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Where is Snapchats making its money?

(https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a-business/)

This image illustrates the various ways that Snapchat makes it money. It is funny how they have all of these forms of income, yet, they are losing money. As stated before in a previous post, due to the high demand of users on Snapchat, they are constantly having to use the money they are making to buy more storage space for pictures, videos, advertisements, etc…

I was unable to find more information when looking deeper into who works at Snapchat and what they are being paid. It would be interesting to know these details considering they amount of money they are losing when buying more photo space.

I believe one of the main reasons that Snapchat is valued so high (about $22 million) even thought it is constantly losing money, is because so many companies are investing (along with personal investors) and paying for advertisements to get their word out to teens and the youth to educate them with both old and new media which can be referred to back in the chart above.

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How Corporations Control How We Think

You may think you consume a healthy variety of news media. Reading news stories in different papers or websites to get the full story, switching up cable news stations so you don’t become too biased on a subject?

Well, it may be harder than that.

According to one well-known journalist, Ben Bagdikian, only six corporations rule 90% of what we watch, read, and listen to.

Of course this is just an estimate, but it is enough to cause concern and open up a bigger discussion.

Not only are the majority of the news sources we use controlled by the same conglomerates, but within these corporations news companies are often owned by people who have investments in other places.

We can see there is a conflict of interest after billionaire, Sheldon Andelson, secretly bought a newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, that had previously given him bad press coverage. After he repeatedly denied to have bought the paper, saying he had “no personal interest” in it, it was finally revealed that he and his family were the new owners. Since then there have been stories of the chief editor Andelson hired using a pseudonym to write stories that made the billionaire’s scandals sound better. It has also been outed that Andelson told his newspaper employees that they may no longer write about himself or another casino owner billionaire.

If one individual can have that much influence on what facts get out about himself, family, and friends, imagine the impact those six corporations have on news media.

One way they have major impact on the masses is the agenda-setting function of mass media or the agenda-setting theory. Basically it is the idea that the issues that a society cares about is set by the media in the way they portray subjects and how long they spend on the matter.

While media cannot tell you what to think, it can tell you what to think about and what not to think about.

This 1998 Saturday Night Live sketch below, “Conspiracy Theory Rock”, is a satire cartoon about the conglomerates that rule media, including their network NBC and parent company (at the time), General Electric. It is a parody off the educational shorts, Schoolhouse Rock!. Ironically, the sketch was removed from future episode syndications after airing. Creator and producer of SNL, Lorne Michaels said the only reasoning to this was because it “wasn’t funny”.

As a society we must be critical thinkers and never totally trust one source, but this is especially the case for mainstream media. As these companies could be restricting information, redirecting public attention from another issue, and/or pushing propaganda by orders from their owners.

Do not be swayed by these media giants, get your primary sources of news from places that are free of corporate interests and government influence: independent media.

 

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The Statistics Behind Snapchat and How They Are Actually Losing Money

When one thinks of Snapchat they typically think of teens taking selfies. This is in fact very true. The youth plays a major role in being part of the 161 million daily active users. On average, there are 2.5 billion Snapchats sent per day which was last updated on February 2, 2017. In 2014, so this statistic is continuously growing from here, 77% if college students were using Snapchat to send pictures to their peers and document their daily lives.

The statistics above alone show the major influence and impact that Snapchat has on youth today. The majority of youth today feel the need to document everything around them. If there is a rainbow they will make that their story. If there is a protest going on in their town, they will make it their story as well. This now relate to Snapchat’s influence on the media and the news. Snapchat has a discover page that had multiple sponsors that have daily updates on various news sites such as The  New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. On the other hand, looking at more of the entertainment side of news, there is a discover page for People, Cosmopolitan, Vogue along with so much more. Each college campus also has a section where students can post about updates that occur on campus. Some are entertaining while others are more informational.

 

Looking at all these statics and amount of people that use Snapchat one would think it is making a lot of money. Well the answer is no, it is not. Snapchat is free first of all, along with many of the other social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. Unlike those, Snapchat losses a lot of money. One of the major reasons is because they need to constantly buy more storage because of all the pictures, videos and messages that are going through Snapchat by the second. It is in fact bringing in revenue by selling to advertisers so they are able to publicize their product and make different geotags but they are losing more money than they are making. Overall, the company is a potential risk factor.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38850229 (click to watch video)

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Implications of Fake News

Hearing the term “fake news” has become common in the media. This concept was hard for me to grasp because I have always thought of the news to be factual, a place where I didn’t have to question the content I was hearing or seeing. I think that this trust not only comes from a long history between the people and the media, but also from laziness. Many people have so many things going on in their daily lives that they can’t even keep up within their own bubbles. Educating yourself about current events and staying up to date with important information takes time and the news provides the option for people to not have to invest this time.

So when the term “fake news” began to spread it became another task that people needed to do if they wanted to consume news. They had to teach themselves how to spot fake news.

I learned of the implications of fake news in regards to the 2016 US Presidential Election. For example, one of the most widespread  fake news articles said that the Pope had endorsed Trump with an engagement of over 2 million people on Facebook alone. This is not the only fake news story to have such large reach, there are many others that also had implications of their own.

However as I was exploring the internet for information on fake news, I came across this TED talk given by Stephanie Busari, a journalist and editor at CNN International Digital.

Stephanie’s story illuminates implications of fake news that I hadn’t thought about yet. Not only does this inaccurate information ignite action, but it also deters it. The lack of representation and information in the news is just as, if not more significant than what we do see.

But what can the concerned news consumer do? Well firstly is to be cognizant of the signs of fake news and reporting it when you come across it in your social media. Also it is important to determine which news sources you trust and identifying why that it. Take some time to do research as to who funds the companies, what are the themes seen throughout the content reported, and what efforts are they taking to ensure legitimacy. According to this 2014 study, BBC was the most trusted news source of the time.

What news sources do you rely on and do you think you have potentially spread fake news?

 

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Spotting Fake News

Facebook has been under fire regarding the news feed for users, in particular the spreading of fake news stories. In reply to this, Facebook News Feed and PR teams have been working tirelessly to inform users that this is not Facebook’s intent and how the users can avoid reading and spreading this content.

Recently when I opened Facebook on my phone, the top of the page was a message with a message grabbing my attention saying, “How to spot fake news” as seen below.

It grasped my attention enough to make me click on it and continue to read on the topic. They included a lot of resources and steps that people can take when trying to spot fake news.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found it interesting that Facebook set this up so that it would be the first thing users see when they open the app the day that they had this scheduled. In a way I felt like this was a direct response to the large amount of complaints and bad press they have been having around the issue. It feels like they are trying to push it in peoples faces

Facebook made it incredibly easy for the user to learn about spotting fake news although this effort does not inform people about how big of a problem the “fake news” epidemic is right now.

Buzzed news created an analysis of the top 20 fake and real news stories during the 2016 Election. They  found that the fake news stories had greater engagement than the legitimate ones by over 1 million users.

image source

Spotting fake news requires EFFORT and many social media users aren’t looking to put this in for an issue that they don’t realize is such a big deal. Would you go through the effort to report a news story that you thought to be Fake News?

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Unwilling to Pay

 

Last year John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, did a segment on journalism, specifically, how important newspapers are to all media that report news stories.

Oliver is a popular figure for millennials. One poll found Last Week Tonight to be in the top 20 go-to news sources for the generation.

Although in the segment Oliver pokes fun at the fact that people categorize him as a journalist. In one interview he told a reporter that, “It’s not journalism, it’s comedy first, and it’s comedy second.”

Journalist or not, John Oliver knows how to appeal to younger audiences with his witty remarks and entertaining satire.

He knows who his audience is, people who have mostly moved on from print news sources and rely on social media to lead them to other articles and videos. It can be guessed that a large portion of the millions of people who have watched the segment on Youtube and HBO did not know the importance of newspapers, so Last Week Tonight is the perfect place to inform people of the significance of the newspaper industry.

Newspapers, both local and large scale, are the backbone of news circulation. They hire journalists to do research that other sources like Last Week Tonight and cable news programs use.

Unfortunately, most newspaper companies have been seeing their profits diminish throughout the years. Even with the large increase in cyber activity, online advertisements do not provide enough revenue to make up for the loss in print revenue.

Getting news for free is now customary in our digital culture. Even going as far as using ad blockers so we don’t have to see advertisements appear around the borders while reading online articles.

Although some sites have ad blocker detectors that require people to turn off the extensions before viewing their content. Last March the New York Times showed messages saying things like, “The best things in life aren’t free…Advertising helps us fund our journalism,” then gave the reader an option to disable their ad blocker or subscribe to the newspaper.

In Oliver’s segment he comments, “A big part of the blame for this industry’s dire straits is on us and our unwillingness to pay for the work that journalists produce. We’ve just grown accustomed to getting our news for free. And the longer that we get something for free, the less willing we are to pay for it.”

It is understandable why so many people have gotten ad blockers, advertisements are annoying. They are intrusive and get in the way of reading articles or watching videos. People are using ad blockers as a way to fight against the increasingly invasive advertisements.

And according to research done in 2016 by the Pew Research Center, the younger people are, the less likely they are to read daily newspapers.

But millennials are not the only ones who are causing this decline, newspapers are slowly losing all their audiences. 

Publishers need money somehow. And if people are not subscribing to print media like they used to, combined with users blocking their sources of online revenue, the future seems bleak for journalism.

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The Comedic Critical Voices

The rapid change in how people access and consume news media, especially through the rise of social media, the line between news and entertainment has blurred. With an exponentially increasing amount of choices and growing competition for attention online, the stage has been set to allow satire to dominate the chorus of dissent in the face of modern adversity. The rise of political satire has made the news far more accessible to a hungry audience. “Political humor at least molds a more informed public and at best increases political involvement and excitement.” Now as the Trump administration, which got a boost to victory with the sensational way the media covered his “viral” campaign, has been taking unprecedented action throughout the government and blatantly lying and pushing false narratives, a kind of war with the media has been underway.

Trump considers the media the opposition party. With his administration successfully proving that facts do not make a difference on how people feel and therefore what they believe, it has become easy to turn the news media into the enemy. The media, however, has handled dealing with what Trump says in very inconsistent ways as the role of a journalist changes. The complete lack of trust in the media and the growing perception of bias as ethics change, it is difficult to find the best way to handle someone like Trump, a celebrity personality combining entertainment and governance.

Media outlets originally viewed the outrageous way Trump came onto the political scene as a circus. It was a way to feed the 24-hour news cycle and the entertainment value to the shocking occurrences drove up the views, the most important thing for modern media. The media did not take trump seriously but rolled in the ratings, with Les Moonves (one of the most powerful CEOs in the media) saying, “It may not be good for America, but it is good for CBS.” CBS’s Late Show, with their host Stephen Colbert who earned that job after creating one of the most watched political satires of all time, is the number one voice in late night comedy, because of spending most of his time talking about Trump.

Now, more traditional media outlets have been changing their tone, becoming much harsher towards the action of the administration now that Trump is in office. The media has to take what the President of the United States says seriously, if not the candidate. This has turned them into the opposition party, but it is seen as too little too late by those looking to boldly resist Trump. Late night comedy has become the most successful voice to speak out against Trump. This is due to the power of satire and the way it can “cut through the bullshit” like nothing else.

The power of satire as a critical weapon is seen throughout history and the world. Bassem Youssef, dubbed the John Stewart of Egypt, has run the first Internet-to-TV political satire program in the Middle East. His critique of the authoritarian regime governing his country has led to young people standing up and has been a tool to energize and inspire the protest movement. Youssef recently had to flee Egypt with this family because of the potential retaliation to his dissent. The comparison of him to the American Jon Stewart, the godfather of political satire when he helmed the Daily Show, shows the importance of satire to Democracy as a whole. Being able to exaggerate the absurdity in the world around you, a new kind of perspective becomes clear. Humor is not only a way to make it accessible and relatable, but also a way to reflect reality and draw conclusions from the context and narrative thread of a story. In this post-fact, viral world, satire is one of the ways people can still find the light at the end of the tunnel.

Brian Eckelkamp

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The Changing Ethics of New Media

Living in the Information Age has provided never before seen ways of getting and staying connected as well as unprecedented challenges to the ways we consume media. More traditional media outlets and the massive cable media machine have been dramatically declining as an endless range of newer online options began to compete intensely for attention in the fast paced 24/7 information consuming landscape. The major reason for this decline has been the lack of trust people have in the media. Only 6% of people have “great confidence” in the press. This has sent more and more people to social media and other online sources to find newer alternatives to get their information, as 87% of people get their news from Facebook.

Everything about the way people consume media has been changing, especially as the younger generations are the ones leading the charge into the online universe. With this change comes the need to reevaluate the standards and ethics that news reporting requires. The old role journalists had as “gatekeepers” is now gone, since the flood of information is so overwhelming and available, there is no way for them to be a gate to it. The must now become “referees” to the information that is out there. Clear and reliable reporting is difficult in the face of the need to go “viral” with the quickest and most up-to-date story that can gain the highest views and be the loudest voice in a crowded bubble. Journalists have a responsibility to democracy however, that these new media habits are dangerous towards. This is why evaluating who is considered a journalist now that everyone has a megaphone into the world is extremely important.

Bias and truth are very important aspects to evaluate as information becomes so widespread and available. There is no single “objective truth,” especially in reporting. Being able to recognize the different ways bias appears is important since every piece of information consumed was created by someone with some kind of intention. Alternative forms of media can provide different sides to the story, giving voices and commentary that is often ignored in the bigger outlets. Bias is not inherently wrong unless there is an intention to deceive or influence with misinformation. Simply providing a point of view perspective could be important to the story as well as defending the facts from sides that simply have a different political motive is a part of the purpose of a journalist. Identifying ethics of new media starts with recognize where the information is coming from and why it exists. In a free democracy and the age of free-flowing information, it is up to us to ensure the information we discover is accurate and understand the context it was created in.

Brian Eckelkamp

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The Men Who Are Now Worth Billions

Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown are their names. The co-founders of the popular smartphone app called Snapchat. Spiegel and Murphy are now worth about $4 billion each. While attending Stanford University, the college students thought, I wish the pictures I was sending to girls would disappear after I send them. They then had an epiphany: we should create an app that does this!

When it originally launched, its name was Picaboo and had about 127 followers within the first 3 months. Drama emerged between the 3 co-founders with Brown on one side and Murphy and Spiegel on the other eventually kicking Brown out and leaving him with nothing.

Later on, in the fall of 2011 Spiegel and Murphy knew the name needed to be changed and that is when the name Snapchat popped into their minds! Within a year, and mainly by word of mouth, Snapchat now had about 100,000 users. At this point, Murphy has graduated by Spiegel was still in college. Once they had an investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spiegel dropped out of Stanford weeks before graduating.

Around Christmas time of 2012, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, was launching a new feature on Facebook called, Poke, which only gave more spotlight to Snapchat and it was soon forgotten about. No wonder, I have never even heard of this version of Poke on Facebook. This only made Spiegel and Murphy more well known and richer after that small obstacle, so many people were signing up to use Snapchat!

Zuckerberg offered to buy out Snapchat for $3 billion and it backfired when Spiegel and Murphy refused the offer. Overtime, big brands are taking interest in Snapchat and being featured on its Discovery section on the app where various news sources are being advertised. Which bring us to today. Murphy and Spiegel have reached a market in which no one has ever touched before. They are both, separately, worth about $4 billion. Many want to invest thousands and this company and the power structure of Snapchat will continuously grow into a social media empire.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNmGfVHRmVg

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Transformation in News Consumption

Millennials often get criticized for not being in touch with the world around them when they are always on their devices, scrolling social media, texting, or playing video games. But by looking at studies done in the past few years, it has been found that young adults may be more connected than what is thought by the older generation.

Young adults are still getting the news, it is just coming from a wider array of sources than what previous generations have been exposed to. Traditionally people have mostly received their news from print and television, but now, thanks to
technological innovations, there are countless ways to retrieve the news.

Young people seem to be making the most of technology, getting their news from a diverse number of platforms. Although various polls have found that CNN is the favorite network of millennials, other research has found Facebook to be the favorite source for the generation.

Young adults are using Facebook and other sites like Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, and
Tumblr all provide a feed of instantaneous news from all over the world.

Millennials are using these social media platforms as portals to be used to view stories from a multitude of news organizations.

The older generations used to, and still do, seek out news and consume it in sessions. They may do this by sitting down and reading the newspaper, watching cable news, or listening to the radio.

Millennials are seen getting their news throughout the day. It is interwoven in their online socializing sessions. They are not making distinct times to go to direct sources to watch or read the news.

When young adults go on their social media feeds not only do they see their friends’ statuses, pictures, and videos but also shared news stories and articles. There is also usually a “trending” or “discover” section of the site or app, where the most talked about events around the world are displayed.

Some consider this new wave of journalism a good thing. That this means millennials, and other users of social media, are getting a variety of views, opinions, and sources.

Social media platforms can provide links to credible sources. While many young people may no longer check certain newspapers or news stations, they are redirect from their newsfeeds to news websites.

This new way of consuming current events has drastically changed the way journalism reaches its viewers.