New media

• What is new media?

  • Types of media who use digital technology and it's audience is much larger than traditional media (old media)
  • Social media sites
  • Streaming of videos and television
  • Computer games/online gaming
  • Apps for mobile phones
• Convergence

  • One device can be used to access a wide variety of media eg. a mobile phone can be used for watching films and videos, listening to music, accessing social media and reading books etc. People are encouraged to seek out new information according to Jenkins.
• Interactivity

  • New media allows an audience to engage with content
  • Jenkins says this has led to:
  • Participatory culture - producers and consumers now interact with each other when this was once separate. Jenkins suggests this gives consumers more control over media content and emphasises that the circulation of new media content depends heavily on consumers active participation.
  • Collective intelligence - Interactivity between users allows information and knowledge to be shared on an international scale and is a new source of media power
  • Examples include Amazon user reviews and TripAdvisor
• User-generated content

  • There is an erosion between the gap of media producer and media consumer. They are able to influence media content through their interaction, or even create and share the content themselves
• Accessibility

  • Once people have the devices and the broadband internet access, they are able to get instant access to a vast array of media content, much of which is also free
  • They can even catch-up on TV shows they have missed eg. BBC Iplayer
• Evaluation on new media being revolutionary

  • Cornford and Robbins argue that new media developments are evolutionary not revolutionary - interactivity was present in older media forms such as letter pages in newspapers
  • New technology was built upon the old - Boyle and Haynes
  • New media is used much more frequently than older people and can lead to a digital underclass because tasks such as banking, shopping and getting a passport are all done online
• Neophiliacs

  • People who believe the media has positive benefits and new forms have led to more consumer choice, more participation, greater democracy and created a global village
  • During the Arab Spring the number of users of social networks, especially Facebook, rose dramatically in most Arab countries, particularly in those where political protest took place, except for Libya, which at the time had low Internet access preventing people from doing so
• More informed consumers

  • In July 2013, UK media audiences had a choice of over 500 digital terrestrial, satellite and cable TV channels
  • News, shopping and social networking are all completed online and interactive sites allow consumers to actively participate in media content
  • Neophiliacs argue that the new media gives power to ordinary people and have made positive contributions to building more democratic societies
  • McNair - 'information, like knowledge, is power'
• World becomes a global village

  • A term used by McLuhan to describe how the digitised new media collapse space and time barriers allow users from all around the world to connect and interact with each other instantaneously
  • Everyone has access to huge amounts of information from all over the world, including access to high culture which was formerly limited to educated elites
• Social life and interaction enhanced

  • Postmodernists see the new media as contributing to social diversity and enabling people to share in globalised cultures, and to build and shape their identities and to make lifestyle choices in a media-saturated society
  • Factors like gender, age, ethnicity and class combined with separation by geographical distance, might have meant some conversations in the real world may have been avoided but alternative identities can be constructed in cyberspace to allow this
  • Social networking accounts for more than a fifth of all time spend on the internet
• Cultural pessimists

  • People who are critical of the new media and argue that the development of the internet has led us to live in an increased state of surveillance.
  • They also argue that the new media has all the disadvantages of the old but brings extra disadvantages with it. Believe that there are problems with validity (fake news) , a threat to democracy, lack of regulation and less consumer choice
• Problems validating information

  • Hard to validate information and know if videos and images are doctored
  • 'Factual' public information on the internet is often more than often disguised advertising for products - such material is often recycled without checking the information or sources
• Cultural and media imperialism

  • The idea that new media, particularly the internet, satellite television and global advertising have led to the imposition on non-Western cultures of Western, and especially American, cultural values, with the undermining of local cultures and cultural independence
  • Cultural pessimists argue that neophiliacs underestimate the threat to democracy posed by new media corparations and the impact of the digital divide, which restricts access to the new technology, particularly among the poorest and most oppressed people in the world
• Sovereigns of cyberspace

  • MacKinnon uses this term to describe the power of giant multinational corparations such as Amazon, Apple and Facebook to control internet access, social networking and mobile technology
  • They now hold power over us that was once only held by governments
  • These companies are now effectively part of our political system, but they are neither elected by nor accountable to the public in the way democratic governments are, and exercise what Curran and Seaton call 'power without responsibility'
• Censorship and control

  • Some undemocratic, repressive regimes like China and Iran monitor and control new media use
  • Social networking and email web filter/block surveillance technology supplied by Western technology companies
  • In China, messages online are censored which might cause political problems with the government
  • Project Tempora - GCHQ found it involved huge data-trawling of internet traffic, emails and phone calls of wholly-innocent citizens raising major concerns over privacy and illegal surveillance activity
• Lack of regulation

  • Undesirable things such as drug smuggling, pornography, violence, racism and other undesirable media representations can thrive virtually unchecked
  • In 2014-15 there were growing concerns about the way a terrorist group like Islamic State had seized large areas in Syria and Iraq and could use new media to conduct a holy war - ISIS were highly skilled in doing this
• Limited consumer choice

  • Social media sites are not about connecting people together, but just a means of targeting advertising at people who give companies detailed information about their lives
  • This is a form of commercial surveillance by storing information about consumer preferences to bombard them with advertising products
  • Preston - digital media allows people to have a choice at what they want to read about but they don't bring stories to their attention that they didn't know they wanted to be informed about until seen on TV
  • No longer exposed to a broader news agenda
• Undermining human relationships

  • Increase in social isolation with people losing the ability to communicate in the real world as they are constantly consumed by the virtual world
  • Loss of social capital as people spend less time engaging with the communities and neighbourhoods in which they live
• Who controls the new media?

  • Neophiliacs - new media is democratic and bottom up, the public are in control of it
  • Cultural pessimists - new media is anarchic and full of fake news, Andrew Keen argues democracy makes it dangerous due to it's uncensored freedom
• Boyle

  • Younger generations have grown up with new media and therefore use it more than the older generations
  • 16-24 year olds are greater internet users and are more likely to use the internet and have a smartphone
  • Average global internet use in 2016 was 46% - 88% in North America and 29% in Africa
  • Control of the new media - Malicious Communications Act 1983 and Cyber Strategy 2022