NEW MEDIA AND SOCIETY
BY JOHN CAFRENE
BAPRM 42567
New media is an
umbrella-term which includes different technologies. In the opinion of some
specialists are considerate as new media because both blogs, podcast, video
games, virtual worlds, Wiki encyclopedia, and other mobile devices, interactive
televisions, and even the web-sites and e-mail. Others consider that blogs and
virtual worlds must be included in the category of social media because they
are encouraging appearance of virtual communities and social networks.
In spite of the differences, some research
workers3 identified two common characteristics for majority of definitions.
These are: - spreading
the information to
a number of
receivers which is theoretical infinite,
in customized ways,
depending on specification for endorsed categories; -
tenure of un equal control about information both of transmitters and
receivers. Other definitions are
even more vaguely, considering that new
media are represented
by all the
texts, sounds, images
and graphic forms transformed by
the computer.
THE CONCEPT OF MULTIMEDIA
The new media technology has generated massive
social changes in the behavior and lifestyle patterns of the consumers. New
media have shaped
modern culture, by
affecting the way
people behave, communicate, learn
and conceive of themselves and their world. For example Giovani Sartori announced in the
paper „Homo videos, Imbecility through television and Post-Thinking” that we
entered in a multimedia period.
The concept of
multimedia is explained by Sartori through the union in a single media of the
written and spoken word, of the sound and the image. In
this multimedia period,
that Sartori described,
are living together several
media, and the television is not anymore the queen of them for
some time now.
The new sovereign is from
now on the computer.
The personal-computer is not only unifying the word, the sound, the
image, characteristic specific of television, but introduces row the visible
simulated realities, virtual realities. Television is making us see images of
real things, she is the “photo” and “cinema6” of the real things. In exchange
for the computer makes we see imaginary images.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NEW MEDIA AND MASS MEDIA
One
of my objectives
is to identify
the characteristics of new
media and contrast them with the electronic mass media. Given that the medium
is the message, I began my analysis by identifying the characteristics or
messages of new media that are different from mass media that
Marshall McLuhan identified
such as the
light bulb, telegraph, telephone,
radio, phonograph, camera and television.
Studying the specialized bibliography, I identified the following five
messages of the Internet:
1. two-way
communication;
2. easiness of access to and dissemination of
information;
3. continuous learning;
4. alignment and integration;
5. community
Although one or two of these characteristics
apply to traditional mass media, what is unique about the Internet is that all
five of these characteristics apply and help define the impact of this medium.
As it turns out all of these characteristics also apply to the general class of
new media. These five messages show specialists that revealed the study of new
media to the society and how to control them.
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