mac201 technology and media audiences

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• Technology mediates boundaries between public and private sphere

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• Technology has become a ‘powerful material and symbolic force’ (Mackay, 1997: 263)

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• Technology assumed to have a determining affect on society (see McLuhan, ‘the medium is the message/mass age).

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• ‘The effects of a technology … are not determined by its production, its physical form or its capability. Rather than being built into the technology, these depend on how they are consumed, and this consumption takes place in contextin context’

• (Mackay, 1997: 263)

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9% of people in daily activity Average mins per person per day

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• ‘the most single influential theory of the relationship between technology and society’ (ibid, 4)

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• Putting product before people is a mistake

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• Marketing (promote products)• PR (change attitudes)

• Belch & Belch (2001: 576): both ‘generate buzz’

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• Microsoft adopted open, traditional marketing & PR strategy

• Regular public announcements about features, dates, pricing, etc

• Improving Vista to benefit consumer

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• The hierarchical organisation of Microsoft?• The corporate direction?• Forgot about its audience?• Grandiose claims, but failed to deliver

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• From openness to secrecy (see Arthur, 2008)

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• Grant and Tybout (2008) suggest this makes people much more careful about what they buy.

• Surprise may help promote impulse purchases (gadget lust?)

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• Shirky (2008) • social media technology

rewriting ‘top down’ models of communication

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Facebook vs HSBC

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• Charles Arthur, 2008, ‘Why Apple's secretive approach is so effective’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/21/apple.marketingandpr

• George E. Belch and Michael A. Belch, 2001, Advertising and Promotion, McGraw-Hill/Irwin• Bill Gates, 1995, The Road Ahead, London: Viking• Susan Grant and Alice Tybout, 2008, ‘The Effect of Temporal Frame on Information Considered in

New Product Evaluation: The Role of Uncertainty’, Journal Of Consumer Research• Nada Kakabadse, 2007, ‘The rise of technology addiction’, Click, BBC,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6411495.stm• Philip Kitchen, 1997, Public Relations, Principles and Practice, International Thomson Business

Press• Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.), 1984/1999, The Social Shaping of Technology,

Buckingham: Open University Press• Hugh Mackay (ed), 1997, Consumption and Everyday Life, Open University Press• Clay Shirky, 2008, Here Comes Everyone: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, Allen

Lane• Frank Webster, 1996, ‘The Information Age: what’s the big idea’, Renewal, vol 4 no 1.• UK Statistics Authority, 2006, ‘Time use survey 2005’,

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/nojournal/time_use_2005.pdf

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