What is New Media?

The purpose of this entry is to define what New Media is. Although to me, it is strange to call something “new” and “old” when it is all relative to the time and person viewing it. When I look at media I just look at it as a consistent flow of communication between the author and the consumer of media. There are changes however, as “seamless” as this evolution seems, which triggered vast advances in the technologies supporting mass media.

Firstly, the Internet has undoubtedly changed how the masses consume media. That cannot be denied. The year before the Internet was developed and the year after Internet was developed seem like totally different eras, even centuries. People began communicating in time that they could not even imagine and were staying connected with practically everyone in the world- from family to co-workers, the latter of both which some people now regret. Seconfly, New Media became more interactive and personal. It became even more democratic with the development of Web 2.0, which made New Media a “do-it-yourself” media, as the Web 2.0 YouTube video explains.

The new technologies, which support this open and equal communication between the creator and the receiver, include blogs, wikis, Flickr, and websites such as Facebook, Technorati and Google Maps. These advances changed the Internet from a “static website”, to a more customizable and collaborative platform for mass communication, where everyone has a voice, no matter how insignificant their real life is in the grand spectrum of the world. For the first time, oppressed people in the Middle East could post YouTube videos of governmental violence against citizens, which shocked the whole world and called for change. There is more transparency now. More responsibility for one’s actions and statements. All you have to do is “ youtube it”, and it already has a voice. It gave people more freedom to fight back for injustices done to them. It decentralized the power to communicate and thus the power to influence.

As the previously mentioned video, in Web 1.0 you, as the creator, choose your content while in Web 2.0 your content is created by the people and only influenced by you. The Internet made communication faster and thus more current and meaningful, which allows for people to experience life together and more simultaneously. No matter what the future will bring in terms of technology “the lid is blowing off”, as Clive Thompson writes in his Wired article, and media can be transformed into anything people desire it to be. New Media is succeeding because it is more interactive and it lets people influence what they consume in terms of information. You have a question? Go to Yahoo!Answers. Old media is not going to cease to exist because people still crave knowledge and entertainment. It will just blend into a more balanced form of media that people want to consume. Where you people can read what they like and post their reactions. People are in charge now. Finally.