The majority of you have posted your response to the “New Media” keyword. If you’ve not posted yet, please do so. Initial posts were due by Thursday, August 26. Thanks to all how have posted and started adding reply comments. Overall, good work on this initial post.
The goal of these posts is to engage you in the keyword as a lens for understanding media, culture, and identity. In this sense, “New Media” offers a useful way to categorize something as new and emerging, differentiating it from old and waning. Some of you found the term useful in describing the difference between a waning social media platform like Vine and an emerging platform like TikTok. But how does “New Media” tell us something about culture and identity? Several of you pointed to ways that popular opinion shape media platforms and their audiences using the example of Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok. Facebook is an “aging” new media, Instagram is in its adulthood, and TikTok is an adolescent new media, still developing and following public opinion. However, does “New Media” have a profit motive? Or are new media largely built around public opinion? How might culture and identity shape new media, and how might new media shape culture and identity?
Interestingly, no one noted what might be an important distinction: social media might be new media, but it might also be a platform. To what extent does a “platform” perform as media? Are they separable? Is “Twitter” a platform or a new media? Keep in mind that media have been around a long time. How might Twitter be a platform, but merely a reiterated version of an existing medium? To what extent is it a new medium?
As you continue posting these responses, provide specific examples and consider adding links and images that explain or illustrate your ideas. Feel free to use all of the options available to you in these blog posts to help convey your points. And be willing to play!