Example of Changing New Media Use

This is an excellent example of the way audiences are now consuming media differently. The actor is seen interacting with the Internet, mobile phone and MP3 player as he buys some concert tickets and organises to catch up with friends. By doing this, he would certainly be considered part of an online community. Comparatively, a couple of decades ago, the traditional way to purchase concert tickets and catch up with friends would have been vastly different.

New Audience Research

The new media audience is consuming and interacting with media in vastly different ways to what has previously been known. The increasing prevalence of online communities and the rise of the participatory culture means there are great changes in audience behaviour. Banks (2002, 189) suggests that “internet technologies and the users forming around them are in the process of constructing a very different ‘audience’, with different practices, expectations, materials, tools and technologies”. With these changes, however, must come changes in media audience research. Researchers are being left behind as traditional methods are no longer adequate to measure the change in behaviour of this new media audience. Livingstone (2005) suggests that "audience researchers are faced with a moving target as once-'new' media become familiar and ever-newer media emerge". Audience research needs to adapt their research techniques if the media industry is to successfully monitor and measure this new media audience.

"We do not know how to describe the audience for new media. 'Audience' fits the activities of listening and watching. New information and communication technologies open up more active and diverse modes of engagement with media - playing, surfing, searching, chatting and downloading." (Livingstone 2005, 44)

An interesting article addressing this idea is "Dude, Where's my Audience". They suggest that traditional media measurements and tracking aren't keeping up with new habits such as time-shifting programs and multi-tasking (sitting with one eye on the TV with another on the laptop in front of you). They suggest that because media measurements are failing to measure this, the new media audience is probably being vastly underestimated.

References:

Banks, J. (2002). "Gamers as Co-Creators: Enlisting the Virtual Audience - A Report From the Net Face," in M. Balnaves, T. O'Regan and J. Sternberg (eds) Mobilising the Audience, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

Livingstone, S. (2005). "Media Audiences, Interpreters and Users," in M. Gillespie (ed.) Media Audiences, Maidenhead: Open University Press.

TheAge.com. (2007). Dude, Where's My Audience? Retrieved April 15, 2008, from http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/dude-wheres-my-audience/2007/07/24/1185043119701.html?page=fullpage

Defining New Media and Traditional Media

I was sitting reading my blog this morning and thought that while my focus is on the changes that new media has brought about, I really needed to clarify what I consider to be new media, and how this is different to traditional media.

I think that it's important to acknowledge that new media shouldn't be regarded as a complete replacement of older media but more of an addition to and integration with traditional media. It's difficult to clearly distinguish between those mediums we consider 'new' and those we consider 'old', as technologies and, in turn, the media landscape is constantly changing and bringing about new media. Flew (2005, 2) suggests that "new media can also be thought of as digital media". He goes on to outline five key features of information in new media, including that it is:

• Manipulable - the digital format of new media is easy to change, adapt and edit.
• Networkable - digital information can be shared at a global scale.
• Dense - large amounts of information can be stored or transmitted quickly.
• Compressible - information stored on a network can be easily compressed, or decompressed when needed.
• Impartial - networks can share and exchange any kind of information regardless of who created it, what form it takes, or how the information is used.

The digitisation of older, traditional media forms, particularly aided by the Internet, for e.g. online newspapers, has also blurred the line between the classification of what is old and what is new.

This shift and convergence from old to new media also creates a significant shift away from the traditional model of information and towards the network model. The main difference between the traditional model and the network model is the way information is produced. The traditional model is typically characterised by the production of information by established institutions of society. There are clearly defined power structures, and usually forms a top-down hierarchy of information with the majority of information contributed by experts or professionals. The network model, however, which is particularly aided and driven by the widespread popularity of the Internet, is characterised by the production of information by anyone and everyone and is published immediately. Networked social structures and constantly changing alternative sources of information and knowledge are typical of the network model.

References:

Flew, T. (2005). New Media: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Victoria: Oxford University Press.