New Media - Digitization vs Democratization

Digitization

Digitizing or digitization is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or a signal (usually an analog signal) by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal. Strictly speaking, digitizing means simply capturing an analog signal in digital form. For a document the term means to trace the document image or capture the "corners" where the lines end or change direction.

McQuail identifies the process of digitization having immense significance to the computing ideals[which?] as it "allows information of all kinds in all formats to be carried with the same efficiency and also intermingled" (2000:28)

Process

The term digitization is often used when diverse forms of information, such as text, sound, image or voice, are converted into a single binary code. Digital information exists as one of two digits, either 0 or 1. These are known as bits (a contraction of binary digits) and the sequences of 0s and 1s that constitute information are called bytes.

Analog signals are continuously variable, both in the number of possible values of the signal at a given time, as well as in the number of points in the signal in a given period of time. However, digital signals are discrete in both of those respects – generally a finite sequence of integers – therefore a digitization can, in practical terms, only ever be an approximation of the signal it represents.

Digitization occurs in two parts:

• Discretization

    The reading of an analog signal A, and, at regular time intervals (frequency), sampling the value of the signal at the point. Each such reading is called a sample and may be considered to have infinite precision at this stage;

• Quantization

    Samples are rounded to a fixed set of numbers (such as integers), a process known as quantization.

In general, these can occur at the same time, though they are conceptually distinct.

A series of digital integers can be transformed into an analog output that approximates the original analog signal. Such a transformation is called a DA conversion. The sampling rate and the number of bits used to represent the integers combine to determine how close such an approximation to the analog signal a digitization will be.

This shift to digitization in the contemporary media world has created implications for traditional mass media products, however these "limitations are still very unclear" (McQuail, 2000:28). The more technology advances, the more converged the realm of mass media will become with less need for traditional communication technologies. For example, the Internet has transformed many communication norms, creating more efficiency for not only individuals, but also for businesses.

Democratization

Democratization (or democratisation) is the transition to a more democratic political regime. It may be the transition from an authoritarian regime to a full democracy, a transition from an authoritarian political system to a semi-democracy or transition from a semi-authoritarian political system to a democratic political system. The outcome may be consolidated (as it was for example in the United Kingdom) or democratization may face frequent reversals (as it has faced for example in Argentina). Different patterns of democratization are often used to explain other political phenomena, such as whether a country goes to a war or whether its economy grows. Democratization itself is influenced by various factors, including economic development, history, and civil society.

Causes of democratization:

• High overall level of economic wealth
• Relatively equal distribution of wealth
• A market economy
• Economic development and social modernization
• Social equality
• Civil society
• The resource curse theory suggests that countries with abundant natural resources, such as oil, often fail to democratize because the elite can live off the natural resources rather than depend on popular support for tax revenues.
• Human Empowerment and Emancipation Values
• Homogeneous population
• Foreign intervention
• Age distribution

Media democracy is a set of ideas advocating reforming the mass media, strengthening public service broadcasting, and developing and participating in alternative media and citizen journalism. The stated purpose for doing so is to create a mass media system that informs and empowers all members of society, and enhances democratic values. Media democracy entails that media should be used to promote democracy as well as the conviction that media should be democratic itself; media ownership concentration is not democratic and cannot serve to promote democracy and therefore must be examined critically. The concept, and a social movement promoting it, have grown as a response to the increased corporate domination of mass media and the perceived shrinking of the marketplace of ideas.

The term also refers to a modern social movement evident in countries all over the world which attempts to make mainstream media more accountable to the publics they serve and to create more democratic alternatives

Key principles

Media democracy advocates that corporate ownership and commercial pressures influence media content, sharply limiting the range of news, opinions, and entertainment citizens receive. Consequently, they call for a more equal distribution of economic, social, cultural, and information capital, which would lead to a more informed citizenry, as well as a more enlightened, representative political discourse.

Despite the difficulties in defining the term, the concept broadly encompasses the following notions:

• The press Media democracy remains an under-defined concept because of deliberate structural pressures that prevent individuals from questioning the connection between the press and democracy.
• The ability to comprehend and scrutinize the connection between press and democracy is important because media has the power to tell a society’s stories and thereby influence thinking, beliefs and behavior.
• The concept of “democratizing the media” has no real meaning within the terms of political discourse in Western society. In fact, the phrase has a paradoxical or even vaguely subversive ring to it. Citizen participation would be considered an infringement on freedom of the press, a blow struck against the independence of the media that would distort the mission they have undertaken to inform the public without fear or favor... this is because the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and frightened away from the arena of political debate and action.