Key New Media Theories

David Gauntlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlzu8UYidTY

The Media Gods

OLD MEDIA

The Media Gods NEW MEDIA

Passive Audience
Web 2.0
Appointment to view
User Generated
Expensive Cross Platform
Separate Platforms Inexpensive to produce
Centralized Decentralized
Wasted Social
Time/Cognitive Making is connecting
Surplus

As opposed to
Making is connecting
Marshall McLuhan
The Medium is the
Message

NEW MEDIA OLD MEDIA

Global Village The Gutenberg Galaxy

Cool Media Hot Media

As opposed to
We have extended our central nervous
system itself in a global embrace.'
Nielsen
Lean Forward, Lean Back

NEW MEDIA

Lean Forward
Lean back 2.0 OLD MEDIA

Lean back

On the Web, users are engaged and want to go

places and get things done. The Web is
an active medium. While watching TV, viewers
want to be entertained. They are in relaxation
mode and vegging out; they don't want to make
As opposed to
choices. TV is a passive medium.
 Nielsen: Lean
Forward/Lean Back
 Tim Berners Lee
The Internet
Different
communication
protocols. URLs
Every page has an
Competing address
(expensive) html
commercial software Shared non-commercial
software
Military/Scientific/Acad W3
emic Non Commercial body
users governs the rules (such
as domain names and
codes)
The World Wide
'I have always imagined the information space as
something to which everyone has Web
immediate and intuitive access, and not just to No barriers
browse, but to create.'
 Tim Berners Lee
DECENTRALISATION

Includes all,
irrespective of
wealth, social status, Monopolies (like
or geography Google)
Concentrate power and
make the web brittle

As opposed to
By design, the Web has no centre, anyone can
create.'
 Tim Berners Lee
OPENNESS

Open source software

(Linux, HTML)

Common Standards Copyrighted

(W3C consortium) commercial software.

As opposed to
Openness empowers People.'
 Tim Berners Lee
INCLUSION

Includes all,
irrespective of
wealth, social status,
or geography Information Poor
& Information Rich

As opposed to
The Power of the Web flows from its
universality.'
 Tim Berners Lee
PRIVACY,FREE
EXPRESSION,
SECURITY
Secure encryption

Freedom of
State surveillance (eg
expression PRISM)

State Censorship

As opposed to
Censorship on the web...directly attacks
freedom of expression.'
Lev Manovich DATABASE MEDIA

NEW MEDIA
OLD MEDIA
Automated
Creative Authors Creativity
Library logic Database logic
Stable texts (like books) Variable Texts
Impersonal Information Personalised
Information

As opposed to

The Internet, which can be thought of as one

huge distributed media database .'
 Henry Jenkins
CONVERGENCE
CULTURE

NEW MEDIA OLD MEDIA

CONVERGENCE CULTURE SEPARATE MEDIA

PLATFORMS
PARTICIPATORY CULTURE
PASSIVE AUDIENCE
COLLECTIVE CULTURE
INTELLIGENCE INDIVIDUAL
INTELLIGENCE

As opposed to
The Power of the Web flows from its
universality.'
 Aleks Krotoski: The Great Levelling

Libertarian
Big (Media) Corporations
Utopian/
Government
Communitarian
Control/Censorship Open Sourced
Centralised Infrastructure
Crowd Sourced
Market Capitalism
Open Architecture
Intellectual property
Anti Establishment
Surveillance
Hackers & Pirates
BIG BROTHER
DISRUPTIVE

The (Tim Berners Lee) Web was built around two conflicting tendencies and
these are still playing out..
 Invented the term
Tim OReilly: Web 2.0 Web 2.0 and said
there were six big
ideas that make it
work; the most
important to Media
being:
eMedia User Generated
Electronic Content
versions/add-ons to Audiences become the
old media producers
The Wisdom of
EG: eMail, Messaging, Crowds Audiences
Online Newspapers share their favourites,
Pay to view Movies tags and reviews
The Network Effect
Web 1.0 Audiences
communicate with each
other directly.
The web as a Web 2.0
New way of publishing
existing Media Content The Web as a
Social Network
 Lev Manovich

Software takes
Command
Automation
Decreases human intentionality in
the creative process.
EG: Photoshop filters
Blurs lines between professional and
amateur.
Database Logic
The Internet, which can be thought of as one
huge
distributed media database, also crystallized the
basic
condition of the new information society:
overabundance of
information of all kindsBy the end of the 20th
century, the
problem became no longer how to create a new
media object
such as an image; the new problem became how
to find the
Variability
Old media involves human creator(s)
composing a fixed/stable text that
is then copied and distributed
through mechanical means.
New media (like flickr) give rise to
many different versions. And
rather than being created
completely by a human author,
these versions are often in part
automatically assembled by a
Customization /
Personalization
You enter information about yourself
and then the automated software
creates a personalized interface to
the database just for you.
Reveals a post-industrial logic.

(Example: amazon recommendations)

Henry Jenkins: Media
Convergence
JENKINS: CONVERGENCE
Byconvergence, I mean the flow of
content across multiple media
platforms, the cooperation between
multiple media industries, and the
migratory behavior of media
audiences who would go almost
anywhere in search of the kinds of
entertainment experiences they
wanted.
PARTICIPATORY CULTURE
In this emerging media system,
consumers are transformed into
participants who are expected to
interact with each other ...each of
us constructs our own personal
mythology from bits and
fragments of information we
have extracted from the ongoing
flow of media around us and
transformed into resources through
which we make sense of our
 COLLECTIVE
INTELLIGENCE
Because there is more information
out there than we can store in our
heads, there is an added incentive
for us to talk amongst ourselves
about the media we consume.
Consumption has become a
collective process... None of us
can know everything; each of us
knows something; we can put the
pieces together if we pool our
1. User Generated Content
2. The Wisdom of Crowds
3. Data on an epic scale (Big Data)
4. Architecture of Participation
5. Network effects
6. Openness

Tim OReillys Web 2.0: The Six

The Network Effect (Tim
 We have extended our
central nervous system
itself in a global embrace,
abolishing both space
and time as far as our
planet is concerned.
Rapidly, we approach the
final phase of the
extensions of man.. the
technological simulation of
consciousness, when the
creative process of knowing
will be collectively and
corporately extended to the
whole of human society.
Mcluhan: Saw The New Media is an extension of
 Hot Medium
extends single sense in high definitio
low in audience participation
engenders specialization/fragmentat
detribalizes
excludes
extends space
creates Horizontal associations

Cool Medium
low definition (less data)
high in audience participation
engenders holistic patterns
tribalizes
includes
Mcluhan: Media Hot, Media Cool
collapses space
 Four epochs of history:

Oral (tribe) culture

Manuscript culture
Gutenberg galaxy
Electronic age (The Global Village)

McLuhan wrote that the visual,

individualistic print culture would soon
be brought to an end by what he called
"electronic interdependence":
when electronic media would
replace visual culture with aural/oral
culture. In this new age, humankind will
move from individualism and
fragmentation to a collective identity,
Mcluhan: The Global Village
with a "tribal base."and the coinage
McLuhan's
for this new social organization is
 ..The medium is the message.
This is merely to say that the
personal and social
consequences of any medium -
that is, of any extension of
ourselves - result from the new
scale that is introduced into our
affairs by each extension of
ourselves, or by any new
technology.

Mcluhan: The Medium IS the Message

I Love New Media

men at once become fascinated by

any extension of themselves in any
material other than themselves
(McLuhan, The Gadget Lover: Narcissus
as Narcosis 1964)
 The physical fact of instant
transmission has been
uncritically raised to a social
fact, without any pause to
notice that virtually all such
transmission is at once
selected and controlled by
existing social authorities ...
Raymond Williams (1974)

Raymond Williams : The Media is always dominated by

the rich and powerful in society (Marxist Perspective)
 Films, radio and magazines make up a
system which is uniform as a whole and
in every part are one in their
enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of
the iron systemany trace of
spontaneity from the public in official
broadcasting is controlled and absorbed
by talent scouts, studio competitions
and official programs of every kind
selected by professionals.

Theodor Adorno and Max

The Frankfurt (1944)
Horkheimer School (Marxist): Saw all
Media as Mass Deception. Is the New Media
The Media Gods

David Gauntlett
We used to just watch
Using our own time- and at
times set for us by the
The Media also used our
Media technology was
The Media Gods
Media handed down from
Each Media had its own
But all these were
Web 2.0 isnt one way- Its
New Media co-exist with the old
New Media values User
And encourages participation
There isnt a sudden change
New media enters the mix of
Tim Berners-Lee invented Web
Web 1.0 was like individual
Web 2.0 is like a shared
Old Media used/wasted time
New Media is more of a past-
New Media is feminised- part of
keeping busy- not vegging out
The Wisdom of Crowds e.g.
Media Studies Media Studies
1.0 2.0 interest in the
An
A tendency to
celebrate certain massive long tail of
key texts independent media
produced by projects such as
powerful media those found on
industries YouTube and many
other forms of
DIY media..

DIY and the Long Tail

The Long Tail- Chris Anderson
I Love New Media

men at once become fascinated by

any extension of themselves in any
material other than themselves
(McLuhan, The Gadget Lover: Narcissus
as Narcosis 1964)
Clay Shirky
Evgeny Morozov
Slacktivism

NEW MEDIA
Slacktivism OLD MEDIA
Lifestyle Politics
Cyberhedonism Activism
Surveillance Street Politics
Censorship
Propaganda

The Net is NOT inherently

As opposed to
liberating; its liberating
potential may shrink or grow
depending on the
circumstances .'
Field Positions in New Media -
T.D.Sampson
Computer The The Media
scientists McLuhanists Marxists

Dominated by scientific Emphasises the determining Critical approach to the

agendas role of the media
state and corporate
development
Pioneers and heroes build Big influence on positive Study of meaning and
the Internet versions of new media theory
and popular concepts.
From Manovich to Wired
Magazine
culture industries
(Frankfurt School)
Defined by (negative)
political economy approach
to new media (Westminster
School)
dominate ideology in
communication process
(British Cultural Studies and
Media Studies Tradition)
Representation and semiotics
French structuralism and
poststructuralism Barthes,
Derrida

Innovation leads to the Software studies Matt Fuller Postmodernism/post Marx

digital, the Internet and the Foucault, Baudrillard Deleuze
Web. Post-representational and Guattari
approaches Italian automatists
Software practices Hardt and Negri
Political Positions
Libertarians
Political Belief
People should be able to do
what they want with the
minimum of state control.
The weaknesses of the few
shouldnt prevent the
freedom of the many.
Philosophy
Information wants to be free
Regulation and control have
no place in the new territory
of Cyberspace.
Causes
Piracy and Censorship
Liberal
Pluralists
Different communities should
be able to live together with
a core of common values,
such as the rule of law and
the primacy of free speech.
The technology can be
empowering and educational
It is a great leveller, but all
citizens must have access to
the web as a digital
entitlement.
Regulation may be needed to
ensure (safe) access.
Digital Citizenship, Safe
access
cConservati
ve
It takes centuries to develop
a strong culture and
institutions. Novel ideas need
to learn to fit in with existing
values.The Jury is still out.
The technology will tend to
damage traditional values
and economic systems
including:
Literacy, Decency, Expertise,
Authority, Confidentiality,
Privacy, and Copyright
Internet Porn (Paedophilia
etc), Damage to young
people, Criminality, Privacy