A discussion of new media

Critically discuss the significance of your introduction to new media and journalism studies, focusing on all of the following issues:
a) The uniqueness and opportunities of ‘new’ media
b) How ‘new’ media relates to critical media studies
c) Whether ‘new’ media is just ‘old wine in new wine skins’

The evolution of ‘new’ media has brought about many exciting opportunities and possibilities for both those who provide and those who consume the news, and is constantly changing the face of media as we know it. The striking new developments are seemingly unique to all the forms of media that have gone before, but this ‘newness’ is an erroneous assumption for reasons I will presently discuss.

That aside, there is no denying the unique nature of the opportunities which ‘new’ media provides. For instance, the digital nature of ‘new’ media allows “a flexibility and creativity that more traditional formats would constrain” (Kawamoto, 2003:2). Digitality results in several important characteristics such as hypertextuality, interactivity and nonlinearity. All of these characteristics have allowed for a fuller, richer media experience and there is a clear interest in ‘new’ media, seeing that since the mid-1990s “millions of people have adopted the Internet as their primary or secondary source of news and information” (Kawamoto, 2003:24).

Such a massive development as ‘new’ media must be discussed with regard to its relationship with critical media studies and with society as a whole. Thompson (1995) critically examines the media in terms of its central role in social life and how the development of the media in the modern era “has transformed the nature of symbolic production and exchange in the modern world” (Thompson, 1995:10) in a profound and irreversible way.

One such example is that “the use of technical media enables individuals to transcend the spatial and temporal boundaries characteristic of face-to-face interaction” (Thompson, 1995:31). Seeing as this process has also been influenced by other developments social such as in transport, proves we cannot view the emergence of ‘new media’ as a stand-alone phenomenon, but rather must see it as “part of a much larger landscape of social, technological and cultural change” (Lister et al., 2002:11).

Furthermore, our critical study of ‘new’ media must examine to what extent ‘new’ media is really new versus what is just a reformation of already existing media. The newness of new media “represents a challenge to some of our ways of analyzing media and, […] gives us an opportunity to think through whether our use of media now is shifting and changing the way we relate to it” (Marshall, 2004:2). Marshall (2004) argues that we need to alter our approach “towards a more intricate reading of cultural production” (Marshall, 2004:12) and that a critical study of new media requires a close examination of the new cultural landscape which has been created and developed through new media culture’s various forms.

In examining whether ‘new’ media is really new, we need to identify some significant change which underpins all new media. Most argue that turning analogue media into digital media is where the specific change has occurred but Lister et al.(2002), warn us “although digital media is accurate as a formal description, it presupposes an absolute break (between analogue and digital) where […] none in fact exists” (Lister et al., 2002:12). For instance the digital nature of new media is really just a “continuation and extension of a principle or technique in place; […] the principle of conversion from physical artifact to signal” (Lister et al., 2002:15). They argue the reason people may conceive of the experience of digital media as a complete break from analogue media is due to the significant scale and nature of the extension.

We therefore need to be historical in our approach to ‘new media’ and remember that “new media are not born in a vacuum and, as media, would have no resources to draw upon if they were not in touch and negotiating with the long traditions of […] older media” (Lister et al., 2002:40). ‘New’ media has developed essentially through the appropriation of “some of the qualities and relationships from past media forms” (Marshall, 2004:3).

In many cases then, new media is simply ‘old wine in new wine skins’ – meaning an ‘old’ medium in new era. The term, ‘new’, is thus quite obviously misleading, and perhaps it is better to adopt Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s (1999) term of remediation to explain the “repurposing or refashioning of old media with new media, not just in terms of content or retelling stories but through the incorporation of old media into new media forms” (Bucy, 2005:50). They argue that ‘new’ media cannot be developed in a vacuum as the very act of remediation “ensures that the older medium cannot be entirely effaced” and the “new medium remains dependent upon the older one” (Bucy, 2005:56). In conclusion, when discussing the developments within media we must remember that “old and new are relational terms and not absolutes” (Marshall, 2004:2).

Works Cited

Bucy, E (ed.). 2005. Remediation in Living in the Information Age: A New Media Reader. USA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Kawamoto, K. 2003. Digital Journalism: emerging media and the changing horizons of journalism in Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.

Lister, Martin [et al.]. 2002. New Media and Technologies in New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.

Marshall, P. 2004. Introduction: new media and cultural studies in New Media Cultures. Arnold.

Thompson, JB. 1995. Communication and Social Context in The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity.