New Media

Digitalisation

Process of converting something to digital form

Interactivity (Participatory Culture - Jenkins)

Method of communication in which a program’s outputs depend on the users input

• refers to the ways in which people process and share information or how they communicate with each other

Accessibility

Media is available for all people to use at any point

Global Ownership

Media organisations operate all around the world

Concentration of ownership

Less companies are owning increasingly larger areas of the media

Vertical Integration

There is concentration of ownership within a single medium, such as one company owning several newspapers

Horizontal Integration

Media owners have interests in a range of media, such as newspapers, magazines, book

Convergence

• Technological: increasingly the case that one device that can be used to access a wide variety of media

• Economic: allows a single company to target larger interest groups through various kinds of media

• Cultural: two or more cultures adopt each other’s traits and became more alike

Synergy

Media companies produce, promote and sell a product in a variety of forms

2015 Statistic: how many adults accessed the internet?

84%

2020 Statistic: percentage of adults aged 16 to 44 years in the UK who were recent internet users

99%

• compared with 54% of adults aged 75 years and over

Inequality in New Media usage: Age - Boyle

younger people who have grown up with the internet at home, at school and from their peers, and are consequently more media-savvy than previous generations

• Digital Natives: brought up in the digital era, more likely to consume media through a variety of formats; 10x more likely to go online via their mobile than those aged 55+

Inequality in New Media usage: Social Class - Jones

Social class also has an impact on new media

• poorest social classes have the least access to the internet

• 16 to 24-year-ods from disadvantaged backgrounds were relatively infrequent users of the internet

Inequality in New Media usage: Social Class - Livingstone & Wang

Suggests that this situation may be worsening as they found progress in gaining digital skills had stopped improving

• normal part of life that those who lack access, or the skills and confidence to use it experience a form of exclusion

Inequality in New Media usage: Gender - Li and Kirkup

Studied the use of the internet by Chinese and British students, found two global gender-based cultures. Men were more likely:

• More likely to have a positive attitudes toward the internet

• More likely to be self-confident about their skills using it

• More likely to use emails and chat rooms and play computer games

• Less likely to use it for studying

Inequality in New Media usage: Globally

Most significant digital divide in terms of location is that between the information-rich and the information-poor countries, and the existence of a global digital underclass

• largest proportion of people in the Western world

• poorest countries lack access due to poverty

• lack of resources to access

• language and cultural barriers can also be a problem: 85% of websites are in English

Creates global inequalities and a new digital underclass who are excluded from the new media

Cultural Optimists - more informed consumers, wider choices and more participate

• Consumers can now access information, complaints and reviews about anything that interests them

• Better informed of products and places - argue it gives them greater choice

• Now have opportunities to participate

Cultural Optimists - greater democracy

• New Media can give more power to ordinary people - helped democratic societies

• Vast ocean of information available to all

• McNair: “Information, like knowledge, is power”

• Social movements and campaigns now use the new media to spread their ideas - more power into the hands of ordinary people

• Citizen journalists now have a big influence on the mainstream media’s content and agenda - post their own reports & respond to what has been distorted by mainstream media outputs

Cultural Optimists - more access to all kinds of information

Access to huge amounts of information

• high culture - previously limited to educated elites

• news and information articles from a wide range of sources

• can gain information themselves rather than relying on others for it

Cultural Optimists - the world becomes a global village

McLuhan - thanks to the digital media, people from all over the world can easily to talk to each other and share ideas

• new media promotes culture identity

• blurs the boundaries between the local and the global meaning different people and cultures are brought together

Cultural Optimists - social life and social interaction is enhanced

Postmodernists - new media as contributed to social diversity

• new media has opened up news channels for communication and interactions, enhancing and replacing existing face-to-face interactions

• media has become a way for someone to express themselves

• may lead to more in-person meetings - some platforms an role of rekindling old connections

Cultural Pessimists - problems of the validity of information

Difficult to know the source of information - hard to validate

• ‘fake news’ - emergence of artificial intelligent

• material is often reused without checking the information or sources

Cultural Pessimists - cultural and media imperalism

Imposition of Western, particularly American, culture on non-Western cultures

• undermines local cultures and their ability to maintain independence

Cultural Pessimists - threat to democracy

the power of unelected commercial companies: sovereigns of cyberspace

• MacKinnon: ‘sovereigns of cyberspace’ to describe the power of giant multinational cooperation’s - now hold a kind of power over us that was once held only by governments, effectively part of our political system

censorship and control

• MacKinnon: some undemocratic, repressive regimes (China & Iran), monitor and control new media use

• filtering/blocking and surveillance technology often supplied by Western technology companies

Cultural Pessimists - lack of regulation

large scale and global landscape of new media meant that there is a lack of regulation by national bodies

• e.g. Twitter - criticisms as individuals and their families have faced cruel abuse, and rape and death threats from those disagreeing with their views

Cultural Pessimists - commercialisation and limited consumer choice

new media has been driven by consumerism and commercialisation

• making money for the companies that produce the technology

• sell their products online - bigger business than advertising in the traditional media

• targets of advertising at people who spend time online - no real increase in consumer choice

Preston - digital media offer consumer choice of what they want to read or look at, don’t bring attention to stories that people didn’t know they wanted to be information about

Barnett and Seymour & Curran et al - poorer-quality content, ‘dumbing-down’ and tabloidisation of popular culture is used to attract a larger audience

Cultural Pessimists - increase surveillance

Increased all kinds of surveillance

• surveillance techniques can also be used by those with power to monitor and control social protestors

• agencies also have the means of monitoring who is posting information online, and communications between individuals and groups

Cultural Pessimists - undermining of human relationships

Increase in social isolation

• people losing the ability to communicate in the real world as they spend less quality time having convocations with family and friends

• loss of social capital or the useful social networks which people have as they spend less time engaging with the communities and neighborhoods