Anonymity:
The internet has many good and bad points.
One of the main ones being anonymity. There are of course advantages and
disadvantage to being anonymous.
Advantages being that: anonymity can
protect people who are being persecuted, so that they are able to fully protest
without revealing their identity. It can allow you to do research without
others knowing what you are doing. If you are researching in the library, then
someone just has to look over your shoulders to see what you are doing. You cannot
do this with the internet as you can go on it on your own and use programs that
block what you are looking.
Of course these can all be disadvantages.
People can use anonymity to unfairly criticise without being able to be traced.
They can use the anonymity to carry out some very questionable activity.
In all honesty it depends what you are
doing. If there is a piece of media then surely criticism should be made in
your own name. After all media should never be about life and death.
The Internet for
Distribution:
The internet can be fantastically simple
for distribution of a media product. There are any number of video streaming
websites where all you need to do is to create an account and you can upload
straight from your computer.
This therefore means that the internet is
now the primary choice for distribution from ‘amateur’ producers. Although here
amateur us a misnomer as a lot of content published on the internet is nowhere
near amateur.
The major advantages of using the internet
for distribution are that it is instantly available so that your work can be
seen as soon as it is finished. You can create it and showcase your work as
soon as it is finished. This then follows on to being able to focus your work
maybe more than you would be able to do so with traditional media outlets.
The disadvantage comes from the fact that
if you can do it then so can thousands of others, this means that you are
always fighting to be different and to be noticed. Whilst this could also be
considered to be somewhat true for more mainstream media the difference for
them is that they have the budget so that they can make more considered careful
decisions on the work. As it is so hard to get to this stage it means there is
less work from them and so it is more likely to be noticed.
Basically on the internet to be successful
you need to be different, to have a following and to be able to adapt to change
as soon as it comes along, because if you don’t you will be forgotten very
soon. There are numerous stories of people making money from advertising
revenues on YouTube, but this can’t last and unless they are able to change
they might find a time when they are no longer in demand and they might
actually find that they are struggling.
So whilst the internet is a good place to
distribute it cannot and should not be the only place you distribute and earn
your revenue from. If your work is good enough then you should be able to get
it to more mainstream media, where more work should then hopefully follow.
Social Media:
Social media described in the simplest
terms are sites where like minded people can keep in contact. As the internet
allows you to communicate more information faster than any other form of
communication this means that change can fluctuate more so than anywhere else.
However, because of social media with these like minded people, you can focus
your work and target it towards people who will be interested in what you are
producing. Probably one of the best sites to attempt to do this is Twitter. Not
because of being able to share links for videos, but because there are
celebrities on the site with millions of followers. If you are able to gain
there attention then they may tweet a link to their followers. If you can do
this then you open your work to the possibility of millions of people seeing
your work. This is where your work can go viral.
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