New and digital media; MY CASE STUDY - mr halsey

Smart phones and mobile apps...

Main focus

1. A study of the impact of new and digital media on smart phones and social apps.

Theories

1. Hypodermic needle: By using smart phones and using the new and digital app's people's behaviour and attitudes have changed. For example, by constantly using their iPhone's people tend to listen to their friends and allow influences such as those on Facebook influence their behaviours.
2. Representation theory: this is Stuart Hall's theory of media texts encoding and the audiences decoding. This theory can relate to smart phones and 'Apple' tend to create new iPhone's every year with new features therefore benefiting the audiences and allowing them to buy which one they'd prefer. Also, by social apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. being free it draws in the younger audience as well as older therefore giving smart phones a upper hand as it draws audiences in to buy them in order to get the advantages of socialising with their friends on the go, at no cost. 
3. Bandura's BoBo Doll: Bandura did an experiment on a bobo doll where adults beat up the doll and the kids that watched went in and did the same where as the children that didn't watch played happily with the doll. This relates to the impact that new and digital media has on smart phones and social app's as smart phones have now come in demand therefore as more people buy them and give good reviews others would also do that same. Furthermore, the purchase of new app's also causes people to purchase/download them as they want to do the same as others and see what the fuss is about. This is also beneficial on smart phone and app companies as by people copying each other and purchasing smart phone and downloading their app's these media institution are gaining users therefore gaining more money.
4. Hegemony: Gramsci's theory, is the influence that media has on audiences. It is usually one social class over the other, e.g. Rupert Murdoch/institutions over audiences. In terms of apps and social networking it could be said that despite the user generated content the social networking sites still have control over what is being said.
5. Marxism: believe that mass media are a tool used by ruling bodies to maintain hegemonic control over the masses and a class decided society. So a Marxist would say that although audiences believe that they are given the power and having their say on social networking sites due to citizen journalism and user generated content, commenting etc they are actually being controlled by the ownership of networking sites, e.g if someone was to post something negative about the social networking site the institution is likely to delete the comments and block that user. - FOR EXAMPLE, Rihanna posting naked pictures of herself on Instagram brought about a lot of negative feedback from fans and users over Twitter and instagram; causing instagram to delete Rihanna's instagram account. 
6. Pluralism:  Argue that we live in a classless society and media organisations are responsive to an audience and are economically determined. So media gives us options and we have choices. This would therefore relate to the use of the increasing choice in smart phone and social apps. Social apps have a huge impact on an individuals life however it is their choice to whether they wish to comment or download these social networking sites. 

References: 

- Twitter, Facebook and Instagram also Snapchat and the new update.