The significance of my introduction to new media and journalism studies

I believe that my introduction to new media and journalism studies has vastly influenced my future career in the journalism industry. As the use of new media such as the internet grows, it is imperative for journalists to understand the impact that these new channels of communication will have on the way in which news is presented, distributed and assimilated. New media offers various unique opportunities for journalists. Lister asserts that “new media appear, as they have before, with claims and hopes attached; they will deliver increased productivity, educational opportunity and open up new creative and communicative horizons” (2002). Some of these communicative horizons, according to Lister, include “new textual experiences”, “new ways of representing the world”, “new relationships between subjects (users and consumers) and media technologies” and “new patterns of organization and production”. These create exciting new opportunities for the media to reach its audience on an entirely new, and more interactive, level. Lister asserts that information on the web exists in a “permanent state of flux, in that, freed from authorial and physical limitation, any net user can interact with [it]”. I believe that the interactivity of the web will allow for a more relevant, more democratic form of journalism, closely criticised and regulated by the very audience for whom it is produced. With regards to how new media relates to critical media studies, I believe that there is much merit in research of the ways in which people view new media, and the ways the new media act as filters to shape those perceptions of the media. We use cultural decoding to make sense of the advent of these new forms of media, and it is these new forms of media which give us the tools to decode them in a certain way. Lister mentions the need for critical study of “the wider processes through which media information and representations of the media is distributed, consumed and received by its various audiences.” Two major areas within new media which relate to critical media studies are “the shift from modernity to post-modernity” (and the perception that new media are one of the main manifestations of post-modernity) and the connection between new media and intensifying processes of globalisation - as seen in the expansion of the global village, via search engines such as Google (Bucy 2005). New media are seen as both cause and effect of these changes. Lister also asserts that internet thought is “modular, non-linear, malleable and co-operative”. These characteristics of the internet result in what Lévy calls “the disappearance of the signature”. A “reading writing continuum” is formed when the lines between reader and writer become blurred. This new experience of media is of great importance, as it influences the ways in which people relate to themselves, to the world, and to new media itself. I also believe that new media cannot be called “old wine in new wineskins”. Lister asserts that “the nature of the change that was experienced [at the advent of new media] warranted an absolute marking off from what went before”. Our current new media differs vastly from previous forms of media in that it utilises digital, rather than analogue, forms. This allows for “media texts to be ‘dematerialised’”, “compressed into very small spaces”, “accessed at very high speeds” and “manipulated far more easily than analogue forms.” These, and the high level of interactivity afforded by new media, means that the media is more accessible to the public than ever before.

Bucy E (ed). 2005. Remediation in Living in the Information age: A New Media Reader. USA: Thomson Wadsworth *
Lister, Martin [et al.]. 2002. New Media and Technologies in New media : a critical introduction . London : Routledge