New media | Definition, Examples, Digital Marketing, Traditional vs. New Media, Society, Arts, and Entertainment (original) (raw)
New media is a complex, relative term. It broadly refers to new environments of communication that arose from the Internet and related technologies—social media and computer-mediated communications—during the digital revolution. New media can refer to the move from analog to digital technologies, which is why some argue that a more concrete term for these new environments of communication is digital media. New or digital media are sometimes seen in contrast with “old” analog media, although some argue they are an evolution of older media forms. Examples of old media are broadcast television, radio, and print media (e.g., newspapers). Examples of new, digital media are websites and social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn), virtual and augmented reality, and streaming services for entertainment and gaming. All are new environments for communicating content and information that require digital technologies.
What is “New” in New Media?
When discussing new media, one must acknowledge how it is intertwined with convergence culture, a term coined by Henry Jenkins in his book Convergence Culture: When Old and New Media Collide, published in 2006. The idea is that the “new” in “new media” is misleading because much of the digital revolution was an evolution of previous media, not necessarily novel media forms. For example, an online book is a book, an old medium, that has converged with modern technology. In terms of journalism, an example would be an online newspaper. The content of the newspaper is likely still the same, but it has converged with new technology so it can be read online rather than on paper, and it is easier to find or circulate via the Internet and social media.
What is “new” in new media is that the convergence of old media with modern digital technologies has created new methods for organizing social, political, and economic structures as well as new ways to disseminate and consume content. New media encompasses the rapid and continual evolutions in media that have created new textual experiences, new ways of representing the world, and new relationships between subjects and media technologies. New media have led to a shift in media organizations’ focus away from “audiences” to “users” and from “consumers” to “producers,” from the idea of a “mass audience” to multiple niche audiences, and from one-way communication to two-way communication.
With new media, people can consume content in multiple ways. For instance, one can read the digitally formatted version of a book downloaded to a tablet or phone, watch a movie from Netflix on a laptop rather than on a television, or read about a new game on a forum on Reddit. The technological affordances of digital platforms allow individuals to shape their consumption habits or experiences as they see fit—for example, by sampling items from the à la carte format of YouTube. Users can choose what they wish to consume at any given time.
Audiences for new media are more active and participatory than before. Technological affordances allow new media users to interact with, shape, or produce content themselves. Through social media, users can contact and communicate with a company or provide a news organization with a story, creating two-way communication. Further, due to the rapid growth of new technologies, there is a fragmentation of the mass audience. The ability to produce, publish, and disseminate material easily online has led to a proliferation of niche media organizations and websites. Rather than focusing on a mass audience, many media organizations are now focused on hyperlocal news or specialized services or interests.
Use of New Media by Journalists
The term new media might bring to mind different things for different people. A computer science major might simply think of new media as the Internet. A doctor might think of new media as a technology that helps image and analyze the body. For journalists, several positive and negative aspects might come to mind. New media have brought notable changes to journalistic routines and created new journalistic values. They have been adopted by journalists to aid in traditional journalistic routines, mainly as information-gathering tools and a way to gain sources.
New media, particularly social networking platforms, have features that aid in traditional journalistic practices such as conveying, verifying, and displaying information. Social media platforms such as Facebook and X allow journalists to transmit news content to their audiences by posting links, pictures, and videos of news stories they produce. Journalists can use the platforms to query followers by posting questions to their network. They can use the platforms to conduct story research, gaining background information on someone by checking their Facebook, X, or Instagram profiles. Social media platforms also act as another avenue to contact sources and enable journalists to monitor sources through the content posted on their social media feeds.
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Journalists can gather information by skimming through their social network feeds, allowing them to see and read what people in their community or nationwide are discussing. Journalists can interact with their audience through online messaging and comments, allowing them to learn more about their readers. The ability to link and share social media posts created by others enables journalists to be transparent about the sources of their information.
Lastly, the unique features of digital platforms also allow journalists to create more content and transmit it at a faster rate than traditional print and broadcast media. Journalists can now post and share content instantly rather than waiting for the next publication to come out or for the next news program to air on TV in a designated time slot.
Changes in Journalism Due to New Media
New media have led to both positive and negative changes in journalism. As explained earlier, social media platforms have created another outlet for journalists to gather information and sources. They are also another avenue for transmitting information quickly to an audience. However, media workers must now create more content and disseminate it faster due to the demands of an online audience. Journalists are now forced to multitask and generate content for “old” media as well as online communication environments. Also, they must be more transparent about their work routines and engage more with the audience online. The move away from one-way communication to two-way communication between journalists and the audience, and the increase in avenues for content distribution, has drastically increased the workload of journalists.
The two-way communication factor of new media, particularly social media, has led to an increased emphasis on audience engagement. As audiences are turning their attention away from traditional broadcast and print media to more personal Web and mobile platforms, two-way communication between an audience and a journalist has become valuable. Interacting with an audience is now an essential journalistic value as the engagement garners an audience’s attention. Journalists must fight for attention as new media allow anyone to be a content producer.
Adapting to New Media
New media have transformed the process of mediatization—how media shape and frame political discourse in society. The mass audience is now fragmented, there is more polarization of content, and the line between news and entertainment has blurred. One result is that politicians and governments can now bypass traditional news organizations, but they still depend on digital media platforms to reach audiences. Furthermore, new media have led to an abundance of information sources and communications, which, in turn, has led to niche marketing and polarization of content, in some cases with news organizations tailoring their content to liberal or conservative audiences.
Journalists often use culturally familiar themes that resonate with their audience, which can lead to the news media reinforcing the status quo. However, due to the affordances of social media, audience members now have some control over content production and dissemination. News managers have allowed journalists to share their gatekeeping role with so-called citizen journalists, either by sharing audience members’ content on their media organizations’ platforms or by having journalists work with members of the public to create content in a process known as participatory journalism. These developments have challenged news organizations’ authority and their control over messages.
New media have created several other challenges for journalists. For example, studies have found that journalists use social media mainly as a tool to find information and individuals who can serve as news sources. However, they often do not trust the information or sources they find on social media and prefer to use traditional media sources that have already been vetted. The use of new media to gather information involves new skills of verification and cannot fully substitute for traditional means of journalism.
Another issue with the adoption of new media in the newsroom is that it changes rapidly. The appropriation of digital technology in journalism is a continuous process. The affordances of technology are tried out and renegotiated often. While new media have become part of journalists’ everyday workflow, the constant evolution of digital platforms poses ongoing challenges in adapting to new tools and managing the pressures of constant connectivity.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.