Month: March 2022

Main characteristics of New Media

With the expansion of digital technology within the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of data is now converted, stored, and transmitted as code (a series of 1s and 0s.). Qualitative information has today become ‘digitalized’. Digitalization is what allows such a lot of information to be stored in compact hard disks or micro memory cards and it’s also what allows for the near-instantaneous transmission of knowledge via cable and satellite.

Digitalization has also resulted in ‘technological convergence’, or the convergence of various styles of information (text, audio and visual) into one single ‘system’ – most websites today offer a fusion of text and audio-visual information, and our mobile devices allow us to perform a spread of functions – not only reading text and watching/ being attentive to videos but also looking for information, sending messages, shopping and using GPS functions. Analogue is the opposite of digital. It’s stored in physical form and examples include print newspapers, records, old films, and T.V. programs stored on tape.

Interactivity
‘Old media’ cared-for be significantly a ‘one-way’ affair, with audiences on the receiving end of broadcasts, for the foremost part, able to do little else than simply passively watch media content. New Media however is way more of a two-way affair and it allows consumers and users to urge more involved. It’s far more of a two-way kind of communication than old media.

Increased interactivity may be seen in simple acts like liking a Facebook post or commenting on a news piece or blog. However, some users get far more involved and make their own blogs and videos and actively upload their own content as ‘prosumers’. New Media seem to possess fostered a more participatory culture, with more people involved and also the roles between consumer and producer of media content becoming ever more blurred!

Hypertextual
Hypertext or ‘links’ are a typical feature of recent media, which allows users more freedom of choice over how they navigate the various sources of data available to them. In additional technical terms, links in websites offer non-sequential connections between every kind of knowledge facilitated by the pc. Optimists tend to determine this feature as more individualized lifestyle choices, giving users the prospect to act more independently and to form the foremost of the opportunities new media markets make available to them.

Global Networks
Digital Media has also facilitated cultural globalization – we now interact far more globally and via virtual networks of individuals instead of locally. These networks allow ‘collective intelligence’ to extend – they permit us to pool our resources far more easily and to draw on a wider range of talents and sources of data (depending on our needs) than ever before. NB one question to ask about networks is what the most hubs are, through which information flows. This has implications for power.

Virtual Worlds
New Media presents to us an awfully different reality from face to face to ‘lived reality’ – for many people, this suggests an awfully fast-paced flow of data with numerous products and folks screaming for our attention. However, this example has only existed since the mid-2000s, and it must be remembered that the New Media reality is a computer game. This is often very true when it involves social media sites that give users the chance to present themselves in any way they see fit, and while most users don’t go full Cat Fish, most people value more highly presenting only 1 aspect of themselves.

Simulation
Simulation goes a step beyond the ‘virtual’ nature of recent Media as was common. Simulation is most obviously experienced computer games that provide an immersive experience for users into a “virtual life” that’s simulated through digital technology. These virtual worlds are synthetic creations that ultimately depend on algorithms that set the parameters through which events within the gaming environment unfold.