In the 21st century, researchers no longer understand media as just the communications and the Internet. The media environment is the entire space of interactions that surround a person. New media types have influenced how people communicate, how they produce material goods, consume them, and even the hierarchy in modern society. Man is a social animal, and the locations where he lives are not just physical spaces; they are much larger, they are intellectual, confessional, and global. As Siapera claims in her book, modern media “offered the unique possibility of transcending the confines of space and located-ness, allowing communicating with others regardless of where people are” (p. 215). However, media is a system platform, and the media environment is no less important than the geographical, cultural, linguistic situation in which modern man exists.
Media in the Modern World
A lot of modern life problems arise since a person has multiple identities. It certainly belongs to the place, but it also applies to many other components. The harmonious combination of one and the other is the question of contemporary media in the broad sense if people do not consider the media as the media, but instead talk about communication platforms and transmission technologies. When scientists examine media, they do not mean only magazines, newspapers, television, or the Internet, for all their importance.
People have been living in the digital world for a very long time now. Since the middle of the 20th century, the media sphere has been developing intensively. The area represented has become the subject of study and the question of design. Nowadays, people understand the media considerably widely. It is often said that the media are internet communication, but this is not entirely accurate. Contemporary media includes many aspects of modern cultural life and social interaction (Aguirre et al, p. 105). Urban navigation, computer games, and even interpersonal communications become indirect media means which take on a digital format.
More and more people are working in the area described. However, media technologies and the digital world require a considerably comprehensive range of competencies to manage them. It is about creating a class of producers in the modern world who work not only with media content but also with technology. Specialists are expanding their skills, and the task of media producers is to build interfaces for the interaction of individuals or communities with the virtual world. The cooperation of people is also carried out through the media and requires interfaces.
The Concept and Features of New Media
New media is a term that refers to the emergence of computer, digital, and network communications and technologies in the late 20th century. McChesney claims in his article that “the Internet and digital technologies provide extraordinary opportunities to democratize, improve, and transform our journalism for the better, even revolutionize it” (p. 229). Over the past twenty years, media has been actively transforming due to the advent of new technologies and the Internet. As defined by Professor Hauer, “new media is a new format for the existence of media that are always available on digital devices and imply the active participation of users in the creation and distribution of content” (p. 2). To explain why it is essential to study the phenomenon of transmedia in the modern world, it is necessary to delve somewhat into the history of the concept, into the history of the definition of the idea of “new media.” Of course, the very idea of a novelty here is already quite old as new media are not new, and they are part of everyday life, and people do not imagine media in any other form.
Nevertheless, the word itself has become entrenched, and the concept of “new media” evokes much more understanding than, for example, the idea of “transmedia.” In the most general case, new media are defined through three main categories: digital code, interactivity, and integration. Moreover, the numeric code here is a crucial category, since it provides the next two following features. Integration takes place at all levels that are the level of management, content, and consumption. Moreover, in the situation of new media, researchers do not distinguish between individual media such as television, radio, the Internet, newspapers since all these are different sides of the same phenomenon, and each of the traditional media begins to possess the features of all others based on digital content.
Interactivity has appeared because the user can very actively intervene in the content and becomes its full-fledged creator. In the situation of traditional media, social institutions created media content for large undifferentiated groups of citizens and distributed through channels that belonged to individuals or states. Today all carriers are publicly available, and the content can be equally freely distributed from any Internet user (Baran, “Mass Communication”, p. 17). Therefore, indeed, interactivity is a significant feature of new media, in the framework of which everyone who is involved in this content in any way influences its creation (Baran, “Convergence and the Reshaping”, p. 42). Moreover, the border between the creator and the consumer of messages is erased. The definition presented is, indeed, the most general and today is no longer sufficiently working. In particular, many researchers generally deny an absolute novelty of the phenomenon of new media, saying that completely all elements, except, possibly, digital coding, appeared in previous eras.
However, there is another definition, quite widespread, and it belongs to the American researcher Lev Manovich. His interpretation of new media is based on the idea that computer culture and the logic of a machine program are of particular importance in the situation of new media (Manovich, p. 135). Moreover, the logic of a computer program is that users do not notice that it has a dramatic effect on the content of new media. Indeed, it is precisely what any content, including artistic and symbolic, that consumer receives in the form of computer programs that already has a unique effect on the content itself and on whoever receives this content. Programs represented categorically change all forms of communication and perception of any symbolic products, whether it is a work of art or news.
Today the level of creativity significantly increased, but at the same time, everyone who produces today does it from ready-made elements, as if assembling a puzzle from prefabricated parts. That is, all digital items are already in finished form on the Web, and all the users can do is make a new combination of these elements again. Thus, it can be stated that the level of creativity has increased significantly, and creativity as a whole is widespread. However, at the same the old creativity is becoming less and less of such phenomena because, in general, the authors of any media messages (even any symbolic products) still produce their works from ready-made content programmed for them.
Media Art
One of the leading products of such a composite activity and the rapid development of computer technology and creativity was the emergence of media art. Media art is one of the types of performance, works of which are created and presented using current information or media technologies, mainly such as video, multimedia technologies, and the Internet. Media art includes several genres that vary depending on the type of technology used and the form of presentation of works (Tosa et al, p. 129). Media art is at the crossroads of creation, science, and technology.
The development of modern technology and the digital world’s entrance into everyday life have become excellent opportunities for artists to master new media. Today, media art includes such trends as digital art, generative art, computer animation, GIF-art, net-art, and many others. Simply put, new media art is a performance or a series of artistic strategies created or based on modern technologies, and using a computer and programming languages instead of brushes and paints. Even though the evolution of forms of communication leads to a complete paradigm shift, but at this stage of the phenomenon, it is essential to be open to new aspects of human self-expression, not only from creativity and imagination but also from science and analytics. A basic understanding of technology, which comes first in media creativity, can help clarify the discipline of new media.
Thus, the development of new media leads to the total involvement of consumers in the creation of content and the advancement of new forms of art. The thesis of dominance in a society where communication reigns are becoming obsolete because people have unprecedented power over how and when they gain access to information and with whom they share it. In this sense, digital media fundamentally undermines the interests of any institution based on power and control. The knowledge and information that people can receive once depended on where they lived, but now a person gets unlimited access to the desired information, which leads to the development of innovative ideas and original forms of activity. This aspect of the new media can be considered positive, and the integration of technology into daily life can be assessed as valuable.
Works Cited
- Aguirre, Elizabeth, et al. “The Personalization-Privacy Paradox: Implications for New Media.” Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 33, no. 2, 2016, pp. 98–110.
- Baran, Stanley. “Mass Communication, Culture, and Media Literacy.” Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture Updated Edition. 8th ed., McGraw-Hill Education, 2014, pp. 3–27.
- “Convergence and the Reshaping of Mass Communication.” Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture Updated Edition. 8th ed., McGraw-Hill Education, 2014, pp. 29–45.
- Hauer, Thomas. “Technological Determinism and New Media.” International Journal of English, Literature, and Social Science (IJELS), vol. 2, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1–4.
- Manovich, Lev. “Remix Strategies in Social Media.” The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, edited by Navas, Eduardo, et al., Routledge, 2014, pp. 135 – 1
- McChesney, Robert. “Rejuvenating American Journalism: Some Tentative Policy Proposals Workshop Presentation on Journalism, Federal Trade Commission Washington, D.C., March 10, 2010.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, vol. 10, no. 1, 2011, pp. 224–37.
- Siapera, Eugenia. Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, 2017.
- Tosa, Naoko, et al. “Creation of Media Art Utilizing Fluid Dynamics.” International Conference on Culture and Computing (Culture and Computing), 2017, pp. 129–135.