The Public Changes as a Result of Digital Media - Assignment Example

? Define Digital Media and provide a real-world example. Digital Media is an electronic media that allows storage of data in digital form in such a way that that it can be shared transferred or viewed using a computer unlike analog. Digital media ranges from storage or transfer of information to the information in question. It can be mobile phones, computers, videos, digital audio or flash disks, or hard disk for storage (Qvortrup, 2006). 2. Define participatory media and provide a real-world example. This type of media is one where by the audience actively participate in gathering, passing and analyzing information. Their source and power derived from many people participating by contributing towards the media. Some examples of participatory media are YouTube, wiki, blogs, social sites and music or photos sharing Medias (Burgess & Harley, 2013). 3. Is peer to peer sharing of digital material illegal? Why or why not? Peer to peer sharing becomes illegal when copyrighted information shared without consent of the owner. Risks in sharing these materials may include, if you share protected materials by laws, one might download a virus or enhance a security breach. Violation of these rules has their consequences (University of Washington, 2010). 4. Name three societal impacts resulting from increase of digital media. Increase of digital media have changed the way people converse, study, and spend their free time. There has been increase in internet obsessions and many other cybercrimes through the internet. Digital media has also enhanced interconnectivity between people within various regions through social media and mobile phones easily (Healey, 2011). 5. What is the difference between usability and accessibility? Give an example of each. Usability refers to the friendliness, efficiency, and satisfaction of the user and how easy for one to remember how to use something. Example of a website, it should have visible navigations, which users are familiar with and followed with ease. Accessibility is an attribute in which everyone including the disabled can use, understand, and perceive the media with ease. Example is the use of audio, speech recognition, visual to cater for all types of people (Mifsud, 2011). Part 2: ESSAY ITEMS Answer ALL QUESTIONS in this section. Each response must be at least 200 words in length and must follow APA guidelines. Type your responses immediately below the questions. All responses must be supported by reference to the literature and references must be APA formatted. 1. What is Web Technology? Define and provide two examples of web technology and where it has been implemented. Web technologies used in the web to create an interface for the interaction between servers and clients in through the internet. Some of these technologies include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and XML. Many other emerging technologies that ease the way clients interact with information and other clients through the internet. HTML is an abbreviation for hypertext mark-up language, which is a language that enhances the production of material on the internet. Browsers interpret these HTML codes to visible information when viewed through the web. Cascading style sheets (CSS) is a styling language that defines layout of HTML documents. CSS covers all layout attributes in a website that HTML does. CSS provides web designers with all layout styles in the web and supported by most web browsers. Use of both CSS and HTML makes the content separate from the styling and this makes maintenance of websites easy and faster. Benefits of CSS that HTML are that, with CSS one can many documents layout is controllable from one style sheet and a more detailed layout control. In addition, different designs of materials are different with many advanced techniques. CSS and HTML are the basics of any website in that; all websites designed use these two web technologies (Bangia, 2006). 2. How has digitization changed the manner in which society consumes information? Digitization has brought about many changes in information use within the society. There has been increased interest in digital products as many people are willing to buy digital information more than the analogue. Use of mobile applications has increased the acceptance of digital information like e-books and databases in learning institutions. A research done on the trend of printed books versus e-books shows that, revenue from printed books went down from 2008 to 2010 by 13.7% whereas revenue from digital books rose by 45%. This trend reveals the fact that, everyone is advancing to technology and soon there will be no hard copies of information available (Mike, 2011). Migration from the use of DVDs to online movies and television is another advancement of Digital Media. It has been a big advancement as use of DVDs has reduced due to emergency of live streaming or watching movies online and even television. Television and production studios have allowed for live streaming of videos instead of waiting for shipment of the materials. This has brought about high instances of copyright violations and losses due to the same as people are willing to share information irrespective of their copyright information. The transition from junk mails to e-mail has seen many organizations migrate from the physical mails sent and transported to the recipient to a digital mail over the internet to the expected owner. These methods are even faster and efficient as real time systems are in place and replies are within seconds (Heimbuch, 2010). 3. How has perception of information by the public changed as a result of digital media? Digital media when compared to other traditional medias is perceived as less credible by some cases while other research show that digital media is more credible. There are different views of the web by different people, those who are seeking specific information and highly rely on the web see it as more credible than the ones who do not use it. Perceptions of digital media depend on the person’s experience with the media, the functionalities one is interested in, and many other factors. Many people rely on digital media for their lifetime and thus they see it as a right place to communicate and interact with other people or even information databases. The reputation of digital media information counts a lot when it comes to perception. Individuals who does not know the origin of such reputations tend to rely on the in their perceptions even if they are not correct. Digital media has a challenge for information users about credibility. Non-digital information users today perceive most information as lacking credibility and therefore do not trust much of the information retrieved digitally. Because digital information can be anonymous, many fraudulent acts have emerged and this is reducing perception of people on the credibility of information online. Information from unknown sources is termed unoriginal (Andrew, Miriam & Flanagin, 2008). 4. Describe at least three of the means used by individuals to conduct identify theft and how can these means be prevented? Many ways are used to conduct theft in digital media which include, social engineering, shoulder surfing, phishing and many others. Social engineering is a method whereby someone uses a phone, social media to ask for some credentials. These people ought to have some information about the target and this is what makes people let out their information. The best way to prevent this kind of theft is not giving out credential information to unknown people and keeping safe any credit card information. Shoulder surfing occurs whenever a password is involved, a thief can set a camera and be recording peoples passwords or by getting closer in public places. The best way to prevent this is by use of credit cards, use cash, or make sure no one is near you when conducting a transaction. Phishing used in several schemes, pharming, voice phishing and others. Pharming happens by a thief hacking into a website and temper with domain or host file to redirect to hackers site to capture personal information for victims. Once hackers get the information, they use in conducting theft. In such cases where your information like credit card is needed, contact the organization and make sure that such information is important (“Utica college”). 5. How have brick and mortar businesses been affected by online business? Emergence of web retailers with low prices has affected Brick and Mortar business as the online retailers can sell at cheap prices compared to the physical stores. In addition, buying with just a number of clicks is more convenient for the customers and time saving hence many customers feels it convenient to buy online. For Brick and Mortar retailers to make sales, they have to change their stock collection. The battle between Brick and Mortar versus web retailers based much on price and through this perspective; physical stores cannot win (Mohammed, 2013). Borders are a large bookstore in the world affected by the online shopping. The management of this store claimed that soon they would be out of business due to the increased competition by the online retailers. This shows how by online business as Amazon.com has affected the Brick and mortar retailer business. Barnes & Noble is another bookstore competing with Amazon. This company has recently introduce Android based bookstore and has plans for heavy investments on online retail. Their Brick and Mortar retail operations are still active mainly because of their breadth in book sells and reading areas and cafes. But with time, some of these functionalities will end as customer are more willing to buy things online that as its cheap and time saving (Begany, 2011). 6. How do you effectively evaluate web / online resources? In evaluation of online resources, many factors are considered not only finding the information one was looking for which are but not limited to the following; know much about the author of the information. Author’s background and if no information about authors in the website, follow the origin of the site and get to know much about the author, if they are qualified to write on such topics, their names and occupation. The purpose of the site in which you retrieved the information should be in line with the content. Was the websites purpose in line with the information you obtained, if no then why was the information there and how is it credible are some questions which ought to be answered. Objectivity and accuracy of the information in the website is vital. The information should be facts and not propaganda and the language used should not be bias in any way. Information sources should be genuine for accuracy and no grammatical errors should be available. In addition, timeliness of the information on the website is it kept up to date and frequency of updates. Some other links on the content should be relevant to the information. Quality of websites varies and therefore, evaluation of websites should be different and independent. Information online should be examined clearly as websites can be changed or disappears with time (“Kent State University”). References Bangia, R. (2006). Web technology: Including HTML, CSS, XML, ASP, JavaScript, VB Script. Bangalore: Firewall Media. Begany,T. ( 2011). Is Online Shopping Killing Brick-and-Mortar? From: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0711/is-online-shopping-killing-brick-and-mortar.aspx , On October 10, 2013. Burgess, J. & Hartley, J. (2013). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. John Wiley & Sons. Flanagin, Andrew, J., and Miriam, M. (2008). “Digital Media and Youth: Unparalleled Opportunity and Unprecedented Responsibility. “Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 5–28. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262562324.005) Georgetown University Library. (n.d).evaluating internet resources. Retrieved from, http://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/evaluating-internet-content, On October 10, 2013. Healey, J. (2011). Social Impacts of Digital Media. Vol 324 Retrieved from: http://spinneypress.com.au/books/social-impacts-of-digital-media/ , On October 10, 2013. Heimbuch, J. (2010). Seven major ways we are digitizing our world, and three reasons we still want hardcopies. Retrieved From http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/7-major-ways-were-digitizing-our-world-and-3-reasons-we-still-want-hardcopies.html, On October 10, 2013. Kent State University. (n.d). Criteria for Evaluating Web Resources. Retrieved from, http://www.library.kent.edu/page/10475, On October 10, 2013. Mifsud, J. (2011). The Difference between Web Site Usability and Accessibility. Retrieved from, http://usabilitygeek.com/the-difference-between-web-site-usability-and-accessibility/. On October 10, 2013. Mike, R. (2011).Where will digitization take us? We don’t know for sure but we’re heading there fast. Retrieved from, http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/10/digitization-dont/, On October 10, 2013. Mohammed, R. (2013). Brick and Mortars (Still) Can’t Beat the web on price. HBR blog network. Retrieved from, http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/06/brick-and-mortars-still-cant-beat-the-web-on-price/ , On October 10, 2013. Qvortrup, L. (2006). "Understanding New Digital Media: Medium Theory or Complexity Theory?” European Journal of Communication: 345–356, Retrieved from, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/what-is-digital-media-2.aspx, On October 10, 2013. University of Washington, (2010). Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing and Copyright Infringement: Are You Vulnerable? Retrieved from, http://www.washington.edu/students/gencat/policy/p2pshare.html On October 10, 2013. Utica College. (n.d).Center for Identity Management and Information Protection. Retrieved from, http://www.utica.edu/academic/institutes/cimip/idcrimes/schemes.cfm On October 10, 2013. Read More