WHAT IS NEW AND DIGITAL MEDIA?
The word media, the plural term for medium, covers a broad spectrum describing communications through television, film, radio, and print. Media require a viewer, a listener, a reader, or a spectator to carry any effect whatsoever. In our rapidly advancing hypermedia landscape of the present, where all traditional media have become singular on the screen-based Internet, the reader, viewer, and listener can participate as well and truly use media as communication. Technology has inevitably transformed our traditional media into a multitude of interactive platforms, now read and listened to on mobile devices, tablets, e-readers, flat screens, and wearable devices. Whether it’s media consumption, the form of the content, or the interaction with the media, the Internet changed the habits of citizens globally. We are now ever connected, ever participating, and consuming film, television, music, news, radio, and millions of native websites.
In many ways, new and digital media are distinct from traditional media. New media are any emerging technologies that affect you both socially and culturally. Like traditional media, new and digital media allow for media consumption; however, new media make participation imperative in order to be useful. Users may use an existing platform, but they can create the content. Coders and developers working for their respective companies design Facebook and YouTube, but it’s the millions of users worldwide who create and participate to enhance their growth and reach. The citizens of the web create the additional media in pictures, videos, text, artwork, and sound, among other forms of rapidly developed communication formats and data on the platforms.
New and digital media are unique because of the addition of the World Wide Web and how it connects users to a plethora of stimulating, user-generated amateur and professional, textual and visual content. New and digital media also include web design and site creation, as users can simply read and consume the web while also creating and designing their own digital environment. In the last two decades, the web has increased, from blogging and web platforms, to fully produced website design and access to code and gaming. Where traditional media were based on a consumption model, new media encourage online communities and many users to form them, with Twitter, Reddit, Vine, and Facebook acting as places to bring users together to interact, create, and have daily conversation and interactivity with one another.
Figure 1.1
Welcome to the Internet, we’ll be your guide.
Source: Photo by Jonathan Leung
New and digital media are simultaneously production and design for those who consume and participate in the content. Digital media creation has invented new ways of communication, and there have been various unique forms of that where users send messages and express themselves digitally and creatively. New media can be accessed online through memes, short-form videos on Vine, and looping animated GIFs, to name a few. In the digital media environment of the web, media can be watched, as well as altered and disseminated, by participants. Your outlet on the web can be a particular website or social media platform, among others. New and digital media prosper because you create and participate.
How Do You Use This Book?
The main purpose of this book is for you to become savvy in new and digital media. In order to become savvy, you have to understand the theories and cultural significance of the pieces of technology, some of the platforms, and the web as a communication device. Once you have an understanding of the reasons why you participate in online communities, how viral videos work, and the influence of web television and memes on the digital landscape, it is up to you to join and take part in the medium as a more savvy, responsible web citizen. Being a savvy user of new and digital media means having the knowledge and background information of how and why the technology and platforms in which you participate and create work. After you have read each chapter, we want you to join us online and take a chance. After you read about online communities in the following chapter, we would like for you to join one yourself; if you have never created a meme before, try making one; if you have never produced a vlog before, record one. In order to take advantage of digital media, you have to take chances and jump right in. Once you become a participant and content creator, with an understanding of the purpose or meaning of digital media, you will experience its benefits.
Another aspect and purpose of this book is, once you have the knowledge of how to use particular platforms, technology, and communication and digital media tools, we want you to become a storyteller. Whether it’s through textual or visual formats, we want you to be a storyteller in whichever area of digital media you plan to participate in. After reading the chapter on web television, you may want to start your own web channel on YouTube to create your first series. After reading the chapter on online branding, you may want to start producing your own podcast or blog to promote yourself. Regardless of which chapter affects you, share your story and content with participants connected all over the world. We hope this book organizes and advances your techniques for online storytelling to your audience. You may be inspired to become a storyteller on digital platforms through tools you will be learning in this book. It can be as simple as tweeting on a daily basis or having a voice through your blog, posted once a week. You have the ability to reach millions with digital media, and your story can be unique, creative, and motivational for all to enjoy.
This book is not only your guide, but also a step-by-step reference for how to complete your digital tasks. We want this reference to be your one-stop shop to inform you of new and digital media theory, creation, and participation in the web, all in one place. We understand you can find this information in many places on the vast web, but we offer this as a practical introduction to new and digital media and hope it serves as a valuable tool and guide by your side as you become empowered.
We have included sidebars throughout this book that offer additional insight into and awareness of a given topic. The sidebars are designed to increase your media literacy perception in relation to the information we are discussing at the time. These sidebars are meant to start a discussion, build your knowledge, and encourage you to participate and learn more. The sidebars also fill in some of the blanks and quirky questions left unanswered by the growing environment online. These will help you build your mental skills and knowledge area in a specific topic.
To Keep in Mind While Reading
The Internet and the web are a hugely open media platform accessible from anywhere at anytime. Your participation is required for the evolution of the media, and we encourage you to be curious and try everything. We offer one phrase of advice we wish you to keep in mind when using the web: If you do not pay for it, you are the product.
These are strong words to associate with digital media platforms, but paramount for all users to keep in mind. Before we delve deeper into the book, you have to remember that, although these media are accessible and open and for the most part “free,” someone, somehow, is always making money and a profit. In Chapter 2, we will be discussing online communities based on many different social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and many more. Building communities with other users will be the main focus of the chapter, but keep in mind that the material and content you create regularly are bought and sold to advertisers in order to support the storage and delivery costs of the platforms. For every platform you join where you do not have control of the design of the system, there is a professional team that regulates, monitors, and controls your access. Participate, but be responsible and read your terms of service on each platform. We know that most terms of service are boring to read, but they offer you information on your rights and usage of any given technology. We will do our best to explain how you can use the web in the most responsible and creative way and as safely as possible, but, with the nature of the web, this information regularly changes and updates. It is your responsibility to read the “rules” every time they update, for the best experience you can have using new and digital media.
Why We Wrote This Book
Recently, while at a traffic light, four construction workers were identifying the underground lines of either electricity or gas with their technical gauge. While one of the construction workers waved the device around, two of the other three were listening to a story about a remote-control drone copter outfitted with a Halloween costume that flew near joggers, who were frightened into an all-out sprint. The storytelling worker was laughing hysterically at the memory, while the other three looked confused. This is the idea of visual memes and viral videos, which we’ll be talking about in chapters 4 and 5. What the storytelling construction worker failed to realize was that memes are considered a “selfish gene” of culture. It’s hysterical to the one with the memory of the visual, but those without the image feel a bit lost.
The construction worker had seen a video called “Epic Halloween Prank by Tom Mabe.” The video, posted in October 2013 by comedian Tom Mabe, has been seen by over 7 million people. It’s clearly a viral video that has made its rounds. The flying skeleton doesn’t just involve scaring joggers half to death: It also scares some basketball players and frightens some relaxing kids. The video, just over 2 minutes in length, sits right in the sweet spot of virality. The way the video is composed and created helps make the theme very meme-like in quality and begs for it to be shared.
New and digital media are ubiquitous, that is certain. When we sought to approach this book, we knew that we’d have to explain the culture surrounding the omnipresent media. The web, the Internet, and social media are becoming supersaturated, with almost half the world with access to the Internet1 and nearly 2 billion people with some sort of social media account.2 Our approach in this book concerns the ever-pervasive need to control your intentions in the digital space. You can see and hear the need consistently. When we are asked to do talks and workshops, we often find the same thing asked by some of our audience members: “Why isn’t there a book on this topic?” This is what we aim to achieve.
The variety of ways the web plays into our lives often go unnoticed. We have started taking the essence and ambience of the web for granted. In Alfred Hermida’s essay, “Twittering the News: The emergence of ambient journalism,”3 he explains that Twitter has become background noise and, in the case of journalism, it takes on the qualities of information as having nearly ethereal qualities. This so happened recently, when the Associated Press announced that algorithm bots would now write financial news stories.4 In this book, we break down some of the immense amounts of information flow and, more importantly, separate the quality signal from the growing noise.
In respect to understanding the power of using the web for something much deeper and more pronounced than ambient information, we turn to users who utilize the web’s tools, such as YouTube, to enhance their daily lives in ways unimaginable just over a decade ago. In Chapter 6, we will discuss how YouTube can be utilized as a learning tool, and how the user can get involved as a teacher to those who may be in need of their specific information.
Savvy users of the web are far beyond those who use it for frivolous updates or posting pictures of their pets, and they participate by creating quality content. Digital media have no sense of time or place. We understand time linearly, but time is always the same to digital media. Understanding that, we start to recognize that thousands of new users are logging on daily, and people are discovering new parts of the web all the time. We ourselves, as a people, are very similar to the construct of the web.
The web is a replicating entity that continues to grow, creating content out of every subject as each new member joins. If there is something that exists, you can most likely find it online. To paraphrase Clay Shirky, you can see the immense use of the web and the power of its users by going to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on Amazon and checking the reviews—most likely a new review was added very recently. (Go check!) Additionally, Shirky adds an important note to those who are looking for answers on any topic. His example was going to YouTube and checking Gothic-style makeup advice, a search query that yields nearly 20,000 results (and continues to grow).
If you are seeking information or advice on any subject, from changing tires to cooking, someone has created a video of that happening, and, if they haven’t, someone will very soon. To sift through this information to become a savvy user of, and participant in, this media landscape involves a process of understanding how we use the web and how we can get involved. Take, for example, Christine McConnell, a woman who is a self-taught baker who learned all of her techniques from YouTube. She is a savvy user of the web and a phenomenal participant in new and digital media.
McConnell loves the style of the 1950s. A makeup artist and stylist by career, McConnell practices her work on herself. While expanding her skills, she watched YouTube videos on how to bake interesting pastries and desserts. She created a niche when she started baking desserts in the form of monsters and characters from horror movies from the 1980s. She started an Instagram account to show off her work, and, very soon, online publications such as BuzzFeed ran profiles on her. She is now a web darling, among many others, who developed their persona online and use the web to continually increase their knowledge and expand their skill set.
Many average web users feel overwhelmed when they learn about Christine McConnell or other users who have created personas from their own expertise. If you are reading this book, then you have already taken steps toward advancing your identity online and becoming a better user of the vast amount of free tools available.
In Marc Prensky’s article, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,”5 he explains we are in an era of youth growing up to understand digital media as a natural tool. This was later corrected, when Prensky realized his article was a bit too ahead of its time: The digital natives are really those born after the rise of the World Wide Web and, more specifically, touch-screen media. Although many readers of Prensky’s article felt insulted by the insinuation that, if you were not savvy with digital media you were relegated to immigrant status, it opened a conversation about what it means to be truly native in a landscape of 1s and 0s.
Prensky explained that a fair amount of the backlash to his article comes from users who felt insecure about their web usage and experience. He further explained that the next language to be mastered is the language of programming.6 We will spend Chapter 3 focusing on understanding how to identify several online languages and further focus on basic writing skills of the web languages HTML5 and CSS3. This will come with examples and learning tools for being a better reader of website data and functionality and will hopefully encourage the reader to modify and write websites on their own.
We recognize that website media constitute a changing landscape and that trends quickly change, and we hope that our practical introduction to code and website literacy focuses strongly enough on the construct to work with all of the trends that are evolving. In the last several years alone, we’ve seen websites go from multipage database sites to flat responsive design to card-type sites. It’s hard to predict what trend will be considered the most aesthetically pleasing in the coming years, but we can be sure that HTML and CSS will be widely used.
In the near future, more than half the population of the planet will have access to media creation in the online digital space. Being a savvy user does not mean to be a YouTube creator or Instagram star; what it means is to understand why people are using the web and how important it is to be a citizen of the planet and online environment. Web users now have more potential than ever before to be more connected and knowledgeable; it is important to recognize the web as a large tool made up of hundreds of important tools, all working together.
The online companion website for this book also provides you with additional digital learning material to enhance your reading experience. You are encouraged to follow along with it as you read.
Remember to always be the authentic you online, because the web is an exciting, growing, and amazingly weird place. We’re here to guide you and we hope you enjoy!
NOTES
1 ITU global ICT statistics. Retrieved from www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx (accessed April 22, 2015).
2 eMarketer (2013). “Social Networking Reaches Nearly One in Four Around the World.” Retrieved from www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Networking-Reaches-Nearly-One-Four-Around-World/1009976 (accessed April 22, 2015).
3 Hermida, A. (2010). “Twittering the News: The emergence of ambient journalism.” Journalism Practice. Vol 4. No. 3, pp. 297–308. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1732598 (accessed April 22, 2015).
4 Greenfield, D. (2014). “AP Turns Over the Tedious Business of Writing News Stories to Automated Bots.” Frontpage Magazine. Retrieved from www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/ap-turns-over-the-tedious-business-of-writing-news-stories-to-automated-bots/ (accessed April 22, 2015).
5 Prensky, M. (2001). “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” Retrieved from www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf (accessed April 22, 2015).
6 Prensky, M. (2008). “Programming Is the New Literacy.” Retrieved from www.edutopia.org/literacy-computer-programming (accessed April 22, 2015).