What do theorists mean by the 'second media age'? Do the kinds of media forms emerging suggest the need for new sociological concepts and analytic tool?
In any discussion of new media, a question that needs to be addressed is why some media are considered to be 'new'. It is however difficult to understand different degrees of 'newness' among and across various media, partly because the rate of change in media technologies, services, and uses has been so rapid that what we call 'new' in media technologies will quickly become dated. This is also because new media is basically an advance of old media. For instance the technology of the MP3 player or the iPOD is fundamentally a development from their former audio technologies such as Discman, Walkman, and Radio.
Until the 1980s media relied primarily upon print and analogue broadcast models, such as those of television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media, which are predicated upon the use of digital computers, such as the Internet and computer games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. New Media has become a significant element in everyday life. It allows people to communicate, bank, shop and entertain. The global network of the Internet, for instance, connects people and information via computers. In this way the Internet, as a communication medium of new media, overcomes the gap between people from different countries, permitting them to exchange opinions and information. This essay will discuss what theorists mean by ‘the second media age’ or what we call new media. This essay also will analyse the relationship between media convergence and globalisation to consider the need for new sociological concept and analytic tool with reference to the emergence of the new media. These aspects will be discussed in turn in this essay.
Meyrowitz (1985:317) states that our advanced technologies stage allow us to hunt and gather information rather than food. The evolution in media has changed the way we communicate by altering the ways in which we transmit and receive social information. This evolution has led us to what Fritz Machlup called the information society. As Webster (1994:315) puts it The common definition of the information society emphasises spectacular technological innovation. The key idea is that breakthroughs in information processing, storage, and transmission have led to the application of information technologies in virtually all corners of society. In other words this evolution route to the information society attend to the convergence of telecommunications and computing. In this sense information processing and storage technologies (e.g. computer) lead to widespread distribution.
In general we can define new media as those forms that combine computing and information technology (IT), communication networks, and digitised media and information content. The new media can also be thought of as digital media. According to Flew (2002:10) digital media are forms of media content that combine and integrate data, text, sound, and images of all kinds; are stored in digital formats, and distributed through networks based upon broadband fibre-optic cables, satellites, and microwave transmission systems. The digitalisation of information, combined with the development of related electronic technologies such as microprocessors, and so on has greatly increased the capacity to store and transmit information and has created the basis for a convergence of information and communication technologies, so that information can be converted relatively easily between different communication media.
The capability of new media to be easily changeable and adaptable at any forms of storage and transmission has assisted the information to be broadened. All forms of information also could be shared and changed among a large number of people who can access the net and all the way through enormous geographical area by using networks based upon broadband and satellite. In short new media have given a huge contribution for society to rapidly gain the information all around the world. Through digital media, massive amounts of digital information can be stored in small spaces such as compact disc and USB drive or flash drive which is a small, portable data storage device that plug into USB port of computer. These unique characteristics of digital media bring efficiency in how the information spreads all around the world. Therefore new media have brought broad impact in our society particularly in term of broadcasting information around the world simultaneously.
New media rely on digital technologies, allowing for previously separate media to converge. Media convergence is defined as a phenomenon of new media and this can be explained as a digital media. The idea of 'new media' captures both the development of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking of more traditional media forms to adopt and adapt to the new media technologies. Convergence captures development futures from old media to new media. Barr (2000:22-8, in Flew 2000) divides convergence in three levels. The first level is functional convergence, which is according to Miles (1997, in Flew 2000:18) as information and media content is increasingly processed through computer-based information technology systems and carried to its end-users across broadband telecommunications networks. According to Flew, functional convergence occurs when technological solutions to a variety of different technical problems end up using the same technological process to solve what were very different problems. For example, collecting news is one problem. Disseminating news is another. Up until the 1970's, news was collected by reporters using a very different series of technologies to those used to disseminate these. Since 1970's, information and media content is being processed through computer based it systems and carried to end users through broadband telecommunication networks.
The second level of convergence is industry convergence, which involves a series of takeovers, mergers, and strategic alliances that strengthened linkages between the computing and IT industries, telecommunications companies, and the media sector (Flew, 2002:19). This is for instance Microsoft and Nine Network to create NineMSN, Yahoo and Channel 7 become Yahoo7, or the Telstra and Foxtel Linkup in Australia. Many media businesses are now becoming part of global entertainment oligopoly. The formation of alliances as a product of convergence has meant that many former great media companies have now been subsumed into larger entertainment conglomerates. For instance Disney/ABC, Viacom/CBS, NBC/Universal, Time Warner and News Corporation are four huge corporations, which dominate the world's publishing and entertainment business right now. Takeovers, mergers and strategic alliance have reinforced the power of media conglomerates to broaden their empire. In this logic industry convergence in the media occurs when technology developing to earn more money.
The third level is convergence products and services which are forms of media and information content that take advantage of a networked broadband infrastructure, the capabilities provided by digitization, and the scope for interactivity and user customization of service ((Flew, 2002:20). This is for instance products and services provided by telecommunications and information services companies such as Telstra and Optus in Australia. These companies not only provide mobile telecommunication services but also broadband access and content, and or carriage service providers and ISPs. Convergent products and services are increasingly being directed to consumers during the 2000s, such as the capacity to access e-mail and other Internet services through Short Message Service (SMS) – enabled mobile telephones, networked games consoles such as Sony's Playstation 2 and Microsoft's X-box, or through digital television.
Three levels of convergence are significant because they affect media as a powerful source to distribute information – e.g. idea/ideology/certain discourse – with certain agenda rapidly and simultaneously around the world. Flew (2002) states that as a result of media convergence and or the evolution of new media technologies, globalisation occurs. In the most general sense globalisation refers to the growing interconnectedness of different parts of the world, which give rise to complex forms of interaction and interdependency. (Thompson, 1995:149). This means that space and time is no longer forming a boundary among people around the world to share and exchange information. Globalisation thus shortens the distance between people all over the world by the electronic communication.
New media radically break the connection between physical place and social place, making physical location much less significant for our social relationship. As Webster (1999:320) puts it
Courtesy of immediate and effective information processing and exchange, economics has become truly global, and with this has come about a reduction in the constraints of space. Companies can now develop global strategies for production, storage, and distribution of goods and services; financial interests operate continuously, respond immediately, and traverse the globe. The boundaries erected by geographical location are being pushed further and further back.
News used to be collected by using different kind of technologies such as camera and film. It then would be disseminated using other different technologies such as newspapers, radio, and television. It took days to publish the information around the world. Today, however what happened on the other side of the world will be broadcasted and circulated around the world in count of second through the convergence of digital media, e.g. 9/11 attacks – 2001, Indian Ocean Tsunami – 2004, and The 2006 FIFA World Cup. News collected and then distributed through the convergence of computer-based technological system and broadband telecommunication networks, satellite, or microwave transmission systems. Since all this process of colleting and disseminating information can be solved through one source called networks, we now see the other side of the world not as far as we thought from our home. Communication seems easier by using the same language called globalisation.
What globalisation should mean was that the boundaries of nation states were eroding, that people were gaining the freedom to mingle freely and adopt a multinational/multi-ethnic/international sense of the self. When we all could cut and paste an identity for ourselves that drew from the best that cultures of the world have to offer us. Globalisation should mean when everyone could draw from the distinctiveness of the cultures around them and create their own unique blend of what it meant to be human. When we could take in the cuisine of Asia and the Middle East mix with this the spiritual outlook of the Dali Lama. (Darrell, 2005:56). However, rather than having this cosmopolitan mix, globalisation has been referred to as the McDonaldisation of the world. This perspective sees what is lost when Mcfries – represents American culture – replace croissant or any other given cultures of the world. It looks at the amazing cultural diversity that capitalism demands began to take over. As Ritzer (1993:1) puts it McDonaldization,...is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world.
According to Thompson (1995: 161) The development of new technologies has played an important role in the globalisation of communication in the late twentieth century, both in conjunction with the activities of communication conglomerates and independently of them. The spread of American media including TV, film and American music artists, has been the main component of what we called Americanization of other countries. American TV shows are broadcast around the world. Many of the shows are broadcast through American broadcasters and their subsidiaries such as HBO Asia, CNBC Europe, Fox Channel and CNN International. All of what is known as the 'big four' American broadcasters have international distributors, for example HBO broadcasts to over 20 countries. Many of these distributors broadcast mainly American programming on their TV channel. American films are also extremely popular globally. Many of the world's biggest computer companies are also American, such as Microsoft, Apple Inc., Dell, and IBM. Much of the software used world wide is created by American based companies. The two largest personal computer companies, Dell and Hewlett Packard, which maintain over 30% of the market, are American based. In this perspective it seems that globalisation, as we know it in the twentieth century, can also be thought of as the result of culture imperialism.
Until the 1980s media relied primarily upon print and analogue broadcast models, such as those of television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media, which are predicated upon the use of digital computers, such as the Internet and computer games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. New Media has become a significant element in everyday life. It allows people to communicate, bank, shop and entertain. The global network of the Internet, for instance, connects people and information via computers. In this way the Internet, as a communication medium of new media, overcomes the gap between people from different countries, permitting them to exchange opinions and information. This essay will discuss what theorists mean by ‘the second media age’ or what we call new media. This essay also will analyse the relationship between media convergence and globalisation to consider the need for new sociological concept and analytic tool with reference to the emergence of the new media. These aspects will be discussed in turn in this essay.
Meyrowitz (1985:317) states that our advanced technologies stage allow us to hunt and gather information rather than food. The evolution in media has changed the way we communicate by altering the ways in which we transmit and receive social information. This evolution has led us to what Fritz Machlup called the information society. As Webster (1994:315) puts it The common definition of the information society emphasises spectacular technological innovation. The key idea is that breakthroughs in information processing, storage, and transmission have led to the application of information technologies in virtually all corners of society. In other words this evolution route to the information society attend to the convergence of telecommunications and computing. In this sense information processing and storage technologies (e.g. computer) lead to widespread distribution.
In general we can define new media as those forms that combine computing and information technology (IT), communication networks, and digitised media and information content. The new media can also be thought of as digital media. According to Flew (2002:10) digital media are forms of media content that combine and integrate data, text, sound, and images of all kinds; are stored in digital formats, and distributed through networks based upon broadband fibre-optic cables, satellites, and microwave transmission systems. The digitalisation of information, combined with the development of related electronic technologies such as microprocessors, and so on has greatly increased the capacity to store and transmit information and has created the basis for a convergence of information and communication technologies, so that information can be converted relatively easily between different communication media.
The capability of new media to be easily changeable and adaptable at any forms of storage and transmission has assisted the information to be broadened. All forms of information also could be shared and changed among a large number of people who can access the net and all the way through enormous geographical area by using networks based upon broadband and satellite. In short new media have given a huge contribution for society to rapidly gain the information all around the world. Through digital media, massive amounts of digital information can be stored in small spaces such as compact disc and USB drive or flash drive which is a small, portable data storage device that plug into USB port of computer. These unique characteristics of digital media bring efficiency in how the information spreads all around the world. Therefore new media have brought broad impact in our society particularly in term of broadcasting information around the world simultaneously.
New media rely on digital technologies, allowing for previously separate media to converge. Media convergence is defined as a phenomenon of new media and this can be explained as a digital media. The idea of 'new media' captures both the development of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking of more traditional media forms to adopt and adapt to the new media technologies. Convergence captures development futures from old media to new media. Barr (2000:22-8, in Flew 2000) divides convergence in three levels. The first level is functional convergence, which is according to Miles (1997, in Flew 2000:18) as information and media content is increasingly processed through computer-based information technology systems and carried to its end-users across broadband telecommunications networks. According to Flew, functional convergence occurs when technological solutions to a variety of different technical problems end up using the same technological process to solve what were very different problems. For example, collecting news is one problem. Disseminating news is another. Up until the 1970's, news was collected by reporters using a very different series of technologies to those used to disseminate these. Since 1970's, information and media content is being processed through computer based it systems and carried to end users through broadband telecommunication networks.
The second level of convergence is industry convergence, which involves a series of takeovers, mergers, and strategic alliances that strengthened linkages between the computing and IT industries, telecommunications companies, and the media sector (Flew, 2002:19). This is for instance Microsoft and Nine Network to create NineMSN, Yahoo and Channel 7 become Yahoo7, or the Telstra and Foxtel Linkup in Australia. Many media businesses are now becoming part of global entertainment oligopoly. The formation of alliances as a product of convergence has meant that many former great media companies have now been subsumed into larger entertainment conglomerates. For instance Disney/ABC, Viacom/CBS, NBC/Universal, Time Warner and News Corporation are four huge corporations, which dominate the world's publishing and entertainment business right now. Takeovers, mergers and strategic alliance have reinforced the power of media conglomerates to broaden their empire. In this logic industry convergence in the media occurs when technology developing to earn more money.
The third level is convergence products and services which are forms of media and information content that take advantage of a networked broadband infrastructure, the capabilities provided by digitization, and the scope for interactivity and user customization of service ((Flew, 2002:20). This is for instance products and services provided by telecommunications and information services companies such as Telstra and Optus in Australia. These companies not only provide mobile telecommunication services but also broadband access and content, and or carriage service providers and ISPs. Convergent products and services are increasingly being directed to consumers during the 2000s, such as the capacity to access e-mail and other Internet services through Short Message Service (SMS) – enabled mobile telephones, networked games consoles such as Sony's Playstation 2 and Microsoft's X-box, or through digital television.
Three levels of convergence are significant because they affect media as a powerful source to distribute information – e.g. idea/ideology/certain discourse – with certain agenda rapidly and simultaneously around the world. Flew (2002) states that as a result of media convergence and or the evolution of new media technologies, globalisation occurs. In the most general sense globalisation refers to the growing interconnectedness of different parts of the world, which give rise to complex forms of interaction and interdependency. (Thompson, 1995:149). This means that space and time is no longer forming a boundary among people around the world to share and exchange information. Globalisation thus shortens the distance between people all over the world by the electronic communication.
New media radically break the connection between physical place and social place, making physical location much less significant for our social relationship. As Webster (1999:320) puts it
Courtesy of immediate and effective information processing and exchange, economics has become truly global, and with this has come about a reduction in the constraints of space. Companies can now develop global strategies for production, storage, and distribution of goods and services; financial interests operate continuously, respond immediately, and traverse the globe. The boundaries erected by geographical location are being pushed further and further back.
News used to be collected by using different kind of technologies such as camera and film. It then would be disseminated using other different technologies such as newspapers, radio, and television. It took days to publish the information around the world. Today, however what happened on the other side of the world will be broadcasted and circulated around the world in count of second through the convergence of digital media, e.g. 9/11 attacks – 2001, Indian Ocean Tsunami – 2004, and The 2006 FIFA World Cup. News collected and then distributed through the convergence of computer-based technological system and broadband telecommunication networks, satellite, or microwave transmission systems. Since all this process of colleting and disseminating information can be solved through one source called networks, we now see the other side of the world not as far as we thought from our home. Communication seems easier by using the same language called globalisation.
What globalisation should mean was that the boundaries of nation states were eroding, that people were gaining the freedom to mingle freely and adopt a multinational/multi-ethnic/international sense of the self. When we all could cut and paste an identity for ourselves that drew from the best that cultures of the world have to offer us. Globalisation should mean when everyone could draw from the distinctiveness of the cultures around them and create their own unique blend of what it meant to be human. When we could take in the cuisine of Asia and the Middle East mix with this the spiritual outlook of the Dali Lama. (Darrell, 2005:56). However, rather than having this cosmopolitan mix, globalisation has been referred to as the McDonaldisation of the world. This perspective sees what is lost when Mcfries – represents American culture – replace croissant or any other given cultures of the world. It looks at the amazing cultural diversity that capitalism demands began to take over. As Ritzer (1993:1) puts it McDonaldization,...is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world.
According to Thompson (1995: 161) The development of new technologies has played an important role in the globalisation of communication in the late twentieth century, both in conjunction with the activities of communication conglomerates and independently of them. The spread of American media including TV, film and American music artists, has been the main component of what we called Americanization of other countries. American TV shows are broadcast around the world. Many of the shows are broadcast through American broadcasters and their subsidiaries such as HBO Asia, CNBC Europe, Fox Channel and CNN International. All of what is known as the 'big four' American broadcasters have international distributors, for example HBO broadcasts to over 20 countries. Many of these distributors broadcast mainly American programming on their TV channel. American films are also extremely popular globally. Many of the world's biggest computer companies are also American, such as Microsoft, Apple Inc., Dell, and IBM. Much of the software used world wide is created by American based companies. The two largest personal computer companies, Dell and Hewlett Packard, which maintain over 30% of the market, are American based. In this perspective it seems that globalisation, as we know it in the twentieth century, can also be thought of as the result of culture imperialism.
The central proposition of cultural imperialism is that certain dominant cultures threaten to overwhelm more vulnerable ones, for example America over Europe and Asia, and Western domination over the rest of the world. This is for instance The United States (and other 'western' countries) still dominates cultural production and the direction of media and cultural flows. Consider the way that United States news, imagery and products continue to dominate the world. In The Propaganda Model, Edward S. Herman tries to explain why the mainstream US media perform as they do using a propaganda model. He claims that the propaganda model is a model of media behaviour and performance with variable effects. As he puts it:
The [propaganda] model does suggest that the mainstream media, as elite institutions, commonly frame news and allow debate only within the parameters of elite perspectives and that wen the elite is really concerned and unified and/or when ordinary citizens are not aware of their own stake in an issue or are immobilised by effective propaganda, the media will serve elite interests uncompromisingly. (Herman, 2002:103).
Herman (2002:102) explains how the propaganda model generally works by stating that:
Its crucial structural factors derive from the fact that the dominant media are firmly embedded in the market system. They are profit seeking business, owned by very wealthy people (or other companies); and they are funded largely by advertisers who are profit-seeking entities, and who want their advertisements to appear in a supportive selling environment.
It is not the major media institution of this century – press, radio, television – have manipulated or dictated to audiences what they must think, rather, they have influenced what they can think about. As Barr (2000:162) puts it media and communication institutions are central players in influencing and legitimising individual and national identity. What we choose to see as critical issues in society depends in part on how the media constructs its agendas of discourse. Information that spreads globally around the world is more likely created and controlled by the owners of media institutions and or media conglomerates with their specific agenda. From this perspective rather than being neutral, professional, objective, and restrained, media institutions exist to express one single voice to controls the whole industry as well as to make profit.
In conclusion, it appears that the relationship between media convergence and globalisation have explained what theorists mean by 'the second media age' or what we call as new media. It occurred that media convergence is defined as a phenomenon of new media, and that globalisation occurs as a result of the three levels of media convergence. Through the intersection between media convergence and globalisation seem that the new media emerging has been explained clearly using the propaganda model, therefore the need for new sociological concept and analytic tool is unnecessary.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barr, Trevor (2000), newmedia.com.au, St. Leonard: Allen & Unwin
Darrell, Aaron (2005), Critical Theories For Media Studies, Sydney: Aporia
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Flew, Terry (2002), New Media: an Introduction, South Melbourne: Oxford University
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Herman, Edward S. (2002), ‘The Propaganda Model’ in Denis Mcquail (ed.) Mcquail’s Reader in Mass Communication Theory, London: Sage Publications.
Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985), No Sense Of Place, New York: Oxford University Press.
Thompson, John B. (1995) The Media and Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ritzer, George (1993), The McDonaldization of Society, California: Pine Forge Press.
Webster, Frank (1999), The Media Reader, London: Sage Publications.
Barr, Trevor (2000), newmedia.com.au, St. Leonard: Allen & Unwin
Darrell, Aaron (2005), Critical Theories For Media Studies, Sydney: Aporia
Publications.
Flew, Terry (2002), New Media: an Introduction, South Melbourne: Oxford University
Press.
Herman, Edward S. (2002), ‘The Propaganda Model’ in Denis Mcquail (ed.) Mcquail’s Reader in Mass Communication Theory, London: Sage Publications.
Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985), No Sense Of Place, New York: Oxford University Press.
Thompson, John B. (1995) The Media and Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ritzer, George (1993), The McDonaldization of Society, California: Pine Forge Press.
Webster, Frank (1999), The Media Reader, London: Sage Publications.