NDM News

Is mobile making media all the same?

The mobile phone, it turns out, is the greatest homogenising force the media has ever seen. In terms of design: with every pixel precious, sites converged pretty quickly to the format we all now know so well – large photos, clean single-column text on a plain white background, a sticky element at the top of the screen that allegedly allows users to navigate the site but which in practice is mostly just used for branding and/or advertising.

 In the mid-2000s, especially, the dream of web-based nanopublishing was alive and well: if “freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” as AJ Liebling famously said, then suddenly hundreds of millions of people had a printing press at their fingertips. Arianna Huffington, and her investors, made a small fortune from aggregating what those people had to say: “self expression is the new entertainment,” she said, and she wasn’t wrong.



This article show how the mobile is the medium for homogenising the media. This is very interesting because the advancing in technology would have meant that institutions are able to create a sense of individuality but through mobile apps, it is very difficult because users are so used to certain layouts. This shows how there is a lack of individuality in the media because majority of institutions have their app constructed in a very familiar way in which all the other apps are constructed too.    

Globalisation in advertising weakens great British brands, says Sir John Hegarty

Globalisation in advertising is weakening the brand reputation of Cadbury and other great British names, one of the leading figures in British adland claims. “Globalisation has made it hard,” he said. “I have to create a piece of communication that works not only in the UK but in Malaysia, in Germany...and all the vested interests are hard to convince.” “Cadbury's was a culturally important brand, it was part of the British psyche. It’s now completely disappeared. It had a history of wonderful advertising right up until Cadbury's Gorilla and then [the company] it gets taken over by Kraft who reduced the country's association and relationship with it and have turned it into a very ordinary chocolate in terms of image, in my view,” he said. 

This article is interesting because it debates on the negative effects of globalisation on stereotypically 'British' brands mainly Cadbury. This is because these brands have to find ways to make their advertising appealing internationally not just nationally which was the case in the previous years. This article taps into the notion of the 'global village' because adverts are now being tweaked in order to find appeal internationally or else the institution who don't, are losing their competitiveness.