The New Media

• Media


  The predominant means of communication, particularly of mass communication
• New media


  Those types of media that use digital technology (e.g. social media and the use of the internet)
• Old media


  Traditional forms of media, such as print media (e.g. newspapers and magazines), television and radio
• The potential audience for new media is much larger than traditional media forms like newspapers
• Digital media


  Media encoded into a machine-readable format, such as MP3 files
• Examples of new media

  • Social media sites
  • Streaming of video and audio files
  • Digital/satellite and "smart" television
  • Computer games and online gaming
  • Apps for mobile telephones and tablets
• Social networks


  Forms of software that allow people, groups and companies to connect and share information such as photographs and text
• Virtual communities


  Networks of individuals who share information across an online community, often hosted on a social networking platform
• Some old media today exists in new media formats (e.g. newspaper's websites, "smart" televisions, digital radio, e-books)
• Key features of new media

  • Convergence
  • Interactivity
  • Audience/user power
  • Accessibility
• Interactivity in new media

  Gives more power to the audience/user
• Increasingly, new media is free media, with instant access to a vast array of content, though this raises issues about how media producers make money
• Views on whether new media is revolutionary

  • Evolutionary rather than revolutionary (Cornford and Robins)
  • Adds to rather than replaces old media (Boyle and Haynes)
  • Significant change in speed of communication
• Neophiliacs


  People who are positive about the benefits of new media
• Cultural pessimists


  People who are critical about the new media
• New media has increased opportunities for cybercrime and the globalisation of crime, but also improved abilities of social control agents to solve and prevent crime
• While new media appears democratic and bottom-up, it is in fact dominated by a relatively small number of large corporations who act as gatekeepers