The media- usually male- use their representations to “symbolically annihilate”. For example representations of females in sitcom such as the Simpsons where Marge the wife of Homer Simpson is represented to pick up after him and manage the household while he goes off to work. In one episode Marge is seen to been picking up groceries, taking homers bowling ball to the cleaners and taking care of their child Maggie. Marge is seen to be the family controller where Homer is seen as the bread maker.

Three points from Bianca's essay

the media- usually male- use their representations to “symbolically annihilate” The word translates to “deadly woman” as she was manipulative, seductive and money or power driven. 1950’s sitcom “Father Knows best” - “Doghouse” (2009) follows a group of guys, who badly treat their women, to a remote area where female zombies attack.

It has been said that media representations often reflect the social and political concerns of the age in which they are created. Discuss.

Media representations have been changing over decades, changes such as for females post feminism and for males becoming the female gaze. When media texts representations were created, they were created around current affairs and cultural traditions for instance post world war two led to the emergence of the suffragettes, females who burnt their bras for more freedom and value in society. This then gave way to the representation of females as the femme fatale in such films such as ‘double indemnity’ which showed females in control and superior in some way leading men on to end up either murdering them.

Gender has also changed over the years, as Gerda Lerner says gender is ‘ a costume, a mask, a straight jacket’ which connotes that gender isn’t reality, it’s what is constructed. In a certain way it can be argued that the media has created gender which the public follow as the media acts superior, as the public are ‘subordinated groups accept the ideas, values and leadership of dominant groups’. It can be argued that media construct representations that don’t follow the times they are created in. For example 9/11 and the London bombings didn’t change the representation of Muslims in films as fills before these events represented Muslims as extremists who were a threat to western society. Films such as Four Lions still see Muslims as extremists and bring comedic side to the representations.

Females have gone through a large amount of change through time; representations of females have changed from being subordinated by men and view voyeuristically to becoming superior and given more freedom.

“Did the washing machine change the world more than the internet?"

Every year brings technological change; products have evolved over decades to new styles, functions and designs. The washing machine has changed the way we was our clothes however, also changing society and the roles that gender play. On the other hand the internet has led our consumer lives bringing us what we need from entertainment to services to information all in one application.


The washing machine changed the way females were seen, it was as a starting point to the change of representations of women as females were seen to be the person who did the cleaning. But the washing machine meant that women had to spend less time cleaning clothes and gave way to extra time for them. This extra time meant they could go work or even go out to socialise.


On the other hand the Internet has become as a global community where views, values, traditions, goods and service can be exchanged, it has helped the economy boom and has given rise to a more technological advanced workforce with easy contact by the use of applications as skype and msn.


To concluded i believe that the Internet has changed the world the most as it has done more than empower females, it has empowered the globe.

Next step

Look at my presentation and include the quotes and statistics into the essay.
Also refer globalisation.


The music industry has changed significantly as new sites such as YouTube allows videos of artists to be uploaded and watched. Comments and video responses can be left. Also viewers can subscribe to channels to have a constant update on the artist. Therefore benefiting the consumers as it allows them to put across their views and opinions across the way they would like to. However the developedment of such sites has caused the institutions to suffer (producers). Instituions such as Universal, Sony and EMI lose customers and lose revenue as artists can post/upload their own work on these sites.
Both producers and consumers benefit from the digital change as the development of the medium has allowed the the views and values of the world to become interconnected. As sites can be made available in several countries it allows the different cultures to be shared across the medium to influence producers and also educate the consumers to acept and learn new things.

Net neutrality

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/16/tim-berners-lee-net-neutrality - Guardian


The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned internet service providers (ISPs) that plans for a "two-speed" internet go against the principles that have let the net grow so rapidly in the past two decades.

"Best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," Berners-Lee told a round table in Westminster on Wednesday morning, convened by the communications minister Ed Vaizey. Content companies, represented by Facebook, Skype, the BBC and Yahoo, squared up to ISPs, with input from consumer representatives including the Open Rights Group, the Consumers' Association and the communications regulator Ofcom.

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, who was representing consumer interests at the meeting, said afterwards that he was concerned about the direction the debate was going: "The potential for something going terribly wrong is absolutely there. The regulator and government do not wish to intervene, for good reason; but industry is not putting forward anything that looks like meaningful self-regulation."

ISPs have for years sought to charge the BBC or customers, or both, for the huge amounts of data transferred over their networks by applications such as the iPlayer, whose popularity has exploded in the past few years. ISPs have to pay for carriage of data from BT's core network to customers, but offer unmetered services on broadband – meaning that when people's demand for data grows, ISPs can be out of pocket.

But the BBC and other content providers such as YouTube have resisted calls that they should pay, on the basis that they are providing a service that allows the ISPs to find customers. In response, ISPs both in the US and Europe have mooted the idea of "two-tier" connections where some services are slower than others. Skype complained at the meeting that its service is effectively blocked on all of the mobile services in the UK except 3, meaning that carriers are violating the principle of net neutrality because they fear it will affect their call revenues.

Berners-Lee told the meeting that "every customer should be able to access every service, and every service should be able to access every customer ... The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."

Vaizey said the meeting had been "useful and productive" and that "it was important to discuss how to ensure the internet remains an open, innovative and competitive place."

"Net neutrality" – in which services are treated exactly equally as they pass over the net, no matter what their source or destination – has become an increasingly vexed topic as demands on ISPs and mobile carriers have begun to outstrip capacity.

ISPs have thus suggested that they should be allowed to manipulate the transfer of data, but that they would be transparent about how and what they were doing.

On Monday the Broadband Stakeholder Group launched a new traffic management transparency code, which has since been signed by the largest fixed-line and mobile carriers, including BSkyB, BT, Everything Everywhere (formerly Orange and T-Mobile), TalkTalk, 3, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Together they represent more than 90% of all fixed-line broadband and mobile customers in the UK.

It pledges that "information will be provided in a common format to explain what traffic management techniques are used, when and with what impact for each broadband service currently marketed by the code's signatories."

But Rob Reid, senior policy adviser at the Consumers' Association, who was among the attendees at the meeting, said that there was concern that transparency was only one half of the required commitment – because users might be tied into contracts lasting 18 months or more, meaning that if they disliked a change to the traffic management policy it would be expensive to switch to a different provider who offered one they preferred.

Antony Walker, the chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, told the Guardian: "The issue of [customer] switching is critical. It's the other side of the coin to transparency. Ofcom is working on guidance on this and it is an issue that was highlighted. Everybody agrees that it is important."

Adding faster systems would only work as a short-term measure to relieve congestion on networks, said Walker: "it's like adding more lanes to the M25 – it just attracts more cars. Having faster networks will mean that people will want more services using more data."

But Killock said that not enough was being done yet: "In contrast with the US, where rules are being put in place through the Federal Communications Commission, or Norway where ISPs have agreed a meaningful code, our ISPs are not offering us what we and the UK economy needs. If that continues to be the case, then Ed Vaizey will find himself with the task of breaking the log jam."

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4607-net-neutrality-concerns-raised-as-isps-defend-two-tier-internet.html -Non Uk


Earlier this week, many broadband ISPs spoke out in favour of the voluntary code of practice on traffic management transparency published on Monday by the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG). A long list of broadband providers, both large and small, has put their backing to the proposal indicating that they are in favour of ISPs being open and honest about the services they provide, and how they handle traffic management across their network. Consumer Focus, a government backed consumer body also backed the proposals and are keen to point out that verification that consumers are sticking to it should be independent.


"This is a golden opportunity for internet companies to provide clear information to consumers. To keep consumer confidence, it is vital that the pilots of this code are independently verified and contribute to informing consumer’s actual experience of traffic management policies. But transparency should not be used as a tool to restrict consumers choice of accessing content, applications and services over the Internet nor discriminate against certain applications, services or content."

Robert Hammond, (Head of Post and Digital Communications) Consumer Focus

The key to this proposal being successful is in information being clearly visible to consumers in an easily understandable way. Whilst some users will appreciate technical details, others will not be willing to trawl through tables of data to try and work out the difference between a broadband product from one provider and that of another.

Other concerns have been raised over this with some wondering if this will see ISPs start to offer a two-tiered Internet where some services receive a higher quality of service in comparison to others, but with ISPs being open about how traffic is treated. Net neutrality is a hotly debated subject, and pro-campaigners are keen to see that all traffic on the Internet be treated equally, no matter who sends it. A net-neutrality debate organised by the government saw ISPs defend their right to run a two-speed Internet, stating that if content providers want to pay to get a higher priority on the network, then they should be able to.

Whilst this is how things work in a free-market, there are strong concerns that this will cause long term damage to the way the Internet works. Smaller websites, and those who operate free-services could effectively find themselves priced off of the Internet by large content providers, and ISPs seem unwilling to compromise in the net-neutrality debate.


"They weren't willing to make any concessions on their ability to manage traffic. BT even said that if people want to block things they should be able to.

If people are blocking large sections of the internet and promoting a handful of service then they shouldn't be able to claim that they sell internet access.

Jim Killock, (director) Open Rights Group

The BBC being one of the larger content providers in the UK are equally concerned about the issue, and have called for the creation of a 'broadband content group' to help represent content providers such as themselves and the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. The BBC are hoping that a system to shame ISPs who are performing poorly could help users see when their ISP is performing traffic management on their connection. The BBC iPlayer is soon to receive a traffic light system which will rate their ISP based on the performance of the connection to the iPlayer service- Red for poor, amber for UK, and green for acceptable. Such a system is unlikely to be enough to qualm service providers though, and they will continue to press for the right to run their networks as best suit them.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/berners-lee-to-advise-on-uk-net-neutrality-code-10022010/ - UK source


The government convened a net-neutrality-related roundtable event on Wednesday involving ISPs, content providers, consumer groups and father-of-the-web Tim Berners-Lee.

It was announced at the event that Berners-Lee will work with industry body the Broadband Stakeholder Group to expand its voluntary code of practice, which was unveiled on Monday. The code, to which most big ISPs and mobile operators have signed up, compels those companies to be transparent about their traffic management policies in an easy-to-understand way — Sir Tim wants the commitment to extend to other aspects of net neutrality.

"While transparency about traffic management policy is a good thing, best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," Berners-Lee said in a statement. "The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."

Communications minister Ed Vaizey, whose Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) organised the occasion, described it as "useful and productive".

"I am pleased that someone with the expertise of Sir Tim has agreed to work with industry on expanding that agreement to cover managing and maintaining the open internet," Vaizey said.

"That agreement should be guided by three simple principles. The first is users should be able to access all legal content. Second, there should be no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry and finally traffic management policies should be clear and transparent. The internet has brought huge economic and social benefits across the world because of its openness and that must continue."

Vaizey's words did not carry the government position on net neutrality much past that which he had already laid out — namely, that it would prefer to avoid regulation on the matter until a real problem manifests itself. It addressed the potential issue of a content provider paying an ISP to downgrade rival content providers' services, but that is not really a scenario that has been much discussed — at least in public — in any case.

What has been proposed, many times, is that ISPs charge content providers to ensure their services run at a guaranteed quality. ZDNet UK asked the DCMS on Thursday what its attitude would be to such arrangements, and a spokesman said the department "wouldn't intervene".

"The difference would be that if you come to an agreement for a guaranteed level of service then the knock-on impact would be on the internet as a whole, not a specific group of content providers," the DCMS spokesman said. "[Vaizey] is saying there's no way you should be able to get an ISP to run your rival's service slower. It's about specifically targeting your rivals."

According to the DCMS, attendees at the roundtable included: Amazon, the BBC, the Broadband Stakeholder Group, BSkyB, BT, the CBI, Channel 4, Channel 5, Consumer Focus, eBay, Everything Everywhere, Facebook, the Federation of Communications Services, Google, ISPA, ITV, the Mobile Broadband Group, Nominet, Ofcom, the Open Rights Group, Skype, TalkTalk, the Tax Payers Alliance, 3, Virgin Media, Vodafone, the W3C, WE7, Which? and Yahoo.

what is net neutrality?
is when services are treated exactly equally as they pass over the net, no matter what their source or destination.

Is the internet neutral?
i believe the internet is not neutral as we in the UK all receive a much slower service than other countries.

Should it be?
In some way the internet should be neutral. Everyone should be able to receive the same speed. If people want faster speeds then they should pay for that extra bandwidth.

essay

‘Digital media have in many ways, changed how we consumer media products’ who do you think benefits most- audience or producers?

The media has been evolving from many decades changing everyday consumption of media products. Since the beginning of the new millennium there has been a boom in the development of technology which has allowed the audience of media products to become more in control of the consumption of the media.

Some features that have been put forward in today’s society are uploading self composed music or audience creating their own content becoming ‘citizen journalists’ without the hassle of music companies or editors. The introduction of Smartphone’s such as Apple’s iPhone and also of its tablet computer the iPad has changed the consumption of media products therefore effecting both producers and consumers.

Therefore in this essay I will discuss how the change in technology in the 21st century has changed the way we now consume media products and also focus on who is most benefited from this, the consumers or producers.

Before the new millennium there were two primary ways of accessing media texts, this was done through the print and broadcast medium by the establishment of newspapers/magazines, radio stations and television stations. The 21st century brought the public the internet, first established in 1992 however, becoming established in the new millennium. Alongside this the development of the speed we receive material on the internet changed as broadband was discovered. This meant that audiences could receive texts at faster speeds.

The development of the internet has allowed a new medium to establish, e-media. Also to add the previous mediums print and broadcast have been futher developed by new technologies. The development of digital media has therefore lead to a decline in several areas within the two mediums.
The print medium has had several changes within itself such as newspapers now becoming online as companies have no created sites which allows consumers to view texts on their computers, laptop or handheld devices. Also the introduction of Apple iPhone and the iPad has led newspaper companies for example the guardian, to create an application for its consumers to recive news upon their iPhones or iPads for a one of fee for £4.99.