Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Entry 2 - Media regulation and policy


Media regulation and policy ‘concerns legal or self-imposed controls or restrictions of media organisations’ (Long & Wall, 2012). From understanding this myself it helps organisations protect their audience from something that might not be suitable. It also helps prevent a bad situation occurring. However it doesn't matter what a company does to follow these rules as they can be broken by the audience. For example the illegal downloading of films and music can’t be avoided as it’s hard to monitor everyone, but it’s also made harder with the internet.

But on the other hand, one example of a policy that seems successful is the Flickr’s Creative Commons license, originally created by Lawrence Lessig for understanding music copyright. The idea behind this is that it offers an alternative to copyright, giving the user of the site more of a control over what happens to their images. This can result in the download and use of the image or it could mean that the image can’t even be downloaded.  

Even though there are regulations put into place, it doesn't mean they are followed. With it being easy for a production company or even a consumer to not comply and even prented that they are, it could show that there might not be a need. However 'a youngster watching a video that the video classification board has indicated is for adults only’ (Long & Wall, 2012: 216/7) isn't right, and this shows a good reason to comply with the rules.

From further reading the suggestion that regulation might not be as successful as it seems all comes down to the invention of the internet and how it can’t be ‘easily censored or eliminated’ (Adbramson, 2001:302) from where it’s been published. This shows then how not everything can be regulated, and it also shows that it’s not as controlled as a film company or TV station where rules can actually be enforced. Not only does it touch on this, but it begins to pose the question of whether globalization will ‘mean the end of media policy’ (Adbramson, 2001:304) and in this case it makes you ask yourself whether it would be good or bad to stop the media being regulated.

In terms of my own interest in photography there are a lot of factors that are controlled. These are things such as getting permission to shoot in a place and even release forms that models might have to sign. The other main factors are the issues of copyright and how you can protect yourself.

Bibliography

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson.


Abramson, B. D. (2001). Media policy after regulation? International journal of cultural studies, 4(3), 301-326.

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