essay regulation.

 Media regulation today is complex and becoming more and more difficult." To what extent do you agree with this question?

Media is becoming more and more complex, which makes it difficult to regulate.

With technological Advancements growing over the years it has opened the eyes of audiences and allowed them to watch media that can be perceived as harmful and disturbing to either a younger audiences or others watching.

Technological convergence has allowed families to be under the same roof with iPhone, iPad, TVs, and laptops to consume media, instead of one form of technology the whole family watches on. Parents of a house hold would be gatekeepers of their family to regulate their child from watching over-rated shows and play games, but as the technology advances this means that parents have no control over what their child watches or when they watch it as, they would no longer need IDs when entering a DVD store to purchase or rent a movie, as they can just stream it online through streaming services and SVOD.

Huge media conglomerates are starting so show more of an interest in media regulation, by either censoring or banning people from their platforms, like Donald Trump was banned from twitter and Facebook, these conglomerates believe that they are showing equality and freedom of speech, because of this Donald Trump wont be able to say any offensive words to offend those on the platforms, the big tech conglomerates will give you freedom of speech as long as its doesn't clash with their ideologies or they will ban you. What the big techs don't know is that by banning a former president it shows how media regulation is more complex as it portrays to the audience that social media platforms users are against a president having freedom of speech and denying him from stating his perspectives on his ideologies.

COVID has prevented audiences to go out and watch movies in the cinemas, which has caused theatre attendance to go down, while allowing streaming services to increase. Because of covid the cinemas would show movies that are rated at a certain rating to protect audiences from being harmed and or disturbed, but now that audiences are at home in lockdown media regulation has become difficult as active audiences are watching movies and tv series that are not regulated or censored by the chief censor and his team in NZ 4.63 million new Zealanders have been shown this as they have had access to the internet whether they are playing games or watching movies in lockdown. The media regulation is still becoming more difficult as audiences are still on streaming services but they have also dispersed to the theatres as the lockdowns are no longer a thing in NZ.

On the 27th of April 2017, the NZ chief censor and his team rated the movie of 13 reasons why an R18 in NZ after it got so many complaints by parents and students about the harmful and suicidal meanings embedded inside the movie as it was originally rated a R13 on Netflix.

Manhunt was the first ever video game that was regulated in NZ by being banned in December 11th, 2003, Chief censor at the time Bill Hastings said, "it's a game where the only thing you do is kill everybody you see. which also seemed harmful for NZ audiences at the time because of how NZ has got the highest suicide rate in the world.

Most recently Germany has got a special law that says social media companies must remove banned content within 24 hours or face fines upto 54 million dollars, Australia also pasted similar legislations with tech executives can face prison for failing to remove extremely violent content. France and New Zealand created the Christchurch call last year, which was in response to a shooting at 2 mosques that was then live streamed on Facebook, its a plan to limit the spread of violent content. And China has what many people call the great firewall, where several websites are banned outright and content is obviously strictly regulated. This new system will help regulate media to an extend until another means of harmful media will slip through the governments of worldwide countries.

Many people have argued that these platforms are bias against their point of view siding how the algorithms are engineered, Facebook in particular is more likely to give users content matching their world views. Most platforms have an increase in the diversity of the information that you see when you use them. But for some of the platforms, particularly Facebook, they found that regardless of the information is more diverse it also shifts more towards the views that you might of already had.  All these platforms have different ways in which they show users and so Facebook is largely the most opaque of the platforms as it is based on content engagements such as likes, comments, shares. 

The proliferation of media has grown over the years through old media and how TVs were the only form of media inside a house with linear channels broadcasted at specific times, whereas nowadays new media has taken over with everyone on the internet connecting with each other around the world, thanks to web 2.0, Web 2.0 has helped many people around the world connect with friends and family, as well as kept them entertained throughout the years. YouTube is a great example of this as audiences love to get entertainment through this platform either by creating their own videos or watching other peoples video's. YouTube is the second biggest search in the world apart from google. YouTube has got 30,000 hrs. of videos uploaded daily, and with 1 billion hrs. of videos watched everyday, this market is huge and will keep growing as technology grows.

Clay Shirky had come up with a theory called the end of audience Theory, he believe that audiences are becoming their own producer and creating media for others to watch, Clay Shirky coined the fraise "prosumers" is is the way in which Clay Shirky argued that audiences behavior has progressed from the passive consumption of media texts to a much more interactive experience with the products and each other, which makes them the new active audience. The prosumers are able to create their own media and share it to other active audiences to like, share, and comment on the media.