INTRODUCTORY UNIT: New Media Technologies

AIM: Students need to feel confident about how changes in media

technology are changing the nature of the relationship between media
texts and their audiences.

Part 1: Web 2.0

‘The phrase ‘web 2.0’ describes a new phase of the internet which:
Allows us to create material, distribute it to another (and thus share it)
and perhaps move closer to the democratic ‘spirit’ of the internet that
its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, had in mind.’
Julian McDougall, OCR Media Studies for AS (2008)

One of the writers most associated with this term is David Gauntlett,
Professor of Media and Communications at the University of
Westminster. You can read his full article at
http://www.theory.org.uk/mediastudies2.htm

Here’s a summary of the key points.

The fetishisation of 'expert' readings of media texts is

replaced with a focus on the everyday meanings produced
by the diverse array of audience members, accompanied by
an interest in new qualitative research techniques;

The tendency to celebrate certain 'classic' conventional

and/or 'avant garde' texts, and the focus on traditional
media in general, is replaced with – or at least joined by –
an interest in the massive 'long tail' of independent media
projects such as those found on YouTube and many other
websites, mobile devices, and other forms of DIY media;

The focus on primarily Western media is replaced with an

attempt to embrace the truly international dimensions of
Media Studies – including a recognition not only of the
processes of globalization, but also of the diverse
perspectives on media and society being worked on around
the world;

The view of the internet and new digital media as an

'optional extra' is correspondingly replaced with recognition
 that they have fundamentally changed the ways in which we
engage with all media;

The patronising belief that students should be taught how to

'read' the media is replaced by the recognition that media
audiences in general are already extremely capable
interpreters of media content, with a critical eye and an
understanding of contemporary media techniques, thanks in
large part to the large amount of coverage of this in popular
media itself;

Conventional research methods are replaced – or at least

supplemented – by new methods which recognise and make
use of people's own creativity, and brush aside the
outmoded notions of 'receiver' audiences and elite
'producers';

Conventional concerns with power and politics are reworked

in recognition of these points, so that the notion of super-
powerful media industries invading the minds of a relatively
passive population is compelled to recognise and address
the context of more widespread creation and participation.

DISCUSSION / DEBATE
Read the following materials to consider some of the main
issues in discussion about new media.

http://adamrobbins.edublogs.org/files/2007/05/newmed052.doc

http://adamrobbins.edublogs.org/files/2007/05/new-media-
controv.doc

Part 2: CONVERGENCE

Two of the areas identified in the OCR Guidelines are:

1. The importance of cross media convergence and synergy in
production, distribution and marketing.
2. The importance of technological convergence for institutions and
audiences.

Here’s the two-part definition from the OCR text book:

1. Technologies coming together, for example, a mobile phone you can
use as a still and moving image camera, download and watch moving
images on, use as an MP3 player and recorder and access the internet
with.
2. Media industries are diversifying so they produce and distribute
across several media – for example, a newspaper with an online
version and audio podcasts.

Here’s the distinction between Convergence and Synergy

http://adamrobbins.edublogs.org/files/2007/05/2732-conv-
synergy.doc
The distinction here is a difficult one and McDougall tends to blur the
two terms – convergence and synergy – together.

DISCUSSION – Why is it difficult to distinguish between the two.

What does this tell us about the ways in which media are coming
together?

ANSWER:
1. Increasingly, convergence creates synergy. By coming together,
the separate media forms generate an energy that they could
not achieve on their own.
2. In many ways the term ‘Convergence’ has superseded ‘Synergy’
because it is now more difficult to separate out different
technologies and think that they are ‘rubbing against each
other’. Technologies have converged and are in some senses
‘inseperable’.

Come up with examples of Convergence. Apart from their phones what

other technologies could be held up as examples of media
convergence?

TASK: Students could be given sections of this text to read and

summarise: Why Convergence Matters:
http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/why-convergence-matters/
(scroll down to see the article)

DISCUSSION – Q. What has changed? Why is this convergence

happening?

Possible Answers
-Technology – For the first time, all this is possible.
The following extract is an excellent summary from Wikipedia of the
emergence of DIGITAL media. Students need to have a basic grasp of
the idea of a shared digital language (binary codes etc)

Until the 1980s media relied primarily upon print and art analog
broadcast models, such as those of television and radio. The last
twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media which
are predicated upon the use of digital computers, such as the Internet
and computer games. However, these examples are only a small
representation of new media. The use of digital computers has
transformed the remaining 'old' media, as suggested by the advent of
digital television and online publications. Even traditional media forms
such as the printing press have been transformed through the
application of technologies such as image manipulation software like
Adobe Photoshop and desktop publishing tools.

Andrew L. Shapiro (1999) argues that the "emergence of new, digital

technologies signals "a potentially radical shift of who is in control of
information, experience and resources" (Shapiro cited in Croteau and
Hoynes 2003: 322). W. Russell Neuman (1991) suggests that whilst
the "new media" have technical capabilities to pull in one direction,
economic and social forces pull back in the opposite direction.
According to Neuman, "We are witnessing the evolution of a universal
interconnected network of audio, video, and electronic text
communications that will blur the distinction between interpersonal
and mass communication and between public and private
communication" (Neuman cited in Croteau and Hoynes 2003: 322).
Neuman argues that New Media:

• Will alter the meaning of geographic distance.

• Allow for a huge increase in the volume of communication.
• Provide the possibility of increasing the speed of communication.
• Provide opportunities for interactive communication.
• Allow forms of communication that were previously separate to
overlap and interconnect.

Part 3: AUDIENCES

- How has the relationship between audiences and the

media changed?
TASK:
Students to write an account of an average day of media consumption.
What do they use? When? Why?
They are to write a second account of an average day for someone of
a different generation (grandparents?). What media do they use and
why.

Students discuss the different ways in which they are now able to be
‘creative’ via new media technologies.
- in what ways are they active rather than passive?
- What significance might there be in being active? What is the
impact on the conventional structure of media industries?

Having done this, students can decide how much they agree with the
following statements:

- Audiences are now active rather than passive.

- Audiences can also and simultaneously be, producers.

‘The question that needs to be answered is: do new media

forms produce both distinctively different content and
‘audiences’ when compared with their predecessors? The
answer to this question is a qualified yes.’
P David Marshall, New Media Cultures (2004)

P Csigo suggests that media instututions are no longer interested in

keeping the audience together, but in ‘triggering engagement’ in
people.

‘For media institutions, this imposes key changes: the media

world changes from a ‘value chain’ (cultural products made and
distributed to audiences) to a social network (a complex
system where producers and audiences are mixed up). Another
way of describing this is the shift from ‘push media’ (where
producers push media at us and we receive and consume it) to
‘pull media’ (whereby we decide that we want to do with the
media and access it in ways that suit us).’
Julian McDougall, OCR Media Studies for AS Level (2008)

Part 4: DEMOCRACY, ‘WE MEDIA’ ETC

It is also worth considering the way in which we are now active
producers rather than passive consumers. People make the media.
This idea is associated with Dan Gillmor and her book We the Media:
Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People. The book is about
how the proliferation of grassroots internet journalists (bloggers) has
changed the way news is handled. One of the book's main points is
that a few big media corporations cannot control the news we get any
longer, now that news is being published in real-time, available to
everybody, via the Internet. The book received widespread praise from
the demographic it covered, and mixed reviews elsewhere.

In the context of the film industry, it is particularly interesting to

consider the impact of DIY home film-making.
- have we lost sight of ‘quality’ and is there now more of an
appetite for short, ‘cheap’ thrills.
- has it helped reduce attention spans and does it mean that
students are unable to watch long sustained narrative films
- has it renewed and re-invigorated (young) people’s interest in
films

Here are two interesting interesting articles about new media and your
generation

Internet generation leave parents behind

Generation expects