Introduction
All the media sub-sectors in the industry have remained affected by the steady evolutionary changes in information communication technology (ICT) in the last two decades through numerous ways including efficiency in operations, creation of revenue opportunities, or negatively through the delineation of traditional skill, and functions (EFI LW C, 2003).
The new faces emerging in the media industry in the wake of deregulation, technological advancement and the rise of elitist audience have tended to reverse the manner in which the media fraternity works in delivering its mandate.
These changes have moved with speed to amend the working environment and the participants delivering to the audience. Tremendous improvements in technology as an effort to embrace the changing needs of the contemporary media environment has served to reclaim the approaches of media different from the traditional modes of selection and dissemination of information to the target populations across the world (Winseck & Jin, 2011).
However, critical concerns raised by ardent believers in change and media democracy have remained the magnitude by which these changes have worked to reverse the mode of operations in the media (Vogel, 2004).
Although changes in telecommunications have worked for the betterment of the mainstream media participants, they have acted to pressure them with a view to respond to the urgent call for synchronization. This, according to analysts, has motivated or pushed media houses to transit from traditional to modern approaches to media functioning (Winseck & Jin., 2011).
Discussion
The advancements in the technology space have acted as a motivating element necessary to bring about the overwhelming reaction from both media providers and the consumers. As the internet technology expanded to attract the attention of the business world, businesses became largely interested in the emerging trends in new technology.
This brought about the rise of the “dot.com” economy as proxies of moneymaking in the realms of market dynamics. The changes in technology especially the telecommunications afforded the business world to formulate strategies aimed at pushing materials to the users (Vogel, 2004).
The media industry on the other hand took these events with speed to exploit the opportunities that had been presented to them by both the technology as the enabler and the consumer reaction to changes in technology.
This scenario hugely influenced the media to formulate newer methodologies through which they could appeal to the users of information. Informed of the immense changes that had worked to the detriment of their traditional means of reaching the information users, the media fraternity assumed the role of followers of technological insights in order to remain relevant to the information world (EFI LW C., 2003).
These technologies have had far-reaching impact on the media practices especially the print media. Newspapers, magazines and other print materials have been escalated to jointly meet the masses using the internet as their most efficient form of communication. Today, it is common practice to see people read news on the internet via ipads, and phone enabled technologies.
In order to keep pace with the changing needs and preferences of the market, traditional media forms have ensured that they embrace strategic changes in modes of operation including collection, dissemination of information to the larger audience (Bustamante, 2004). The issues of reliability and availability as the takeoff for a plausible medium have challenged the impending practices of the traditional media organizations.
In the contemporary twenty first century, media availability and reliability has been questioned and critics of conventional mass media have cited these two elements as lacking in or perhaps having less emphasis. Therefore, the media services provided with a framework of technology have come in to address the limitations of this strategic magnitude (Hoskins & McFadyen, 2004).
The term media fraternity encompasses a fragmented or desperate collection of numerous sub-sectors including equipment suppliers and the mainstream media. The media companies have a wide range of products, some of which get the characterization of graphics and media sectors.
Changes in technology have tended not only to affect the mainstream media, but also the affiliate groups, which have previously not been categorized under the media sector. The suppliers of media equipments have been forced to form strategic alliances and partnerships aimed at meeting the challenges of going alone (Hoskins & McFadyen, 2004).
These changes have since meant that no single participant in the industry has the overwhelming capacity to beat the market dynamic without seeking a strategic advantage offered by other members in the same industry.
The suppliers have adopted strategies that rely on the identification of necessary interconnected technologies to form alliances with industry players with the requisite expertise in technology. This trend means that the service suppliers will remain strategically significant in the future in terms of formulating and implementing strategic purchasing decisions.
Digital convergence in the media industry serves as the driving force for a movement away from the institutionalization of the media toward the decentralized form of media. Traditionally, the media industry had confined itself to the dictates of the elitist minority who often controlled the content, movement and the mode of dissemination of material information to the audience.
The rise of technological boom and the emergence of social networking such as Facebook, charts and email messaging have challenged the approaches of traditional media.
These trends have disenfranchised the conventional media practice where in the media could “filter then publish.” Today, the media houses and its affiliates have been made to amend this mode toward “publish then filter” approaches in order to feed the users of information with all necessary information (Goodwin, 1998).
Convergence between technological infrastructure elements and devices, and vendor functions continue to create new opportunities. This has allowed media participants to decentralize their business portfolios.
On the other hand, the internet providers have succeeded in acting as facilitators of transactions in the media for trade completed through e-commerce. The publishing groups have begun separating their portfolios between content through multiple distributions, thus offering them additional strategic syndication and rights.
The rise of media technology in the later part of the 21st century has facilitated media organization to provide media materials such as texts, audio, print and video over the wired or other wireless connectivity. In the wake of these advancements has motivated media players to explore or utilize the application of multimedia delivery forms of information.
Today, the old as remained surrounded by a convergent media at a multi-level ground in which all media elements and components have developed the impetus to reform in order to adapt to the lasting demands of the new technologies. Therefore, these changes have welcomed new ways of creating, distributing, consuming and interacting across the world (Winseck & Jin, 2011).
Although the changes in technology have brought about tremendous changes in the operational environments of the media world, many media experts have equated these changes to a tip of an iceberg because many facets including business, health, art, education, and government continue to be carried out through facilitation of the media space via technology devices (Hollifield, 2004).
Informational mobility has characterized the world today with the emerging new technologies in telecommunications. The need for faster dissemination of information to the target users has demanded that the media houses transit from the constricting forms of distribution embedded in conventional media toward methodological approaches capable of appealing to these dynamics (Mansell, 1993).
Media convergence has emerged as a philosophical and economic strategy where communications organizations have sought to benefit from making their varied media forms to work together. For instance, the emergence of new TV technology shall cause no much difference between the computers and Television sets.
Thus, companies have tended to capitalize on their resource availability though investment in research and development (R&D). These trends have been informed by corporate concentration, in which governments have promoted fewer conglomerates to enter into new kinds of media through the process of deregulation and market decentralization.
Media players have sustained economic gains by using technology as a basis for widening their media portfolios to emerge with strong brand enabled by cross marketing and promotion. Subsequently, media companies continue to place their cards well with regard to strategic product delivery using the telecoms as the enablers (Curran & Gurevitch, 2005).
The technology shift has necessitated the emergence and growth of new media, which has bypassed the traditional media. Telecommunications improvements continue to motivate the users of information to rethink their needs, thus creating new demands. On the side of audiovisual industries, the impacts of technological growth continue to promise even greater results.
Although the conventional audiovisual products, television programs, films, and videos may be disseminated through physical media, they have existed as analogue or digitized information. Without the existence of the technological devices, such media information could not exist.
Operational functions of media firms such as job functions, needed skills and product delivery have been altered to meet the challenges of the moment (Cave et al., 2002). For instance, the publishing groups, their role as the distributors of information have resulted into a shift from product-specific functions to encompass content providers while building strong linkages with suppliers and customers (Nightingale, 2011).
In explaining this evolutionary growth and change in functions of various media sub-sections, one should examine the corresponding changes that constantly occur in the technology. Modes of transmission of information have been altered through digitization with an aim to cause a strategic response to the need for an immediate mobility of media information (Doyle, 2008).
The technological movements have caused the deregulation of the media industry where in, the potential participants have found it easy to enter. According to McChesney (2008), the only quality media that can guarantee value to its audience is the deregulated and free market system in which media organizations can exercise their autonomy and free will.
In the wake of the media revolution enabled by the move toward technological embrace, the media has been able to reap strategically from the growing changes (Nightingale, 2011).
Studies have indicated that the advent of internet technology has brought about the increased researches on its influence on consumption of messages using the traditional forms of communication (Picard, 2002). Surveys on the consumption of messaging using the internet reveal a decline in the number of people using these conventional forms of media.
The monthly survey reports conducted by the Research center for the people and Press proposed that the number of online news consumers increased (Gumbrecht, 2003) considerably while TV and print newspaper users declined in equal proportions.
The fundamental place for publicly available information, regular news facilitated by print media has remained democratically significant because they enable the public to make up their stands on issues of the society. Many scholars have suggested that the internet provides the best medium of communication in which over 200 million users engage in online communication and search purposes.
According to Gumbrecht (2003), the internet has provided a platform upon which numerous traditional news and media organizations have anchored their practices in appealing to the preferences of the media market.
With over 13 million internet links, traditional media have tended to consume these improvements in technology to provide effective and robust services to not only businesses, but also institutions and governments. The changes have informed and challenged the traditional media organizations to shun methodologies that fail to offer the society with opportunities to address their concerns (Holt & Perren, 2011).
The new technology promises to shatter the traditional and undesired modes of information relay. The latest media that include the wikis, iPods, Podcasts, peer-to-peer communications have served to redeem the society from the unprecedented censorship, autocratic and limiting sense of the tradition or the conventional media (Ward, 2003).
This scenario has had an enormous impact by challenging the singular voice of the old media perspectives (Murdock & Golding, 2000). Informational endowment by the underprivileged serves as the most potent weapon that can incapacitate the autocracy and authoritative media and the elitist group using media as a tool to propagate their self-interests at the expense of the wider society (Benjamin, 1938).
Although the advent of technology has been cited as the detriment of the media influence on the mass audience, studies have suggested that most media organizations have utilized the synergies to create economic advantages. Today, the world of technology has motivated the masses to engage in free conversion with an aim of addressing the societal issues or simply for business or political reasons (Hesmondhalgh, 2007).
Using this as an enabler, media fraternities have gathered strategies to foster social participation in response to the challenges posed by the digitized media such as charts, wikis, and other instant messaging services.
To position themselves alongside these challenges, organizations have been forced to move out of their confines through strategic approaches in a bid to embrace change through gaining a strategic competitive advantage (Birkenshaw, 2000). In return, positive responses from the masses have translated into economic gains by those implementing change due to changes in technology.
Conclusion
Changes in technology have served as drivers of change in the approach, methodology, and scope of media functioning across the world. The theory and practice of the media organizations cannot be detached from the contextual environment of the society in which the media industry operates.
Efficiency and effectiveness of the media information systems due to advancements in technology has altered and perhaps redefined the traditional mode of gathering, synthesis, story production while offering opportunities to news agencies and reporters.
Technology has aided the in ascertaining the quality, reliability, and validity of the informational means and media channels via dissemination of information through different and plausible ways.
Although the traditional forms of media continue to operate under enormous competition from the digital and modern media forms, they continue to formulate strategies aimed at cushioning themselves against significant effects capable of impeding their progress. The use of strategies such as corporate social responsibility via support of the societies in which they operate has worked as a huge asset to their operations.
However, the advantages presented to these traditional media by the new forms have been exploited on the modalities of strategic partnership and alliances to profit and gain brand strength from the target market. For instance, the traditional forms have signed up millions of websites and internet links in order to capture the business using the power of technology.
The media have a primary duty to serve the interests of the masses as contrasted to the elitist group and its narrow approaches to the imperatives of the media to the society. Technology has thus worked to alter this movement from the narrow methodology serving the minority interests toward embracing the masses for which the media are established to serve.
This change in practice is informed by twofold approaches to change, including the competitive nature brought about by hi-tech technology and the growing concerns about the functions and the role of the media in promoting social, economic and political agenda in the twenty first century.
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