Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape

This article by Henry Jenkins, 2006 which can be viewed at http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/eight_traits_of_the_new_media.html

was the first essential reading for the course and I felt it was a really good introduction to the kinds of debates and issues I will be learning about over the next year. The focus on "emerging cultural practices" rather than "emerging technologies" created a clear divide in my head between the technologies I've been using and how they are actually affecting my life and the way I interact with people.

According to Jenkins the Contemporary Media Landscape is:

1- Innovative

"New media technologies spark social and aesthetic experimentation" I think this is referring to social networking sites such as myspace. when this was popular everyone seemed to me to be obsessed with updating the layouts and backgrounds of their pages. However facebook soon became more popular perhaps because it was easier to use and more uniform.

"Such transformations broaden the means of self and collective expression", this is definitely an accurate statement when thinking about the internet today for instance this blog is giving me the means to express my views, for free in a place where potentially anyone could view and comment on my ideas. Such opportunities where not available 10 years ago.

2- Convergent

Jenkins talks about how new media is shaped top-down as it is in the economic interest of media conglomerates to "move any successful media content from one delivery system to another in order to maximise profit and broaden market potential". This can be seen in the new technologies emerging such as the iphone where the secret of its success is how convergent it it, this has been realised and created by the producers in order for them to make money.

However, this can also be shaped from the bottom-up by "the participatory impulses of consumers....they want the media they want when they want it and where they want it". This highlights just how much power new media is giving to the consumers, no longer does it seem to be a world where we just consume what we are told we should be consuming but we have been given a voice. As Jenkins puts it "they use the web to talk back to media producers". I think technologies like BBC iplayer are an example of media shaped from the bottom-up as they had to provide a service to keep up with our "on demand" demands of TV as there are several illegal sites offering a similar service they had to keep up.

3- Everyday

There seems to be an ongoing debate about how much these new media technologies are effecting and changing our everyday lives. I often wonder how we used to cope without mobile phones as now the idea of going anywhere without one seems impossible!

My favourite quote from this article is in this section;

"We can no more see the layer of media that surrounds us than fish notice the water they are swimming in".

I think it's a really good metaphor for the world we live in today. I can imagine a fish bowl filled with all the media that I must be exposed to everyday, most of it goes unnoticed though and exists almost like white noise. This is something I think people tend to forget when talking about how the media effects us- just because it is there, surrounding every moment of our lives does not mean all of it is taken in and actually absorbed but maybe about 25-50% of it.

4-Appropriative

This part talks about how new media are appropriate for each person, and how technologies can be manipulated for almost any function. This has very strong links with how the internet can be used for self expression. I like how Jenkins has phrased this "their web pages function as the digital equivalent of the old commonplace books, a heady mixture of personal expressions and borrowed materials" this acknowledges the internet to be a good thing for today's youth. How maybe facebook is the online equivalent to the scrapbooks our parents kept and shared with friends.

5- Networked

Jenkins talks about how the "one sender-many receiver model" which dominated print culture has changed into a "many-many model". Now anyone can easily circulate their work or ideas to a larger community.

This can have many advantages, particularly as networking is considered an important social and professional skill these days but also disadvantages as it becomes harder to communicate to only the people you intended to communicate with "while maintaing privacy from unwanted observation".

6- Global

My immediate ideas about the media being global are advantages for business and easy ways of communication between friends of family who are separated by large distances. However, Jenkins article highlighted some ideas that would not have come to me otherwise.

"This expanded communication will bring about greater understanding; others see the return to fundamentalism a a reaction against the threat posed by these global exchanges."

"Some worry the most economically powerful nations will overwhelm the rest, insuring a homogenization of global cultures; others contend that the world requires constant production of cultural differences in order to satisfy a seemingly insatiable hunger to step outside our own culture".

These issues may be extremely serious however I tend to agree 50-50 with each side of the arguments unable to make up my mind whether these issues pose any threats.

7- Generational

This poses interesting ideas about how "cultural traditions and norms" used to be passed down from generation to generation but now young people are adopting radically different cultural styles and values to that of their parents.

I'm not sure this is directly related to the new media of today as young people always go on to learn new things to that of their parents. I'm not sure how this has changed from 100 years ago apart for the actual technologies at hand have changed. Books were replaced by radios which were replaced by TV's, all these changes saw a generational shift, ours is the internet.

8- Unequal

This concerns us with the idea that people have the choice to be part of or not part of new media technologies, especially when thinking about the internet. However there is a rising feeling within our culture that if you're not participating online that you are then invisible and could be forgotten. This could be the case for those who simply do not have the means to participate.

I guess this is true to some extent but I don't think our culture will continue to preform in this way, I think it is more connected to young people who like to connect to others online. We still use the phone as much as we use the internet and in that sense if you want to communicate with someone then you will regardless if they are online or not, but there is that social aspect of having to be seen and included online.

I think these 8 catergories are a really interesting way of looking at how we use the internet and has certainly made me more aware of how I am using the internet and what he internet may be doing to out cultural practices.