New Media: means of mass communication using digital technologies such as the internet.
The Neophiliac Perspective
Neophiliacs believe that new forms of media (e.g. social media) have led to an increased amount of choice for consumers and has also led to the revitalisation of democracy and democratic engagement
To start off with I would like to prioritise the notion of CHANGE & TRANSFORMATION as a way of thinking about NEW MEDIA which can be linked to the key ideas of a media syllabus. For example,
- the transformation of social interaction (audiences);
- the transformation of individual identity (audiences and representation);
- the transformation of institutional structures (industry); and the changes in textual content and structure (language).
- The transformation of audience consumption
In summary, this could be described as the changing nature of symbolic interaction and a lot of the work on this blog is essentially discussing this concept.
Dan Gillmor is a useful theorist to look at, you can read his book We Media by clicking on this link – provides an overview of how new media technologies have had an impact on relationship between citizens and government / institutional power.
media has transformed:
speed, knowledge, time, space. understanding, access, reality , privacy, choice, interactivity, storage, retrieval.
share | active | creative | host | |
| can share media online with whoever you want. | can create media easily, photoshop. | users can host many events online. | ||
| story | re-connect | personalise | stream | |
| example or comment | can create and or read stories online | can find people you haven’t seen in a while. | can personalise any profiles. | can stream anything you want online |
| experience | store | scale | immerse | |
| example or comment | events can be experienced across the globe. VR can improve the experience. | can store data online, no hardware needed. | the scale of the internet is the largest its ever been. | VR can immerse users. |
| interface | live | adapt | binge | |
| example or comment | can view things as they happen live | covid 19 forced us to adapt and new media helped considerably. | can watch whole shows whenever. | |
| conversation | re-perform | circulate | endless | |
| can talk with whoever. | can put media in circulation, social media. |
Marshall McLuhan:
The Medium is the Message – a good theorist to quote in your exam.
“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication” (p. 8: 1967)
Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Message: A way of understanding ‘technological determinism‘ the idea that it is the tool that shapes us, rather than us who shape the tool.
He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented.