minded people, and
share views, exchange information, and build relationships.

In practice, what these communities look like are people sending electronic
text to each other. Most of the studies of virtual communities are about
groups exchanging messages on newsgroups and e-mail discussion lists, or
groups who often meet in the same chat rooms. The studies seem, so far, to
have ignored the communities which develop amongst similarly-themed websites
and their creators, which in many ways may be stronger and more permanent.
Participants in chattering groups may come and go, whereas the bonds of
friendship and interdependence which the Web, by its interconnected nature,
breeds amongst website-creators - expressed in public links and personal
e-mails - may be more compelling.

Web.Studies - Rewiring media studies for the digital age
Edited by David Gauntlett / September 2000

1st Chapter
 

David Gauntlett, once a true sceptic, concerning the Internet and its power, explains how, as an academic, he was first converted to a follower, by the speed and convenience of email.

In this 1st chapter the author explains how media studies has had a rebirth due to the Internet and its impact on popular mass media.  He explains why, towards the end of the twentieth century, media studies was Śnearly deadą and how this has now changed due to the explosion of new media, the controversy brought about by this and the advantage that this is a truly interactive medium.

This is achieved by giving a brief history of the Web, followed by an explanation of what the World Wide Web actually is and its relationship with the Internet is.  He then goes on to discuss the interface between Web creativity and real-world money, discussing the many ways in which money is involved in the Internet, from the making of millionaires to the question of big business killing the Web.

The author then outlines some of the key issues in Web studies, including; the Web allows people to express themselves, the Web brings people together, building communities, Anonymity and identity play in cyberspace, the Web and big business, the Web is changing politics and International relations.

Main points of the First Chapter of Web.Studies
 

Origins of the web
According to the definition in this chapter, Internet is a global network of interconnected computers; however, World Wide Web is a user-friendly interface onto Internet. In brief, Web is something that functions using Internet. Since Internet consists of cables, wires and microprocessors, it can transport every type of data and Web is one of them. Internet was first discussed by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in 1962, but the internet-style networks did not successfully commenced until Vint Cerf and Bob Khan defined the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) in 1974. On the contrary, the development of World Wide Web was approximately 20 years later than Internet. Tim Berners-Lee developed World Wide Web in 1991 and then in 1993 Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina wrote an unprecedented Web browser called Mosaic which led to a ŚWeb revolution.ą Berners-Lee's substantial contribution, however, was rather socially significant: his idea was to store the documents on any server in the world and these documents can be brought to any computer on Earth so that the information will be globally shared among each person. That was what he called ŚWorld Wide Web.ą

The web and money
Many people who provide free on-line service in their websites have stricken it rich on the Web. Their money-making strategy is similar to traditional media such as commercial TV stations and newspapers: advertising. Audience do not pay for watching TV or reading newspapers because advertisers will pay the money to these media to deliver their advertisements to people. Likewise, people get free access to Yahoo! Website and the only expense for them is Śbeing exposed to some modestly-sized but inescapable adverts,ą according to David Gauntlett, 2000. Yahoo! has a great advantage of gathering advertising revenue, as it will be able to target the right people/consumers for advertisers. For example, those who search Yahoo! for information about cats will be exposed to cat food ads because they might have their own cats. In fact, Web companies such as Yahoo!, Amazon.com, etc have not made a great amount of profit. Their high value is a stock market value - the same kind of value enjoyed by the many Web businesses which haven't even turned a profit yet.

At the beginning of Web revolution, IT experts thought that Internet Content Providers (ICP) will be able to charge their users eventually; however, this dream has not yet come true so far. Since the huge amount of free information is virtually all available on line, it seems that no body is willing to pay the money to any of these content providers except the pornography websites, which have been successfully charging subscription fees. Other examples of paid-for content are rare. The Encyclopaedia Britannica which used to charge for full on-line access has been available for free on the Web. Advertising, sponsorship and e-commerce will be the new ways in which Britannica pays her rent - in line with most other Web services. The other way to scrape back some cash is micropayments system which will be able to charge people small amounts for bits of content. However, it seems that the Author is not so optimistic about it since people have got used to getting free information.

The scarce resource on the Web is attention. Money is not the most important scarce resource and information is not rare at all. The scarce resource on the internet is attention, because there is so much information available, and everyone has so little time to look at it.

SOME OF THE MAIN ISSUES
The most significant change that the Web has made would be the ease of reaching global audience. Since presenting a media product to the whole world is not difficult on the Web, we donąt need to worry about finding an audience for our work. In addition, the internet has created a virtual community for like-minded people because they could communicate with each other regardless of where they are located in the physical world.