New media
certain, new media have made possible commu-
nication across space more accessible to a wider
section of the population, both national and
international, than would have been dreamed of
a decade or so ago. Th e world of knowledge, once
limited to books and libraries, once guarded
by the secrecy of offi cialdom, once a ‘property’
accessible only to the privileged, has been prised
wide open.
In her introduction to Alternative and Activist
New Media (Polity Press, 2011), Leah A. Lievrouw
cites four factors which make ‘new media’ new:
(1) Recombination, that is the way users of media
technology make up, as it were, their own menus
and forms of communication, producing hybrids
or recombinations. What emerges is ‘the product
of people’s ideas, decisions and actions, as they
merge the old and new technologies, uses and
purposes’. (2) Design and use based on networks
(and networks of networks), the hyperlink being
‘the quintessential feature of new media’. (3)
Ubiquity, ‘the seeming presence of new media
everywhere, all the time which aff ects everyone
in societies where they are, whether or not every
individual uses them directly’ (see informa-
tion gaps). (4) Interactivity characterized by
the participation by users in innovative as well as
traditional intercommunicative ways.
Th ese factors are mutually infl uencing, each
helping to shape the others, subject to ‘change
more rapidly than media systems have in the
past’. Th ey ‘resist stablilization of “lockdown” and
change continuously ...’ See audience: active
audience; bricolage; demotic turn; genre.
▶Martin Lister et al, New Media: A Critical Introduc-
tion (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2009); Jan van Dijk, Th e
Network Society (Sage, 2nd edition, 2010).
New media genre theory See genre.
News Th e study of news is central to most, if not
all, courses in communication and media stud-
ies. Like information itself, the news is a vital
component of the life of individuals, groups,
communities and nations. News brings us
information 24 hours a day. Whether it is in
print or broadcast form, the news re-presents to
us the world – reality; and every student soon
learns that the news is a process, or rather an
amalgam of many processes, which mediate
information: select it, edit it, emphasize some
parts of it, distort it, even manipulate it. News,
that is the raw information that is eventually
constructed as news, is turned into narrative,
a mode of storytelling, which by the application
of certain professional practices – conventions- establishes what has come to be termed news
discourse.
New media Term referring specifically to the
possibilities brought about by computers and
telecommunication, encompassing the inter-
net and all its manifest applications. New media
includes the mobile phone (see mobilization)
and is characterized by technological conver-
gence and, contrastingly in terms of its reach,
divergence.
New media diff er from ‘old’ media in a number
of ways. Traditionally, control of any commu-
nicative transmission beyond the field of the
personal has rested in the hands of institutions,
both public and private. To communicate with
hundreds and thousands it was necessary to
own such institutions or work for them. Now
fresh territories have opened up for groups and
individuals; communication is possible free of
institutional control. The airwaves buzz with
bloggers (see blogging; journalism: citizen
journalism); it is as easy to tune into, and be
active with, cyber-journalists, cyber-philoso-
phers, as it is to pick up a newspaper.
New media are interactive; they are two-way,
multiple-way, where traditional media have
tended to be one-way means of information and
entertainment. No longer are we entirely reliant
for news and comment on the press, radio or TV.
Th e traditional vertical structure of communica-
tions has tilted, and continues to tilt, towards the
horizontal.
What has been created by new media is a
‘downloading culture’; and the impact of being
able to download texts of all kinds, from music to
movies, is seen as both a marvellous opportunity
and a threat. If everything is for free, who pays
the piper in the fi rst place? Across the board,
communications industries are having to adjust
to the challenges of downloading.
Not least, new media is characterized by the
speed of its development, matched by the pace
of absorption by the public, young people in
particular. Th e ‘old’ media have not, of course,
been left behind. Now we can read newspapers
online; popular photography has creatively and
profitably embraced the digital; our mobile
phones are fast becoming ‘infotainment centres’.
In schools, electronic whiteboards are taking
over from chalk and duster; in higher education,
text-messaging is being given academic status
and respectability with new courses.
New media have made possible the rise of new
voices, new modes of communication – essen-
tially, but not always, personal; expressions of
individuality. It remains to be seen how far these
expressions can move, consistently, beyond the
personal to the communal. One thing is for