Sunday 28 April 2019

Question 3

Explain the impact of technological developments and changing economic contexts on the cost for audiences of consuming news. Refer to The Guardian and the Daily Mail to support your answer. [10 marks]

Both The Guardian and The Daily Mail rely on the price of the newspaper and adverts for their print paper. Online again they both use advertising. However, the Guardian also offers an opportunity for its readers to pay for a membership. This membership includes ad-free content for the members. Neither of these newspapers uses a paywall, unlike some other newspapers.

A decline in sales of print newspapers could be a result of them also being available online. People most likely find it easier to access the news on the internet via their mobile phones rather than going out and buying a newspaper. This is because the online version of these newspapers are constantly on hand to people and can be easily accessed anywhere at any time. The result of this for The Guardian and the Daily Mail is that they lose a lot of money as readers are not forced to pay for the online version of either newspaper. The Guardian may lose less money as readers are given the option for pay for a membership. However, the result of losing money from online readers may be that the newspapers implement a paywall where readers are made to pay before reading online.

As I said before, one of the main appeals of online newspapers is how easily accessible they are. However, another appeal may be that new stories online can be constantly updated. This is different from print as people who read print have to wait for the next day to read an update whereas online the story can be updated in hours or minutes. 

Online news from both The Guardian and The Daily Mail is available from more than just their websites, it is also available on social media. For example Snapchat and Instagram. The news here is often more targeted to a younger audience who are more likely to use social media. For example, on Snapchat the news The Daily Mail posts are often based around celebrity gossip. 

Prosumer activity is often made possible by these technological developments. An example of this would be a story on The Guardian website about an estate where poorer children were made to play separately from the richer children. This story started with audiences complaining about the problem online. The guardian then picked up the story and it quickly became one of their most read stories. This then caused change to be made to the playing area a matter of days later.

1 comment:

  1. Some intelligent and relevant points Freya and you understand the question, giving evidence of how changes in technology and economics have impacted the two newspapers. At times a little unstructured and you could have added a concluding sentence or two. V

    ReplyDelete

Question 3

Explain the impact of technological developments and changing economic contexts on the cost for audiences of consuming news. Refer to The Gu...