New Media-What does it mean?

Like the terms digital and visual rhetoric, the term new media has had competing interpretations and definitions. This is partly due to most approaches considering the topic as a description of an object. There has been some attempt to use the term to reflect the study of this new media as well.

As Doug Eyman says in “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric”, one of the difficulties is that it doesn’t have any clear direct reference to any previous field. Not only that but both elements have been contested. When does a media stop being new, or does all “new media” refer to digital? Questions like these kept the discussion going.

So what are some possible answers to these questions?

Some treat it as equivalent to multimedia. It is defined as texts created primarily in digital environments, comprising multiple media such as film, video, audio, etc. It is designed to be presented and shown in a digital environment. This follows another description of multimedia as it starts at the computer and it takes advantage of its capability for personal expression.

Some however say we shouldn’t focus on not defining it not by on unique features compared to old media, but how it reshapes new media. As it reshapes and reconfigures old media as they are drawn into the mix and played with in new ways, changing the media itself. This as a whole considers it in part of a larger historical and cultural context.

Probably the most comprehensive approach draws on the histories of things such as art, photography, video, and even literary theory. In the articulation of concept as a cultural object, it includes the idea that it draws upon and reshapes but also what separates it. What that is the underlying structure being computer-accessible numerical data.

Of course, this itself is debatable. In one approach the basic five principles are as follows: Numerical Representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability, and Transcoding. Another option uses these five characteristics: Integration, and interaction. This is an example of how new media isn’t a set concept. Rather, it’s more fluid.