The growth of Internet: Usage and Accessibility
The growth of internet usage is increasing rapidly and India is one of the countries growing in a fast phase. With over 460 million internet users, India is the second largest online market, ranked only behind China. By 2021, it is expected that there will be about 635.8 million internet users in India.
On August 15, 1995, the internet was first launched for the public in India by Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). Today it has been 20 years since the internet entered in India and it has moved from bulky desktops to mobile devices in our palms. Dates back to 1986 it was launched for only educational and research communities in the form of Educational Research Network (ERNET). The internet service by VSNL was first launched in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai. VSNL was able to add 10,000 users in first six months.
In 1996, some news publishers open websites for their own publications. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was formed in 1997 to provide a transparent environment in telecommunication.
In India internet started with email. Then Google launched its social networking website Orkut in 2005.
This service was launched to create a social network for people where they could connect with their friends and family and share pictures and thoughts with them. This site was the start of social media in India.
Soon, it became one of the most popular sites amongst youngsters.
Based on this website, many new social networking websites have started working along with it but no one able to challenge it. But in 2014 Google announced to stop Orkut.
In 2006 Facebook started its services to Indian users. After the success of Orkut, Facebook was launched in India and it grew at a tremendous speed. It overtook Orkut and all other social networks.
Facebook came with 'wall' concept which soon became popular as it has all the post real time. Not only this it came with a good concept that all the friends can comment on a single ‘status/ tag’ which make it even more interesting.
Now, it has more that 8 million users in India alone. Now Facebook users have many interesting features to use like 360 photo maker which is getting so popular.
After Facebook, there were hundreds of social media/networking apps & platforms available like WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, to name a few of them and people are very proactive in experimenting out those.
Today, with everybody and their grandmothers onboard, WhatsApp is the one-time stop for instant communication across the world. The smartphone penetration has been increasing; it has an astounding 20 Cr active users in India.
WhatsApp has more than half Internet users on-board, along with several thousand being added every single day.
Twitter is the latest buzz in the social media industry so far. As soon it came, it made the social media industry rock.
It is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, known as "tweets". It has overcome the feature of making friends to make them followers. Or we can say it has upgraded "blogger" to advanced version and made it a lot easier for people to connect to their superstars rather than friends.
Yes, we can connect to our friends too but, it has helped more to the big guns to show their fan following and got a new platform to promote themselves.
Reliance JIO has played an important role in getting 4G internet available to the people of India initially free and later in much cheaper prices. India will have more than 850 million online users by 2025, with Reliance Jio 4G triggering most of the growth which has added 100 million connections in just seven months.
Also India has seen a huge growth in the number of internet users in past 15 years.
Companies like Xiaomi, Moto, Lenovo, etc. are working hard in providing cheap smartphones for Indian customers.
People who couldn't afford smartphones because of their prices now have smartphones in their pockets. For more than a decade, researchers have found evidence of a "multiplier" effect from mobile access.
Back in 2005, it was estimated that every 10% increase in mobile penetration leads to a growth of nearly 0.6% in GDP for low-income countries.
Like the rest of the world, it has witnessed huge growth in the prevalence of phones, as accessibility has improved and costs have dropped.
Through another flagship strategy – "Make in India" – the government has made progress towards creating an environment where a growing number of mobile phones are being manufactured locally.
It's not unusual to find Indian homes that don't have access to electricity, but do have mobile phones.
Adaptation of New Media
New media does not only mean websites; social media is the biggest part of this new generation of media. Though new media has emerged from the print media but its target audience is different from that of print media. Today, we have young readers getting attracted towards new media.
The rise of new media has increased the level of communication between the people all around the world and it has enabled people to express their thoughts through blogs, videos, and pictures on websites and social media platforms.
Social networking is a progression of sites and applications intended to enable individuals to share rapidly, effectively and continuously.
A great many people today characterize online networking as applications on their cell phone or tablet; however actually, this specialized device began with PCs.
This misguided judgment originates from the way that most online networking clients get to their devices by means of applications. Actually, half of the online clients never used web-based social networking tools or websites.
In America, a review announced that 84 percent of young people have a Facebook account. More than 60% of 13 to 17-year- olds have no less than one profile on social media, with numerous spending over two hours every day on long range interpersonal communication destinations.
As per Nielsen, Internet clients keep on spending additional time on social media destinations than on some other kind of webpage. In the meantime, the aggregate time spent on social media locales in the U.S. crosswise over PCs and additionally on cell phones expanded by 99 percent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 contrasted with 66 billion minutes in July 2011.
Let's take a quick survey of your social media usage and news consumption and see where you stand:
With social media gaining so much, a new term coined, meme, which has taken social media to a new level. Each fashion trend, each new slang term, anything that affected or improved a man or a gathering due to the sheer truth that it was "well known" is a meme.
Introduced by Richard Dawkins from DNA research and "memetics", memes are practices, thoughts, or styles in trending culture that spread from individual to individual.
Presently, rather than spreading thoughts, ideas, and practices through TV, printed media, or verbal, we utilize sites. We make images, illustrations, videos and info graphics.
Impact on Journalism
A decade or before, instant news only lived in dreams or news channels. Either people would wait for newspapers or sit in front of TV for news.
The arrival of Internet changed everything. Although it took some time to establish itself, and there are still parts of India without Internet access, Internet has transformed every aspect of traditional media.
Journalism has moved from itnon specific shape of articles and daily papers to things all the more firmly associated with websites or social media. News-casting has been around for quite a while, however today they are getting more required for digital platforms, for example, twitter,snapchat, and Facebook, all types of online networking.
Journalists can compose and edit from any place; they can outsource roles, for example, subbing. The sub-editor does not need to be in the newsroom.
The effect of the utilization of web-based social networking with news-casting, particularly, is the association that the journalists are having with their reader.
They are getting the readers required to express their conclusions, making it additionally fascinating for the readers. This is particularly pervasive with news media's utilization of Facebook and Twitter.
Fewer individuals are really watching the broadcast journalism directly; rather they are catching wind of it through online networking.
In the "Twitter for Journalists", written by Scot Hacker and Aswhin Seshagiri, clarifies that "Twitter has risen as a powerful news tool, cautioning the world about extremely disastrous events, prisoner standoffs and even progressive uprisings".
Snapchat this year has incorporated a news compose section, getting the users more included and educated about things occurring far and wide.
People like gathering news and information from social media now and it is expected that the number of social media users in future will only grow and at a rapid speed.
