There are many experts that contribute to new media theories and their relevancy to the work of technical communicators. I will introduce the theories of three experts then draw similarities and differences among them.
Lev Manovich: He proposes that new media is a distribution platform. Manovich (2003) defines new media as “the cultural objects which use digital computer technology for distribution” (p. 16-17). Many variations of new media such as “Internet, Web sites, computer multimedia…and computer-generated special effects” (Manovich, p. 17) are computerized methods with which technical communicators deliver messages. In his book, The Language of New Media, Manovich presents five principles of new media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. The principles of each characteristic are briefly described in the video below.
Janet Murray: She makes the point that computers are a new literary medium. This is due to both “consisting of the writing of procedural rules and the engagement of an improvising interactor with the rule-governed system” (Murray, 2003, p. 7). Technical communication is audience centric and today the medium choice is often through computer technology. Therefore, technical communicators tailor and package messages in the most effective way for the audience; often this is through combining rules of grammar and digitally technology with media like email, websites, e-books, blogs, and much more.
Eugenia Siapera: In Chapter 2 of the text, the author highlights how audiences are the driving force of media content. Siapera (2018) explains how user-generated content has exploded due to the “rising levels of education…as well as the dissatisfaction with the limits of mainstream media” (p. 33). In this way, audiences have chosen to break free from the voiceless confines one-way communication of old (i.e. radio and television) and instead contest and create content on websites and blogs. This demand for interaction and a voice changes the concept dynamic of mass media. Siapera (2018) explains how social media crowdsourcing campaigns are an example of this solicited brainstorming and collaboration (p. 35). For technical communicators, this new voice of the masses provides new ways in which to mediate between the writer and audience.
Common Ground Among Sources:
Each author focuses on new media delivering messages and content that audiences desire.
- Manovich (2003) proposes that new media technologies “have become the greatest art works of today” (p. 16). He compared the influence of old and new cultural institutions and highlighted the significance of societal (audience) attention being the catalyst to the popular shift of new media (Manovich, 2003, p. 13).
- Murray (2003) links digital media to fulfilling the human (audience) desire to connect with and “understand the world and our place in it” (p. 11). Hence, people’s desire to share and expound on thinking and creating.
- Siapera (2018) presents Henry Jenkins concept of convergence as the “result of changing consumption practices by audiences or media users” (p. 36). Therefore, audience desire invokes changes in how new media is delivered.
Differences Among Sources:
Each author differs on the societal impact of new media.
- Through the study of new media, Manovich (2003) a few examples of potential impacts:
- “new technology will allow for ‘better democracy,’ it will give us a better access to the ‘real’ (by offering ‘more immediacy’ and/or the possibility to ‘represent what before could not be represented’)” (p. 19).
- “it will contribute to ‘the erosion of moral values’” (p. 19).
- Murray views the societal impact of new media as a expanding human thinking and connection. Some specific examples Murray (2003) gives are:
- Collaborate thinking by “building shared structures of meaning” (p. 11).
- “We will…invent communities of communication at the widest possible bandwidth and smallest possible granularity” (p. 11).
- Siapera (2018) highlights the way with which new media continues or creates new inequalities (p. 20). A few areas of inequalities that Siapera (2018) outlines is:
- Informational capitalism, which “relies on new media and technology, and…imposes their logic on all areas of production and consumption” (p. 21). Some examples of inequalities are:
- “The informationalization of employment has led to a steady decline of agricultural and manufacturing jobs” (p. 22).
- Flexible labour “in terms of distance, with telework…in terms of relationship to employers, with…freelance work” (p. 23). “The increasing precariousness of flexible labour has led to an emphasis on continuous training and lifelong learning, pointing to an increasing gap between the educated and skilled workers and the low or unskilled ones” (p. 23).
- Political economy, which “emphasizes the ways in which processes of media production and consumption reproduce dominant relationships” (p. 27). With common business mergers and acquisitions of new media firms, conglomerates like Google have partnered with Ascensions and gained patents and licenses to own the medical record data of millions of oblivious citizens (Garcia, 2019).
Works Cited
Garcia, A. (2019). Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ center of federal inquiry. CNN Business. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/12/tech/google-project-nightingale-federal-inquiry/index.html (Links to an external site.)
Manovich, L. (2003). New Media from Borges to HTML. The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wadrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003. 13–25. Print.
Murray, J. H. (2003). Inventing the Medium. The New Media Reader. Retrieved from http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-intro-murray-excerpt.pdf (Links to an external site.)
Park, E. (2018). Lev Manovich’s Principles of New Media. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/f81iEcEj-2E
Siapera, E. (2018). Understanding new media(2nded). London: SAGE.
Defining New Media 