Differences between the traditional and new media

By Mkessa Patricia

Lister et al. (2003) suggest what distinguishes the ‘new’ from traditional forms of mass media are  five main concepts: digitality, interactivity, hypertextuality, dispersal and virtuality:

Digitality.  Essentially, this means ‘using computers’, where all data (text, sound and pictures) are converted into numbers (binary code), which can then be stored, distributed and picked up via screen-based products, like mobile phones, DVDs, digital TVs and computers

Interactivity.  Consumers have an opportunity to engage or interact with the media, creating their own material, customizing viewing to their own wishes, with much greater choice compared with the passive consumption and ‘take it or leave it’ features of the traditional media.

Hypertextuality.  This refers to the links that form a web of connections to other bits of information, which give users a way of searching, interacting with and customizing the media for their own use.

Dispersal. This refers to the way the media have become less centralized and more adapted to individual choices, with a huge growth of media products of all kinds, which have become a part of everyday life. The routine use of the Internet for information, shopping and entertainment, email, laptop computers, interactive digital TV, social networking sites like Facebook, downloadable content onto mobile phones, and podcasts to MP3 players all show how the media have penetrated into the fabric of everyday life. The production of media content itself is now becoming more generally dispersed throughout the population, rather than restricted to media professionals. For example, people are now making their own videos and posting them on the Internet. According to Chad Hurley (Guardian: 3/12/07), Chief Executive of YouTube, there were eight hours of new consumergenerated video uploaded to YouTube every minute in 2007. Internet diaries – ‘blogs’ – are beginning to rival traditional journalism as sources of information and news, and in 2006 Technorati, a blog-tracking service, was claiming to be monitoring 47.6 million of them.

Virtuality. This refers to the various ways people can now immerse themselves in wholly unreal interactive experiences in virtual worlds created by new technology (as in computer games), and also create for themselves imaginary identities in online communication and networking sites, like MySpace, Bebo, YouTube and Facebook.