Revolutions in Media
Jessica Wang
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What new ways of producing and distributing media have arisen to complement or replace older media? What is it that defines these as genuinely ‘new’ media and ‘new’ media industries? Media and the numerous industries it encompasses are constantly being reinvigorated. From the mobile phone, to the smartphone, to the tablet, we have seen extraordinary advances in media technology in recent years. But to say that new media is replacing old media altogether may be too simple a statement. It would seem that old media is rather being complemented by its newer counterpart.
Old, or traditional media refers to any media that existed before the advent of the
Internet, such as newspapers, books and television. New media can therefore be defined as any media that came with the advent of the Internet. All of the old media listed are still extremely prevalent today, albeit in upgraded and changed forms. This suggests that new media are not rendering old media obsolete; they are finding new ways of producing and distributing them to reflect the needs of today’s digital world. Bolter and Grusin (1996) described this as ‘remediation’, where new media ‘repair the inadequacy of the media that it now supersedes’.
Media convergence refers to the relationship between ‘existing analogue technologies and media industries with new digital distribution methods’ (Comyns 2012). It has seen a substantial increase in online media content on ‘an increasing array of connected devices and screens’ (Media Convergence and the Transformed Media Environment 2013). The arrival of
Web 2.0 has marked a framework of convergent social media, in which a generation of
Internet users share news and digital content on social media networks such as Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube. Acting as a digital ‘word of mouth’, these networks aid the distribution process, with ‘hash tags’ for example, allowing topics to ‘trend’, ultimately attracting more users to them.
1606922
What new ways of producing and distributing media have arisen to complement or replace older media? What is it that defines these as genuinely ‘new’ media and ‘new’ media industries? Media and the numerous industries it encompasses are constantly being reinvigorated. From the mobile phone, to the smartphone, to the tablet, we have seen extraordinary advances in media technology in recent years. But to say that new media is replacing old media altogether may be too simple a statement. It would seem that old media is rather being complemented by its newer counterpart.
Old, or traditional media refers to any media that existed before the advent of the
Internet, such as newspapers, books and television. New media can therefore be defined as any media that came with the advent of the Internet. All of the old media listed are still extremely prevalent today, albeit in upgraded and changed forms. This suggests that new media are not rendering old media obsolete; they are finding new ways of producing and distributing them to reflect the needs of today’s digital world. Bolter and Grusin (1996) described this as ‘remediation’, where new media ‘repair the inadequacy of the media that it now supersedes’.
Media convergence refers to the relationship between ‘existing analogue technologies and media industries with new digital distribution methods’ (Comyns 2012). It has seen a substantial increase in online media content on ‘an increasing array of connected devices and screens’ (Media Convergence and the Transformed Media Environment 2013). The arrival of
Web 2.0 has marked a framework of convergent social media, in which a generation of
Internet users share news and digital content on social media networks such as Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube. Acting as a digital ‘word of mouth’, these networks aid the distribution process, with ‘hash tags’ for example, allowing topics to ‘trend’, ultimately attracting more users to them.