Exploring New Media: Definitions, Perspectives, and Debates

1. mobile user-generated cross-platform D.I.Y participatory culture new media? What is fandom convergence transmedia social media interactive Web 2 . 0 technology

2. learning outcomes • Definethe term ‘new media’ in line with personal and academic understandings of the concept. • Listenand verbally respond to other learners’ descriptions of ‘new media’. • Outlinesome of the key issues and debates that surround the subject of ‘new media’.

3. what is new media? • …by new media we mean information and communication technologies and their associated social contexts, including: • The artifacts or devices that enable and extend our abilities to communicate; • The communication activities or practices we engage in to develop and use these devices; and • The social arrangements or organisations that form around the devices and practices. (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2004: 7). The term ‘new media’ emerged to capture a sense that quite rapidly from the late 1980s on, the world of media and communications began to look quite different and this difference was not restricted to any one sector…[new media should be] seen as part of a much larger landscape of social, technological and cultural change. In short, as part of a new technoculture. (Dovey et al, 2008 :10 - 11) • Dovey et al (2008) suggest that new media is: • New textual experiences • New ways of representing the world • New relationships between users and technologies • New experiences in terms of time, space and place that impacts on how we see our place in the world • New conceptions of relationship between our physical body and technology • New patterns of organisation and production (pp12 – 13). New technologies are not always that new, but depend on developments of earlier technologies and their applications…Cornford and Robins (1999) talk about ‘an accommodation between old and new’ and point out that ‘new media are often heavily reliant on repackaged older media content’ (Burton, 2005: 198).

4. issues and debates Social Constructivism Solid Materialism Social Shaping Technological Determinism The notion of technological determinism represents an argument that technology of itself shapes society and can be a cause of social change(Burton, 2005: 201). Nancy Baym defines technological determinism as a stance that views technologies as ‘causal agents, entering societies as active forces of change that humans have little power to resist’ (2010: 24). …the development of new media technology needs to be linked into the transformation of the economy, and related changes within politics and culture (Burton, 2005: 222). …the socialtechnicalinfrastructure, or platform, that underlies online activityinfluencessocialinteraction. Admitting so is not technological determinism. Rather it is a solidmaterialism that recognises that technologieschange the fabric of the materialworld, which in turn changes the socialworld. (Hansen et al, 2011: 11 -12) Social constructivism suggests that ‘new technologies and their uses as a consequence of social factors’ (Baym, 2010:44). Social shaping accounts for both ‘the social capabilities technologies enables - and the unexpected and emergent ways that people use those affordances’ (Baym, 2010: 44).

5. references Baym, Nancy (2010) Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Burton, Graeme (2005) Media and Society: Critical Perspectives, Berkshire: Open University Press. Dovey, John et al (2008) New Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge. Hansen, Derek L., Ben Shneiderman, and Marc A. Smith (2011) Analysing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World, Burlington: Morgan Kaufman. Lievrouw, Leah A, and Sonia Livingstone (2004) (reprinted), Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs, London: Sage Publications.