OLD AND NEW MEDIA

Scissoricizing and Scrapbooks: 19th century reading, remaking, and recirculating Characteristics of new media: digitality, interactivity, hypertextuality, dispersal, virtuality. This does not mean that these characteristics were totally absent from “traditional” media. Readings discuss how interactivity and dispersal of production and consumption also characterized scrapbook culture in 19th century.

Bookwheel

Index Rerum 1835: A sort of catalogue of your own reading. Quote favorite passages or passages of interest and organize them topically Assumes continued access to books that one uses: knowledge remains contextualized. Internet equivalent?

Scrapbooks With the arrival of magazines and newspapers, audiences started to “cut and paste” articles of interest in scrapbooks. Scrapbooks reflect interest of makers. Recontextualizing information. Challenging authorship Contemporary equivalent?

So why do we care? Shows that audience always has searched to make certain uses of media to satisfy its own needs rather than follow the conventions of the medium. ( Mcluhan) What is the relation of the audience towards cultural texts? Passive receivers of information or active creators of content? ==> textual poaching vs. gleaning

Textual poaching (Henry Jenkins) Audience’s particular mode of reception. Particular set of critical and interpretative practices (discussions about plots, characters…) A base for consumer activism (write letters to networks, fight against bootlegging) Particular forms of cultural production and artwork (fanfiction) An alternative social community (creation of non- geographical communities, based on shared interests)

Textbook example: Trekkies How is textual poaching of Star Trek fans different from and similar to the textual poaching of scrap book makers? Can you list other examples of textual poaching (on the Internet)? How does the Internet changes the relation between cultural texts and audience?

Question Five characteristics of new media are not absolute. Some of them were present -to an extent- in old media. What do media have in common and what sets them apart? What is old in new media and what is new in old media? For example: If one looks at “new media” as an economic commodity, the same economic rules apply : If you don’t bring in money, you will go under