Digital Information In Jamaica

INTRODUCTION

At just a quarter of a century in governing regulations, listening to complains and making recommendations, while maintaining the standards of the laws of Jamaica as it is concerned with the media. There is one inevitable aspect the Broadcasting Commission has to continuously keep abreast with, and that is change.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin

As Jamaica and the rest of the world gradually moves into the future, an ever so rapidly revolving future that is more technologically advanced than it was, 25 years ago. Predicting the future can be a difficult task especially when it comes to trends in information technology.

That is when everything started to move away or converted from the analog stage to the digital stage of technology, mass media being no different.

A good way of getting a sense of what analogue information and digital information are is to imagine ‘analogue’ as an expression of our experience of the real world while ‘digital’ expresses a world belonging exclusively to computers.

It is important that we differentiate the analog stage from the digital stage because that is when we will be able to recognize that a revolution has been taking place. Digital information can be shared and exchanged (networkable), can fit into small capacities (dense) and can be compressed (compressible). One of the most significant reasons why the future made a digital move was because of the quality of digital technology compared to analog, and media relies heavily on quality of output.

“Whatever the media, whatever the technology the quality of the creative idea always remains central to the success of the communication.” – Stuart

The impact of the digital era on radio broadcasting in the previous years has resulted in a lesser effect than that of Television. People are reading more of what is online (since it is readily available and most times free) than printed words on a page, such as a newspaper (since it is not always easily available and it has a price attached to it). The rapid growth of the Internet, wireless communication, multimedia servers, and the interoperability among massive digital libraries will enable virtually everyone to gain access to large volumes of data on almost any topic.

Therefore, media companies are beginning to develop themselves as content creators rather than simple ink-based newspaper firms or visual-based television stations. They are acknowledging the potential of a digital technology and are adjusting their content to suit a variety of platforms, such as mobile and the web. The marketing focus is being shifted as new advertising techniques are being used, for example adverts are becoming more effective with visual graphic effects which are created by digital