Notes to Lecture 2 - Media, Socialization, Identity- Taking Another Look at the differences between "New" and "Old" Media.

Old Vs New Media?: Binary Oppositions

Building on my introduction from last week, we will turn our attention this week to questioning the chief binary opposition used in popular discourse about cyberculture, namely the distinctions made by many commentators between 'Old' and 'New' Media. In doing so, I hope to highlight a number of possible methodologies for approaching the Media in general, and the Computer-mediation in particular. In doing so I hope to draw attention to some of the problems that arise out of the unquestioning use of terms such as 'New' Media.

The Pervasive-ness and Invisiblity of Media

Individualisation and Identity: The role of Media in making us Us

In giving this lecture two years ago, the Sociologist Marcus Leanings, began by highlighting the relationship of the media to a process he called 'socialisation'. Leanings began by noting:

"The media are commonly perceived as a form of socialisation. The experience of living in the specific style of industrial capitalism that we do (what is referred to by Anthony Giddens as 'Late Modernity'), has seen a decline in the importance of those features of life that were seen to give meaning and shape to our lives; tradition; the bounded geographic community; religion etc. In their place has arisen new forms of identity and meaning. The media is typically seen as one of these new forms of meaning. It is seen as a unifying force that allows experiences to be shared by millions. The media are seen to provide a sense of commonality between people. It allows us to experience the same things even though we might live miles apart…The media allow many millions of people to understand the world in the same way."

Leanings queried this unifying conception of the media. Noting that both Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck have pointed out that we are now going through a period of 'secondary modernity' defined by a process of individualisation.

A Brief History of Modernity

The first modernity was the initial movement from pre-modern society to modern society. Such a transition was typified by the rise in state bureaucracies, such as education and welfare systems, the growth of the urban proletariat and bourgeois mercantile class, the rise of scientific rationality as opposed to older more traditional belief systems, such as religion and folklore, and the nation state rather than the ethnic state.

Secondary modernity sees as an exemplification of these processes, the process of 'de-traditionalisation' speed up and members of society increasingly loose touch with those elements and ways of life that structured their forebears lives. Additionally the ways of structuring our life that typified early western modernity and to some extent still typify other societies are in decline. Ideas such as class, race, nationality, religion are seen not to have the power they did for those living in secondary modernity. Instead, a process called 'individualisation' typifies secondary modernity.

Individualisation means that identity is no longer something imposed but something chosen. Beck calls this 'reflexive modernity', the position in which we make choices about who are what we are, we can choose to celebrate certain aspects of our identity, see for example the gay and black rights movements, and be involved in identity politics.

Individualisation and Identity - Workshop Idea

In this exercise you are provided with five blank labels (the yellow post-it notes ). Select five aspects of your own identity that you would happily where as a label. ( note you don't actually have to wear them… that is your choice in this exercise). Consider the following: -

• Gender;
• Class;
• Ethnicity;
• Sexuality;
• Generation
• Bodily Features

Are we free to assume these types of identities?

Sources of Identity

Is one free to select all aspects of our identity? Are they imposed? If so, what are they imposed by? By birth? By education? By our bodies? By Society? By the Media?

What happens when the processes that create identity change?

Media and Identity

Returning to Beck notion of 'reflexive modernity', one of the ways that our identities are realised, celebrated and challenged is through the media. So what happens to our idenity when the media change?

Back to "Old" and "New" Media

So what has this got to do with the 'New' or 'Old' Media discussion we began above?

Firstly, it is important to see beyond a technological determinist perspective of the Media and realise that terms like old and new media are rooted in the cultural assumptions of the society using such terms. Secondly, to see that computer-based media are being used in an era already deeply effected by the effects of mediation.Thirdly, to provide a intellectual framework with which to discuss the effects of media ( Old and New) and fourthly to argue that what is new ( if indeed anything is new about New Media) has to be considered from many different directions.

New or Old - The Media Yardsticks

It is certainly not easy to walk around a home or office and to point at a technological device and say that it is Old or New Media. This is a useful insight! As it is not possible or desirable to consider any technological artefacts in isolation (the boxes under the desk or sitting on the table) when making any judgements about the effects of these devices. The device always has to be seen in context, including the specific cultural conditions prevailing at the time. For example, Leanings, above, is talking about the Giddensian description of a few western states (e.g. their state of modernity etc.) It creates a very useful model with which to think about the current cultural conditions. However, would the unthinking application of this model be useful for describing another type of society?

By imposing a euro-centric model one is arguably guilty of intellectual colonialism. It is important to remember that Leanings is simply providing an introduction to a methodology. In practice, his method is a lot more specific than the generalise approach he began with.

A Yardstick-Based Model for discussing the Binary Opposition between "Old" and "New" Media

In all, Leanings identifies about five types of 'yardstick' ( considered by many commentators as being applicable to this issue) that could make a meaningful distinction between old and new media.

• Systemic
• Technical
• Aesthetic
• Logical
• Political

It is important to note that a particular media might well be regarded as being new by one or two yardsticks, and not by the other three. Also critical judgements are constantly being called into question in this area so that a media might be judged by one commentator as being new given a certain set of criteria, but judged as old by another who has adopted an equally valid but different approach. This question of judgement is particularly true of time. What might well be judged new today might be deemed old tomorrow by a subtle change in the law for example. It is always important to maintain methodological rigour, so that others can follow and make use of the logic of our judgements.

Systemic Considerations

Systemic attributes are the ways in which the media are dealt with by the market and by the state.In particular we have to consider

• Ownership - The Number, Diversity and Sector of the Ownership;
• Regulation - Government, Inter-Government, Industry Standards and 'Social Mores';
• Access- How is easy is it to set-up in a particular media etc.

Technical Considerations

• Electric vs Non-electric - All media identified as new are electric (unlike newspapers). However, not all electric media (e.g. 19th Century Telegraph) are now regarded as new media.
• Analogue Vs Digital - all new media identified are digital, but again this is not an exclusive definition.

By being digital and electric the new media tend have certain other sub-characteristics:-

• Digital media tend to be easy to reproduce( a point that is well made by Richard Wise in his book Multimedia: A Critical Introduction). Information is not copied, but reproduced through a set of instructions. This ease in turn gives rise to a number of cultural phenomena such as 'peer-to-peer' file sharing, with open source software programmers making their code available to one another or music fans sharing of digital music files through file formats like mp3.
• User Control of flow - Digital Media make a virtue of hypertextuality, links and interactivity.
• Relative Ease of geographical distribution. The digital media are examples of what economists have been describing as the 'weightless' economy. They are easy to pass around the world via cables and satellites. However, it is worth noting that just because they are realatively easy to disseminate does not mean they are easy to access or control.

Aesthetic Considerations

It is worth asking the question - Do new media look, sound, taste, touch, smell and act any differently from old media?

Remediation

Bolter and Gruisin, in their book Remediation, propose that new media constantly 'remediate' existing media forms ie: they borrow ideas, convention and images from older, established forms. This is not idea uniquely associated with the new media though, as it is worth noting that the start of the TV news has a series of headlines ( a term and concept borrows from print newspapers). It does, however, mean that interface designers etc will be subject to conservative cultural forces that will demand that their productions conform 'old' print-based models.

[We will come back to Remediation duting the course of this module time and again. We will question this theory's applicability, its use and insight. You might be interested to know that there are other theories of the relationship between media - for example Lev Manovitch has recently developed a compex typology that explores the relationship between New Media and Film.]

To quote Leanings:-
" new media will not be dramatically different in look and will constantly borrow and make reference to the styles of the old media"

As we will see this is particularly pronounced with branding and the aspects of corporate culture involved with marketing.

Mediamorphosis

Another author that has considered this question is Roger Fidler in his book Mediamorphosis. Fidler argues for a process of change deeply dependent upon the interactions between media (old and new) and the wider society. Fidler gives a very good account of the development of text systems. In particular, he focuses on the 'failed' new media such as the Prestel 'teletext' system developed and implemented in the UK in the 1980s. The system is still in operation but has never been the success that either the Internet or the Minitel system developed in France has been. One of the key differences identified by Fidler has been the importance of person-to-person communication in the uptake of a new technology. In particular, the chat-rooms, e-mails and other flirting spaces of mintel and the world wide web.

Artistic Input

One of the most interesting aspects of the new media is its technical limitations (connection speed, textual interfaces, line drop out etc.) have been perceived as an artistic opportunity. With ASCII art, for example, images are made solely by using the characters available on the keyboard, so overcoming the limitation of early text-only IRCs. Brenda Danet has made a study of a number of groups involved with art on the Internet in the 1990s and describes the aesthetic of these practioners as cyberplay. These culture practices often run as a counter-culture to the conservative forces of remediation. Danet, for example, describes the font franzy that broke out amongst Internet designers recently. The more extreme practitioners actually demonise Times New Roman, the most commonly used font for exactly the same reasons are conservatives embrace it, namely its ubiquitous use in printed materials.

However - Is Play a Characteristic of all New Media aesthetics?

It is always good to question over-generalizations and sweeping statements in any cultural studies course!

Interaction

Interaction is a key 'buzzword' word in media circles at the moment and a number of definitions of new media centre on struggling with what a meaningful definition and usage of this term might be. I will address this key term in later lecture, however, just for now it is worth considering - what do we mean by interaction, who is interacting whom/what? Is this an exclusive feature of media ( new or old)? Is this the 'holy grail' of the new media project?

Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who developed the world wide web at CERN, for example, wishes to develop the web beyond its c urrent hypertext links and interactive pages to make it a fully intercreative medium.

What does Berners-Lee mean by intercreativity? How this different from "Old" Media.

Logical Considerations

The old media needed enormous capital, cultural and technical resources. This is no longer true with new media. It was very, very hard to set up a television station. It is much easier to set up a website. In fact individuals have been able to set-up their own pages. It is easy to become a new media author ( in fact a number of commentators have argued that it is too easy) and to express your views, complete with typing errors, spelling mistakes and factual inaccuracies. This is important for our discussion of late modernity as the state and the corporate sector formerly had sole control over the dominant hegemonic forms of information. The current situation is a lot more difficult to characterise. Organisations like Common Dreams ( http://www.commondreams.org/) and Common Forum argue that the new media are an opportunity to create a new form of media culture, rather like the peer-to-peer approach mentioned above. The forum has been likened to a virtual town-pump where net-citizen meet and exchange news without vested power groups propagating their agenda. This has encourage a lot of speculation about the democratic potential of the new media.

The reality is a bit less rosy. Rather than democracy we have either technocracy ( with power vested in the hands of those who have the resources and access to technology) or the worst aspects of anarchy with lots of people shouting out their opinions without any consideration of others point-of-view.

The other logical consideration of new media is the effects they have on time and space. The new media have put an end to the idea of an imposed schedule. The pattern of consumption is no longer in the 'mass produced' model. Users can download the product when they like. Files can be consumed at any time. This explodes the idea of temporal zones for example the BBC put out Children's TV at certain times of the day. The new media also changes our perception of distance. It is now possible to communicate cheaply with people in any part of the world in real time. This has been described as 'making the world smaller'. I would argue that it simply changes our perception of distance as it brings the on-line nearer to us, but makes the off-line community seem even further away.

Reliability - Love or hate them journalists and editors are part of an established profession. The key word here is established. Enough time has elapsed in the history of the print media that most countries have a body of laws that govern the behaviour of their journalists. Newpapers are subject to censorship, subject of free speech legislation, public interest rights and they can be sued and forced to substantial damages under defamation laws if they make mistakes. In contrast the laws governing the new media are much less well defined and there is very little case law to guide individual judgements. There is also the issue of jurisdiction. The site that is defaming you might well be outside of the jurisdiction of the laws governing the country in which you live.

Political Considerations

At this point in the lecture it is worth contexting cyberculture in two other contemporary cultural debates, namely those surrounding globalisation and individualisation. These processes have been described by Manuel Castells ( among many others) in his trilogy The Information Age. In this massive work he describes the economic and social changes that have already occurred as a result of a network society. In particular, the global capital markets, the inter-connectedness of markets for goods and labour and the dramatic effects on corporations of processes such as outsourcing. New media, the technology, its practitioners and the wider culture loosely referred to as cyberculture are the child of this network society and also one of its driving forces. However, this does not mean that new technology automatically guarantees a new world order (as witnessed by the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000). The future is never that simple!

When do New media become Old?

I would add one other yardstick to Leanings list and that is the notion of perception. One of the key features of the new media is that they are perceived as being new by many commentators, and so have been the subject of excitement, fear, experimentation, demon-isation etc by this vocal section of society. Metaphors and images are very important for the understanding of the new as they are attempts to conceive of the new in terms of something else less unfamiliar. The Internet has been the subject of a wide ranging series of metaphorical construction. The web, the net, the rhizome for example all emphasising inter-connected-ness which contrasts with other metaphors associated with territorial space for example, the electronic frontier and the electronic superhighway. We will investigate this metaphorical quality further next week when we look at the term cyberspace.

We will probably first notice that the new media are becoming old when the language used to describe them becomes less obviously metaphorical and more self-referential; as the language and its linguistic structures come to terms with the impact of the new medium. However, the current new media will probably become truly old when a new new media turns up to challenge their claim to that title.

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