Digital Media & Society Lecture 1 Vocabulary

Flashcards for Digital Media & Society Lecture 1

Digital Society

Our society is affected by digitally networked communication tools and platforms, such as the internet and social media.

Media

Tools, channels, platforms, and strategies used to obtain, produce, and share knowledge through communication and interaction.

History of Computerization

Timeline includes mechanical computers in the 19th century, electronic computing during WWII, mainframe computers in the 1950s, microcomputers in the 1970s, and personal computers in the 1980s.

Digitization

Organizing information into electronically transmittable and storable binary bits.

Post-Industrial Society

A society where handling and relating to information is central to daily life (Bell, 1970s).

Information Society

Society where the predominant form of work shifts as previous forms become automated.

De-massified Information

Mediated information where narrowcasting replaces standardized messages (Toffler).

Internet

Key invention of digital society, originating from a military communications system developed by Paul Baran in 1959; ARPANET was the first computer network, and the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991.

Media Ecology

Media as a medium of symbolic structure or social environment that defines human interaction and the production of culture. McLuhan defined media as extensions of our senses.

Remediation

How digital media continuously absorb and repurpose other forms of media (Bolter and Grusin, 1999).

Hypermediacy

When the interface is obvious and visible, allowing for user interaction.

Mediatisation

How media have become an increasingly entangled part of our realities, accentuated by digital technology.

Media Logic

How a medium functions as a form of communication and how it changes the ways of seeing, speaking, and acting (Altheide and Snow, 1979).