New Media

Definition

New media provide interactivity for the user of the media. The digitality of new media provides innovative ways to format the media for the needs of the user. This is much different than traditional, or “old media,” in that old media does not allow the same interaction with the user. What makes this interaction possible is the digitization of the media into mathematical binary code as distinct from physics and chemistry (Lister 15). Once the media has become digital code it then becomes bits transcending the fixed from of analog media.

New media are characterized by a sense of change since the mid-1980s:

• modernity to postmodernity
• intensifying globalization
• industry to information
• decentering of established political orders

The study of new media focuses on several key terms:

• digitality
• interactivity
• hypertextuality
• dispersal
• virtuality

Though much has been done within the study of new media since the 1970s, current critical thought is frequently grounded in the theories of Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams.

Internal Links

• New Media Vocabulary

Works Cited

• Lister, Martin, Hon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, and Kieran Kelly. New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2003.