NEW MEDIA, ‘OLD’ MEDIA AND CONVERGENCE Lecture notes for Media & Society COMM 100, Furness *Adapted from course notes authored by Dr. Marianne Hicks at Monash University, Australia

‘Old Media’ – Form and Function Print – newspapers, magazines, books, etc. Audio - radio Audio-visual – television, cinema. Broadcasting as one-way communication (encoding-decoding model) Functions: Entertainment & ‘Fourth Estate’

New Media = Digital Media Information and Communication Technology Internet Social Networking Software YouTube iTunes, MySpace LAN and gaming environments Web 2.0 Mobile Phones Satellite TV

New Media = Convergence Participation (Participatory Culture) Production + Consumption = Prosumer Concentration & Dispersion

History of the Internet 1965 – The first networked computers (two of them, and they constantly crashed) – ARPANET Advanced Research Projects Agency Network – text based – funded by the US Military – The term ‘internet’ was first used. 1980s – An increasing number of networked computers worldwide and first ISPs (Internet Service Providers) emerge for the commercialisation of the web. 1990s – The internet emerges as a space for commercial activities.

“… technological, industrial, cultural and social changes in the way media circulates within our culture. Some common ideas referenced by the term include the flow of content across multiple platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, the search for new structures of media financing … and the migratory behavior of audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kind of entertainment experiences they want. Perhaps most broadly, media convergence refers to a situation in which multiple media systems coexist and where media content flows fluidly across them. Convergence is … an ongoing process … and not a fixed relationship.” -Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 2006: 282. Convergence

“The current platforms: television, radio, newspapers, can all converge on screen with broadband on the net. And we're looking towards perhaps having one screen which can do everything. I know people have talked forever about convergence, about having screens all around your house and you can operate them, you'll call up your television and your radio, which by the way I already do in Britain on one screen, but next you'll also have the internet on that screen too. I think that's where we're heading; I think you'll get everything, virtually everything, through the net.” Roy Greenslade on ‘The Media Report’, Radio National, 7.htm Convergence = one screen

Traditional media (newspaper, radio and television corporations) meet new media (online news sites, with multimedia – words, images, sound bites and video)

DoubleClick Google AdSense Ofoto Flickr AkamaiBitTorrent mp3.comNapster Britannica Online Wikipedia personal websites blogging publishing participation content management systems wikis directories (taxonomy)tagging ("folksonomy”) Web > Web 2.0

New media and social change Increased Monitoring & Surveillance Online identity (your boss and Facebook) Increasing equality or inequality The ‘Digital Divide’? Access to information? Harnessing collective intelligence Ex. Wikis Identity construction Social networking software & sites (i.e. Facebook & MySpace) “Technology is always, in the full sense, social. It is necessarily in complex and variable connection with other social relations and institutions, although a particular and isolated technological intervention can be seen, and temporarily interpreted, as if it were autonomous. -Raymond Williams, Contact: Human Communication and Its History, p. 227

Uses of New Media Challenge to traditional news media corporations (citizen journalism & Blogosphere) Challenge to traditional entertainment corporations (BitTorrent, Pirate Bay) Reducing the ‘tyranny of distance’ (Skype, Twitter) Access to information (Google & Wikipedia) Building online communities (Facebook & MMORPGs)

New Media to access ‘Old’ Media In addition to producing new content through new formats, websites, blogs and social media also function as gateways to traditional media: Online versions of newspapers Internet broadcasts of radio TV broadcasts Videos and films

New Media to access New Media The rise in Internet sources, multi-uses of cell phones, and development of media alternative infrastructures leads to: Lowering the threshold to civic engagement Creating Global Citizens Ethical and Responsible Participation Create the critical capacity to understand the way in which media shapes perceptions of the world

New media environments entail… Play – the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving Performance – the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation Simulation – the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes Appropriation – the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content Multitasking – the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details Distributed Cognition – the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities Collective Intelligence – the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

New media environments entail… Judgment – the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources Transmedia navigation – the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities Networking – the ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate information Negotiation – the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms. - From Henry Jenkins, "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture,” 56.

Activities? Creating wikis Recognizing each others knowledge, i.e. ‘collective intelligence’ Group Ownership and vandalism Using hyperlinks to connect ideas Creating class and individual blogs Individual Ownership and plagiarism Interaction Clarity of expression Play as a means of learning (gaming) Communication, self-confidence, problem solving, logical thinking, lateral thinking etc. Media Literacy and critical understanding Being critical of ‘professional’ looking sites Cell-phone access Adapting our material for their platform (libraries and coursework)

Using the ideas of New Media offline: Applying Web 2.0 Collective intelligence and the Wiki model. We all have some knowledge to contribute, we all share in the knowledge produced collectively. Participatory Culture We learn more if we are involved in the making and doing. Prosumers – those who both produce and consume cultural artifacts.