ducaties: New Media goes to war with Murdoch's old media

In a stunning development, and what can only be considered a major turning point in the development of New Media, Murdoch has stated that he will close down the News of the World, the UK's largest selling newspaper. Just when you imagined that MySpace was a major failure, Murdoch has lost the jewel in his UK media empire. It will be interesting to see is campaigns using social media can reduce Murdoch's power even more.

RupertMurdochPR RupertMurdochPR

I will sack/sue any journo who says I profited off deaths of kids, terror victims and weeping SAS widows. Even if I did. And I did #notw

5 minutes ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

It is almost a cliche to say that New Media services like twitter are in a kind of war with older media like cable and newspapers. But a direct war like what we are seeing today is something new.

redscotia52 Denise Morton

Write to Hunt and Cameron @Number10gov to stop #Murdoch's #media takeover! #hacking #notw #milly avaaz.org/en/murdoch_mes…

Users on Twitter are directly attacking British paper News of the World after it was disclosed that News of the World reporters have tapped the cellphones of murder victims and terrorist victim families in the UK. In one case the family of a dead teen ager were lead to believe she might have been alive and checking her phone when News of the World 'journalists' deleted messages to make room for new voice mails (we are not making this story up). We are now hearing that police were paid off by News of the World and even police phones were hacked.

ukradar ukradar
@EastbourneWilko #NOTW Murdoch is like a dying elephant the expiration will be a long process. So there is a lot of time to go yet.
2 minutes ago

The social network is attacking on two fronts. Firstly a Twitter campaign is targeting firms doing business with News of the World. In a larger attack people are trying to pressure the government to delay Murdoch's take over of cable provider BskyB. Last we checked an online petition had almost 100,000 signatures today.

Marshajane Marshajane Thompson

People giving away the sun and times @ Stratford station this morning - most people saying no #notw #youcantgiveitaway

3 minutes ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

This story is extremely interesting in what it tells us about media in the Internet age, and about how layers of media technology may find themselves more and more in direct confrontation.

Follow the hashtag #NOTW for more information.

But it is essential to see this as more than a one sided battle. Older media also has a stake. Many papers are not owned by Murdoch. An interesting development is Peter Oborne's piece of the Telegraph calling out the Prime Minister on his contacts with the New of the World crowd. The piece was scathing in its attack on the still young Tory leader and the piece went viral on the web. Waking up this morning we found that almost a half dozen contacts had sent the same link to us via Twitter, Facebook and email.