What is New Media?
Vin Crosbie, 1998 (revised to include world usage figures and Napster example, 2002
Only its simplicity makes its difficult to understand.
To work successfully in New Media, you must understand what the New Media are.
There is a saying about Einsteins Theory of Relativity — that what makes it difficult for some people to comprehend is its simplicity. That you dont need to acquire more information to understand it, but that you must instead discard preconceived notions to understand it.
The New Media are a lot like that.
What generally stand in the way of peoples understanding of New Media are the very terms media and medium. As commonly used, those terms are misnomers that block understanding.
Simply dont confuse a Medium with its Vehicles
Very few people understand the New Media simply because what most people think are media are actually vehicles within a medium.
- Magazines arent media nor is a magazine a medium.
- Television isnt a medium nor is radio nor are television stations media.
- A personal computer connected to the Internet isnt a medium and the many computers that comprise the Internet arent media.
- Neither is the World Wide Web a medium nor is e-mail a medium nor is the Internet itself a medium.
Newspapers, magazines, television, radio, telephones, billboards, personal computers, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and e-mail all are vehicles for conveying information within a medium or media. They arent the media or a medium in which they operate.
To understand the difference between a communications vehicle and a communications medium, you merely need to understand how the terms medium, media, and vehicles are correctly used when discussing transportation.
Just as only three transportation media exist, only three communications media exist.
As with transportation media, two of those communication media are ancient and arose independent of technology. But the third medium is relatively new and its use is totally dependent upon technology:
Oddly, the first and earliest of these three communications media is only one not to have a commonly accepted name. So, well call this first medium the Interpersonal Medium.
This aboriginal medium arose in basic animal communications, predating both humans and technology. Human technology later extended its speed and reach. Interpersonal conversation is the basic form of this medium. The vehicles that human technology later built for it include the postal letter, telephone call, and electronic mail.
Just as the transportation media of land or water have some unique characteristics, so does the this Interpersonal Medium of communications. It notably has two hallmarks:
- Each participant has equal and reciprocal control of the content conveyed.
- And the content can be individualized to each participants unique needs and interests.
However, those hallmark advantages come with equal disadvantages:
- The equal control and also the individualization of content degrade into cacophony as the number of participants increases beyond two (for example, try simultaneously holding different conversations with more than one person).
For those reasons, this Interpersonal Medium characteristically is used for communications between only two people. And why many academics who study communications media term it the one-to-one medium.
Mass Medium is the Second of Three Communications Media Extant
The Mass Medium is the second communications medium.
Most people mistake the Mass Medium as a product of technology and dont realize how old it really is.
Like the Interpersonal Medium, the Mass Medium predates technology. It originated with the utterances and speeches of tribal leaders, kings, and priests. Technology has merely extended its speed and its reach to global dimensions.
Some vehicles in the Mass Medium are edicts, oratory, sermons, scriptures, plays, books, newspapers, billboards, magazines, cinema, radio, television, bulletin boards, and webcasting.
Communications in the Mass Medium generally go from a one person (for examples, a leader, a king, a priest, a publisher, or a broadcaster) to many people (the audience, readership, listenership, viewership). This also is why many academics who study communications media term it the one-to-many medium.
The hallmark characteristics of the Mass Medium are:
- That the same content goes to all recipients.
- And that the one who sends it has absolute control over that content.
The corresponding disadvantages of the Mass Medium are:
- That its content cannot be individualized to each recipients unique needs and interests and that the recipients have no real control over that content.
Like the Interpersonal Medium, the Mass Medium isnt necessarily dependent upon technology. For example, an actor or speaker can perform without any technology.
Two Mutually Exclusive Media of Communications
With Mutually Exclusive Vehicles
Before we list the third communications medium, lets note some contrasting characteristics of these two earlier communications media. Just as the transportation media of land and water have mutually exclusive characteristics, so do the Interpersonal Medium and the Mass Medium for communications
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