Lecture 1: What’s New About New Media?

• What are the new consequences for human beings?
• Is innovation both a technological and social process?
• Do new media create new meanings? Do they enable or disable social change?

Roger Silverstone, New Media & Society Vol 1 (1)

With every change in the way we communicate in our culture there is a struggle over meaning, significance, knowledge and power. Old rules and orders cannot be applied perfectly under the new regime of communication and thus formations of power are under threat from these new forms of expression. The premise is not exactly a technological determinist argument; that is, it is not saying that technology determines culture. New forms of communications are only partially determined by their technology and are shaped from social and cultural conditions, and from the various manners in which cultural expression and intentions are conveyed.

P. David Marshall, New Media Cultures

Lev Manovich - 5 Principles of New Media

1. Numerical representation
2. Modularity
3. Automation
4. Variability
5. Transcoding

New Media Networks are typically:
• Decentralised
• Less Hierarchical

This makes them
• Difficult for Regulating and Managing Content
• Difficult for Regulating and Managing Access
• Physically Robust
• Example: the Internet

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For the Seminar:

In the lecture today we looked at some of the suggested attributes of new media, both cultural and technological, that have been proposed in an attempt to define it.

Nate Harrison’s piece, “Can I have an Amen” tells the story of how a six-second drum loop became the foundation for a whole musical sub-genre.

While listening to the piece make a note of how the attributes outlined in the lecture apply to the case of the “amen break.”