New Media

The term “new media” can be explained by understanding what “old media” tends to be considered. Lev Manovich, a leading theorist in digital culture and author of new media theories, implies that everything prior to the computer is old media (6). This includes television, radio, print, direct mail, billboards, etc. He more specifically identifies what is considered to be under the umbrella of new media as “the internet, websites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMs, DVD, and virtual reality” (Manovich 19). Ultimately, all digital, virtual technologies would be classified as “new media,” which expands into social media, mobile devices, etc. New media is a term used to sum up and describe any electronic communication that is possible due to advances in computer technology (“What Is New Media?”). This can mean blogs, emails, websites, and anything else you can find over the internet and complete on a computer. Online programs such as Prezi are also considered new media – part of the appeal is that it can “show not tell’…in a way that new media texts are so good at doing” (Lauer). It is one of the newest and most modern-day ways of creating a text which is why it’s called new media. Other terms used to describe this include digital media and multimodal media.

New media is special because it applies old skills and ideas to fresh ways of thinking, interacting, and communicating. Cheryl Ball explains that new media is important to her because of “the way that readers interacted.. that new media caused readers to interact with the text in ways that readers were unfamiliar with” (Lauer “A moment in time”). In a digital world, people are introduced to new mediums and materials than traditionally used. This in turn changes the way information and content is looked at and introduced, as well as how people communicate with one another. The transmission model of communication is the theory that whatever ideas and concepts we put out into text, our audience is receiving the same idea and concept that we intended. While New Media allows us to share information and content with people easier than ever before, in turn upholding the transmissionary model of communication, this is only true if the concept of new media is understood and intentionally utilized.

Yumna Samie emphasizes that beyond the medium being used, there are other aspects that influence and adjust the message being presented. She says, “the messages themselves are up for interpretation, by the writer and the audience” (03:16). Although this is true for all mediums, old and new, this is especially important for new media users since new mediums allow for new influences, which can easily mistaken the planned message. People naturally receive information differently person to person because we all have our own individual experiences that unknowingly impact our thought processes. While this is not something us, as writers, can control, we can think about the medium we are using and how our audience can potentially misread our purpose. When using Twitter, people have the ability to respond to a tweet, creating what is known as a thread. Threads show all the replies to that single tweet and the responses to those replies. When publishing a tweet, we cannot control who responds or whether our audience will be changed by the thread. This concept applies similarly to all social media platforms, and it shows how impactful and distinct new media is compared to old media. Theorist Marshall McLuhan sums up this concept by stating, “our ideas don’t go straight from our minds to our readers’ minds unchanged” (Samie 01:57).

Lauer, Claire. “What's in a Name? The Anatomy of Defining New/Multi/Modal/Digital/Media Texts.” Kairos 17.1: Lauer, What's in a Name?, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 15 Aug. 2012, kairos.technorhetoric.net/17.1/inventio/lauer/contextual.html.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. MIT Press, 2001.

Samie, Yumna. “Remediation! Context Part 2: Study Hall Writing Composition #13: ASU + Crash Course.” YouTube, uploaded by Arizona State University, 24 June 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T169ogVcN9Q&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=ArizonaStateUniversity.

“What Is New Media? - Definition from Techopedia.” Techopedia.com, www.techopedia.com/definition/416/new-media.

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New media consists of new channels of communication on a digital scale. New media provides users a medium through which to convey a message. Currently, new media consists of blogs, instant messaging, online dating applications, and so on. However, new media is relative to the social and cultural climate. For example, at one point, vinyl and flip phones were considered new media. Now, they are collectable items. Dennis Baron highlights an even further look into past “new media” by stating, “Before paper, before parchment, before papyrus, writing on clay was one of the main ways that writing got done” (Baron 72). Southern University Online Learning program refers to new media as “those digital media that are interactive, incorporate two-way communication and involve some form of computing”. As technology continues to surpass expectations and create new waves of possibility, new media is redefined to highlight the latest forms of communication and information processing. Writers use various media to deliver their message to their readers. In fact, author Lev Manovich argues that new media “...represents a convergence of two separate historical trajectories: computing and media technologies” (Manovich 20). As the minds of readers change overtime due to the influence of social norms and technology advancement, writers become cross-media composers which means they use various platforms to deliver a message in order to best inform, persuade, or entertain their audience.

Furthermore, new media has provided writers and readers the opportunity to connect on a global scale. In the time were quill pens were considered new media, it would take one several days or weeks to receive a letter through mail. These limitations would have one consider if the intended message was truly important enough to commit to the required delivery method. Today, new media has broken many limitations and in doing so, a profusion of opportunities for worldwide human connection were discovered. For example, through video calls or Zoom, children were able to continue their education in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, musical artists were able to create a concert experience through virtual concerts. The newer the media is, the more people can manipulate it to their desired purpose. In summary, new media will continue to be redefined as new digital developments are introduced to society. Human beings strive to find meaningful connections through communication and shared experiences. Each time there is a new medium to deliver a message, people will rush to use it to support their purpose as writers and content creators. Current new media has provided support for global collaborative research, forming relationships through a digital space, and educating people with important political and social topics.

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New Media are pieces of communication that are products of the most recent technological innovations. These new pieces are podcasts, streaming platforms, high-definition video games, webpages, blogs, television series, and many more. Conversely, New Media also refers to the new devices used to create these pieces of communication, such as computers, microphones, cell-phones and cameras. In The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan states, “Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror.” (McLuhan, 48)

Writing was introduced thousands of years ago, after the printing press, later radio, and even further along, the television. However, the computer changed everything because it interconnected the world in a global web, and it has forced us to create the term: new media. In, What’s a Name, scholar Claire Lauer’s webpage, she has a conversation with Jason Palmeri, and he says, “New media is a historical moment in which media feel new to us.” The term new media arose because these new things changed the world so drastically that someone had to invent it. This definition is a piece of new media itself because it was created using a computer. The New Media Institute defines new media as “a catchall term used to define all that is related to the interplay between technology, images and sound.” New media changes as new technology is developed. Bulky DVD players and “giant” CD players were the new media, and now streaming sites such as Hulu are the new media. Joe Cote, a writer at Southern New Hampshire University says “new media is any media – from newspaper articles and blogs to music and podcasts – that are delivered digitally. In the “Language of New Media”, Lev Manovich says the popular understanding of new media “identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production.” Manovich also states, “the problem was no longer how to create a new media object such as an image, the new problem was how to find an object that already exists somewhere.”

New media is not only created with new tools, but with tools such as hyper cables, which helps computers transfer data from place to place, and cellphone towers enable distribution to be way faster than it has ever been before. These new tools have also enabled the production of even better tools. As technology continues to develop, new media will as well. New media can also refer to the technology used to create communication products we use everyday. These technologies are relatively modern mediums that humans use to create new media. The more we advance media technology the more the world will change because humans will find new ways to express themselves.

Hypertext refers to the marked-up prose used to intertwine information through the internet. An example of hypertext is the hyperlink. This is because it allows access to numerous types of information. A piece of hypertext is usually underlined or highlighted, and once the mouse clicks on said word, it brings you to another site that would allow you to have more information on whatever topic is being focused on. In other words, it links two separate documents together. For example in the previous sentence I have incorporated a hypertext that will take you to a website titled “what is Hypertext”. Though my example is a clear representation of a hypertext, web designers have created ways for hypertext to be less visible and better integrated into the text or a website. Hyperlinks are mainly governed by designers. Now with everything being more online Hypertext can be seen everywhere, including in the teachings of literature. “

The most common and visible way that college teachers are using hypertext in teaching literature is by having syllabi, readings, and other course materials all linked” (Katz 140) This allows for material to be more accessible for the students. Other ways to incorporate links would be through annotations, hypertext writing and tutorials. Hypertext is essentially computerized knitting, this allows students to have more material when it comes to learning and it also allows for easier access in terms of annotations. Hypertext is also good at leading a person to an article or a web page they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to find. This can be useful in research, when a person is trying to find original source material or trying to verify sources that may have been used in a web journal. Academically hypertext is most useful in connecting information and knitting it into your own research or findings, this makes it easier for information to be transported (so to speak) to others.

To further the understanding of the term Hypertext we must first understand where it originates from. A person named Ted Nelson was the first to coin the term Hyperlink and he discusses it in his book called Literary machines. In this book he talks about his views on hypertext and how everything is “intertwined” and therefore has to be online together.” (Neilsen). Through this he began to try and create a program that would help to intermingle documents and literary information. Though it wasn’t implemented right away Brown University in the 1960s took initiative and created a program that would make Nelson’s idea of Hypertext successful.

Since then hypertext has changed but Brown University had a hand in making the basic functionality of a hypertext and that was only the beginning. “hypertext was conceived in 1945, born in the 1960s, slowly nurtured in the 1970s, and finally entered the real world in the 1980s with an especially rapid growth after 1985, culminating in a fully established field during 1989.” (Neilsen). Hypertext went through many transitions to be able to be stable and work as efficiently as it does today. Thanks to hypertext, the internet was successfully created.