New Forms Of Media Research Articles

The Twenty-First Century, the Reign of Tabloid Journalism

The twenty-first century is the century of tabloid journalism. In Serbia, the number of scientific papers on this type of journalism has recently increased. Investigators of media and media markets are confronted with constant changes of their object of study. Besides the media contents which change daily, media technology, legislation and the audience are also constantly changing. This happens due to complex demands of the modern world. Some authors define the tabloid press as a form of commercial media culture created for profit and distributed in the form of goods whose products are going to sell well because of their factual popularity. As part of popular journalism, tabloidisation means creating the product which attracts the maximum number of customers. The emergence of such products which shocked the world by breaking with the conventions led to the creation of a new form of media literacy, whose celebrities replaced the old values of life and way of thinking, creating new models of identification and resonant performances of style, fashion and behavior. Since profit and not ethics is the deepest motivations of tabloid journalism, some authors of tabloids do not consider them among traditional print media, rather placing them in a separate category defined as consumerist magazines. This subcategory develops rapidly and commercially, as this approach is based on the pursuit of erotic content, gossip and kitsch. As the topics of tabloids are processed, sensationalism is used: relevant contents, giving way to bizarre scandalous, or tabu subjects peek into people's privacy. The consequences are reflected in shaping the reader's view of world, entering virtual reality. Moving from a strictly populist media towards a completely different media, tabloid contents manipulate consciousness and create dependence. Since they have low professional level of journalistic processing, tabloid journalism unfavourably reflects on the promotion of genuine values.

The effect of new media on consumer media usage: An empirical study in South Korea

The advent and proliferation of the Internet (a form of new media) have heavily influenced consumers' media usage behavior and a number of other social, political, cultural, and economic outcomes. The recent introduction of smart mobile media, including smartphones and tablets, is expected to similarly affect these issues. This study empirically analyzes how the advent of the Internet and smart mobile media affects Korean consumers' media usage behavior, seeking to provide a means to anticipate the ripple effect to societal outcomes related to the evolution of new media in Korea. We modeled consumers' media usage behavior and conducted preference and simulation analyses using data gleaned from a survey of consumers' media behavior and a Multiple Discrete-Continuous Extreme Values (MDCEV) model. The results of the analyses illustrate how consumer preferences regarding old and new media differ in terms of socio-demographic variables. Moreover, the analyses revealed that whereas the advent of the Internet has negatively influenced consumers' use of old media, the arrival of smart mobile media has had a synergistic effect on television use. As a result, the advent of mobile media increased the use of television, but decreased use of other forms of old media.

Shallow or Rational Public Spheres? Indonesian Political Parties in the Twitter-Sphere

Abstract Despite the impressive democratic gains of the Indonesian political system since the fall of the authoritarian New Order regime, a noted weakness of the current political party system is the lack of clear ideological positions across parties and the difficulty that voters face in differentiating policy programs in order to hold parties accountable. Yet, with the increasing popularity of social media, new channels of communication are opening up between political parties and their constituents, reshaping Indonesia’s political communication landscape. This raises the question of whether these new forms of media offer spaces that allow, or even encourage, parties to articulate ideological positions and discuss issues of public concern with constituents. This paper addresses this question through a mixed-methods analysis of how political parties are using the popular social media website Twitter and how users are responding to party messaging strategies. Based on a content analysis of party messages, qualitative observation of party-constituent interactions, and a quantitative analysis of user response, the findings suggest that there is reason for modest optimism that the medium of Twitter encourages a less superficial brand of party communication. Whereas other studies have found that the goals or the size of the party as the best explanation for the social media strategy and performance, the Indonesian case suggests that parties that attempt to differentiate themselves ideologically, regardless of their ideological content, and engage the public directly perform better on Twitter. It also finds that tweets about electoral politics receive the most reaction from users. This suggests that Twitter is a medium that will reward more programmatic and engaged party messaging, with potentially positive impacts on the Indonesian political communications landscape.

Posting Racism and Sexism: Authenticity, Agency and Self-Reflexivity in Social Media

Our work engages a critical feminist perspective on the study of surveillance by bringing work on newer forms of media into conversation with the rich tradition of feminist media scholarship on the...

Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology and Politics by Laura Kurgan (review)

Reviewed by: Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology and Politics by Laura Kurgan Jennifer S. Light (bio) Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology and Politics. By Laura Kurgan. New York: Zone Books/MIT Press, 2013. Pp. 232. $36.95. Laura Kurgan’s Close Up at a Distance examines the politics of digital spatial technologies, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and remote sensing—many with roots in American military and national security agency programs but now freely available as civilian tools. Kurgan, whose intellectual biography spans both the theory and practice of architecture and design, is particularly interested in questions about the relationship between reality and representation, especially the tensions between precision and ambiguity, raised by these technological tools. Her analysis proceeds on two fronts. The first, which comprises her book’s three introductory chapters, orients readers to key details of these technologies, including their historical origins, how they work, and the invisible or near-invisible politics embedded within. The analytical contributions of these chapters are clear, if occasionally repetitive, and well-illustrated with supporting images. Although not chiefly aimed at an audience of historians of science and technology, this first section covers familiar terrain to readers in these disciplines, including citations of scholars such as Bruno Latour and Peter Galison that reflect the inroads that limited aspects of history of science and technology have made in the design professions. The strength of these three chapters for their primary audience—they introduce design professionals to a new form of media literacy—is a limitation for a potential readership within the history of science and technology. For there are many points in the book that might have offered opportunities for deeper engagement with our discipline, which would enrich both the book’s account of its fascinating subject and in turn the multidisciplinary conversation about new technologies that is proceeding in parallel in these fields. Thus, Kurgan might have amplified her critique of the [End Page 769] “para-empiricism” of the data produced by spatial imaging technologies—in particular her analysis of their claims to objectivity—in dialog with the rich body of historical literature on the politics of quantification and objectivity across fields of scientific and technological inquiry. Her observations about the growth of military support for commercial satellite operations would fit nicely with recent work on new models of procurement such as the “military-entertainment complex” described by Timothy Lenoir and Henry Lowood. And her call to interrogate the “military-political origins” of technologies now in the civilian domain might have benefited from engagement with John Cloud’s work on the history of military geographic information systems—in particular his discussion of how imagery from classified data-collection systems long ago made their way into the civilian realm, even as the reconnaissance equipment itself remained a state secret. The second front for Kurgan’s analysis, which reflects her professional training outside of the history of science and technology, will likely strike Technology and Culture readers as the most innovative contribution here. For the next nine chapters move beyond textual analysis of her subject and associated images to present a new analytic method. Kurgan uses spatial technologies to explore the politics of those very spatial technologies, and does so with a writing style whose accessibility makes her claims easy to digest. These chapters span topics from mapping the area around the former World Trade Center site to satellite imaging of Kuwait. Each, the subject of an art installation or related project, is presented in its original form, accompanied by updated reflections that nicely link it back to the major themes of the book. Jennifer S. Light Jennifer S. Light is professor of science, technology, and society at MIT. Copyright © 2014 Society for the History of Technology

From the classroom to Facebook: a modern approach for smoking education in adolescents

Background Although studies show that a large majority of smokers initiate smoking while in early adulthood, poor efficacy of school smoking-prevention programs has been noted. With the explosive rise in internet use, the imperative need to use new forms of media for educational purposes has emerged more prominently than ever before. In this paper we briefly describe the design and testing of a smoking-related social media-integrated education intervention. Materials and methods We describe 5 simple steps towards a successful presentation that will lead to meaningful social media interactions: Steps 1-3 include the careful selection of the presenters and their education on general presentation techniques and classroom behaviors, as well as the topic in particular. During step 4, the presenters link up with the students using a social media platform, and provide “take-home” key points. Facebook is chosen as the most popular social networking website in which the vast majority of youth is daily active and already has accounts. Finally, in step 5, the presenters request the attendees to upload one of the take home messages as their Facebook status. The rationale is that the knowledge could, thus, reach a quite larger number of young people than the finite number of attendees. Results We implemented and tested the above algorithm during a tobacco control lecture curriculum to 225 high school students in Athens, Greece, in May 2012. After the lecture, a 3-day window was provided to the attendees to connect with the presenters in Facebook and post a smokingrelated sentence in their account status. Assessed 72hrs later, 32 students (14.2%) had posted a smoking-related sentence in their Facebook account, a “take-home message” that was spread to their 20,095 cumulative friends as a note on their wall via newsfeed. Conclusions

Measuring Interactivity in Video Games

Video games are a popular form of new media, and their use is impacting multiple fields of study within the communication discipline. For instance, research programs in mass communication, health, instructional, feminist/gender, interpersonal, and intercultural communication have all examined video games. Interactivity is the hallmark of video games and consequently is a common concept in the video game literature. While video game interactivity (VGI) is still an under-specified concept, previous research suggests that interactivity has the potential to moderate both positive and negative effects of video games, and therefore it is crucial for understanding general video game effects. We developed a theoretical model of video game interactivity and tested a multidimensional scale to assess video game interactivity across five studies using six independent samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses as well as item analyses revealed a reliable and valid metric consisting of six dimensions of video game interactivity.

Trends in media and communication studies: Toddlers, media consumption, and development communication

The growing field of media studies continues to attract the interest of researchers who closely watch the diffusion and usage pattern of the media. New forms of media that integrate a number of media and communication technologies into a single device (like the latest invention of smart watches) further necessitate intensive research in this field. Until recently, scholars who followed the growth and development of the media focused more on the younger generation and their media consumption patterns. This focus has now shifted to very young children, including toddlers, as their exposure to media has of late tended to change significantly. The early exposure to forms of media, whether television or the internet, has implications for the media industry. At the same time, the communication side of the media has been influencing development initiatives on several fronts.

Book Review: Writing on the Wall: Social Media—The First 2,000 Years, by Tom Standage

Writing on the Wall: Social Media-The First 2,000 Years. Tom Standage. York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 265 pp. $26 hbk.In today's rapidly changing media world, is easy to be enamored by new technolo- gies and marvel at new platforms for sharing information. Digital natives, in particu- lar, cannot imagine life without Internet access or Facebook at their fingertips. Others decry the Internet's pervasiveness, fearing the decline of civilized society due to over- dependence on the web and social media.Tom Standage's Writing on the Wall puts social media in context. Although the media's reach is unprecedented, Standage describes its foundation as anything but new. The idea of sharing social information dates as least to Cicero, when the Roman elite used papyrus rolls and messengers as their Facebook walls or Twitter feeds, he reports.Debates over social media's impact on society, demands for its regulation, and even its ability to effect change are also rooted in tradition. Just as Plato worried that the written word would harm intellectual life, today some argue that the ability to just Google it is a dangerous crutch. Soon, critics contend, there will be no need to learn or remember much of anything.Such context makes Standage's book a fascinating read.Standage, the digital editor at The Economist, sets the stage with data on the rapid growth of social networks on the web. About 1.4 billion people were sharing informa- tion on social networks when the book was published, and the numbers continue to grow. The fascination with sharing is simply a part of human nature, Standage sug- gests. Today's Facebook users, for example, share news they think their friends will like. They comment on news from their friends. Both activities are much like those of Cicero and his pals who had scribes copy letters to send to friends outside Rome.The role of social media in the Arab Spring uprisings is well documented. But social media's role in revolutions is not all that new, as Standage's chapter on Martin Luther points out. The priest's in-your-face pamphlets were reprinted and shared among like-minded reformers, going viral in today's parlance. Although Luther may not have intended schism, the widespread sharing of his works was key to his fame and influence. New forms of media do not trigger revolutions by themselves, but they make easier for would-be revolutionaries to coordinate their action, synchronize opinion, and rally others to their cause, Standage writes. …

What is a Media Company? A Reconceptualization for the Online World

The current understanding of a media company is based on the idea of a publisher or broadcaster producing or aggregating, bundling, and distributing content. In this scenario, the content creation mainly is done by professionals. However, with the advent of mobile devices and ubiquitous Internet access, users have been enabled to produce content themselves. This gave rise to a new form of media companies: the platform operators, who aggregate, manage, and distribute user-generated content. Based on a historical summary, this article delineates the characteristics of this new approach of content distribution, draws comparisons to the traditional media companies, derives implications for the media markets, and provides a definition for the term media company that is valid in both the online and offline world.

New Media and Democracy: 3 Competing Visions from Cyber-Optimism and Cyber-Pessimism

Recent years have witnessed both the critical improvement of new forms of media and their proliferation; from their emergence as the obscure and arcane province of an elite few, they have spread and are now used by millions. Not surprisingly, scholars and experts are increasingly interested in evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of new media technologies for political purposes, and a range of approaches are being employed to investigate the topic. This paper will explore the theme by focusing on the question of whether or not new media technologies have enhanced digital democracy. Generally, the discussion of this issue is dominated by the competing views of cyberoptimists and cyber-pessimists.

Facebook loves: depression, psychosis and online romance, report of three cases

This paper explores the impacts of the Internet, social networking sites, and online-relationships on self-definition, perspectives of reality, and mental health in contemporary times. The authors explain how computer-mediated communication seems to be the culmination of the time-space continuum endemic to modernity. The dynamic formation of the Internet sites has provided new ways of interpersonal interaction and communication that have created a highly impactful shift on the time-space continuum. This shift appears to transcend time as it creates a new sense of interpersonal connection in the virtual realm of cyberspace. Relationships that were previously established and sustained primarily through face-to-face interaction have come to be complemented by a social technology that is creating a new genre of interpersonal relationships. The article highlights contradictory views about how the use of the Internet affects intimacy, expands to another area, namely, romantic relationships. By use of social network sites, an increasing number of people are found to have online romantic relationships. Among these Facebook is a medium that brings people together who have shared interests. Three cases describe experiences of persons seeking psychiatric assistance who experienced depressive psychosis, hallucinations, insomnia and other stressful and disorienting experiences after Facebook relationships formed in virtual communities. Attempts to resolve discrepancies related to the emotional void resulting from differences between online virtual satisfaction of needs for love and actual offline absence of the so-called loved one are explored. We are providing three cases where psychopathology might be fostered with these new forms of media.

Life at the 49th Parallel: Media, Space, and the Liminal Perspective

LIFE AT THE 49TH PARALLEL: MEDIA, SPACE, AND THE LIMINAL PERSPECTIVE North of Empire: Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space by Jody Berland. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp. 408,33 illustrations. $94.95 cloth, >.95 paper.The Second World is a liminal category somewhere between those countries that are fully developed and exporting their culture, and those countries that are underor undeveloped and importing the culture of others either by choice or by force. The challenge in studying the Second World, of course, is not imposing First World perspectives and assumptions through one's analysis. Jody Berland's North of Empire is a collection of essays that highlights the cultural exchange across the 49th parallel, the largest border that signifies and separates the First World (the United States) and the Second World (Canada). For Berland, a professor of humanities at York University, this line is less of a threshold that one crosses than a space that one inhabits. Canada's marginal position responds to the influence the United States commands on the world stage, and that influence is reflected in the spaces, media, and ultimately the cultural identity within Canada. The margin is an active space of contestation, not a forgotten space away from the center, as demonstrated by Berland's definition: A 'margin' is a space which is drawn into the axes of imperial economy, administration, and information but which remains 'behind' (to put in temporal terms) or 'outside' (spatially speaking) in terms of economic and political power (77). North of Empire explores the relationship between the United States and Canada, founded on the influence of the arguably troubled US empire, and demonstrates that, for Second World countries such as Canada, action and even resistance are still possible even from within the postcolonial margin (110).North of Empire is an appropriate title as this text is framed by the other-than relationship Canada has with the United States and the fluid natures of space, media, and identity that arise when two cultures meet. She writes, Each new form of media changes the configurations of space. Cultural technologies work to set the terms, possibilities, and effects of their negotiation (136). The text's subtitle, Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space, seems to imply that what is at stake is the way culturedetermining technologies affect and influence spaces. While this is true, Berland is making a deeper point about the liminal position that Canada holds as it straddles both its border with the United States and the cultural binaries that border invokes: Canada is both an international entity and a fortuitous colony of the United States' media and industry (2); it is both fiercely patriotic and self-deprecatingly antipatriotic (35); it is both an active player on the world stage and yet invisible and disregarded, often by its own citizens (38). Berland highlights various cultural technologies-music, meteorology, modes of travel, and digital media, among others-and their symbiotic relationship with the Canadian imaginary. These technologies, and their potential to be reduced to binaries, reflect the conflict at the heart of Canadians' cultural identity. That conflict is one founded on the complexity of living in the spaces between binaries-the tensions between First World and Second World designations chief among them-and Berland argues that this Second World identity is actually something to be championed, not derided, by such complications. Her use of terms such as margin, dualism, tragic paradox, anxiety, and invisibility sets the stage for a text that spends its time working against 'Canadianization': the of that arises when you see the world through another country's eyes (2). In short, Berland's goal with her text is to respond to this loss of sovereignty by recharting, remapping, and redefining the marginalization of Canadians, their media, and their spaces into an approach that is both active and empowered. …

Mobile social gambling: Poker’s next frontier

In this paper, we provide a history, analysis, and theorization of the emergence of mobile social gambling—a new form of media and cultural practice that fuses “social gambling” and “social gaming,” with the affordances of mobile platforms and social networking sites. Through the use of apps in mobile devices, the consumption of risk is experiencing a shift from space-bound betting to itinerant practices that open new spaces for leisure and socialization. Focusing on a case study of the mobile app Zynga Poker, this paper attempts to identify and describe these “leakages” in the “magic circle” of gambling, which bring together social gaming and longstanding gambling cultures and practices. Our argument is that mobile gambling on smartphones and tablets extends earlier cultural practices associated with gambling activities such as poker, and much deeper into the realm of the everyday. The expansion of gambling practices into the realm of the everyday, however, poses manifold ethical, cultural, and political implications: the availability of gambling products to minors and other vulnerable populations; increased normalization of wagering as entertainment; and the merging of gambling and mobile gaming industries and markets. Digital gambling is a pressing area for future study in mobile media and communication.

Time, space, and the new media machine of the terrorphone

In this short article, the author is concerned with how the contemporary form of the telephone, a new media machine which was of deep-rooted significance for Marshall McLuhan, promotes our obsession with forms of shared participation and social implosion. The author argues that the form of the telephone involves a complex abolition of our sense of space, interwoven with unexpected socio-cultural effects, which then create new subjectivities as well as new forms of decentralization that are intuited but not fully understood. To politicize these effects, and following the revelations of the American whistleblower Edward Snowden, the author identifies the form of the mobile telephone as a new form of media and argues that it is no longer an ‘extension of man’, as McLuhan suggested, but an extension of the US State, which is producing new forms of socio-cultural collapse. The author then explores how the remote-controlled time and space of what he calls the ‘terrorphone’ cultivates, among other things, the contemporary visualization of speech. Finally, he questions the desirability of unrelenting mobile telephone interaction as our only ‘intelligent’ choice today when such interaction is, contrary to McLuhan, not a great extension of our central nervous system, but in fact a danger to it.

Documenting Protest and Police: Occupy Wall Street and the (R)evolution of Digital Mobile Video

The importance of mobile phone video technology was highlighted in September 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street movement transformed Zuccotti Park in New York into a public space for protest. For those not present, the occupation was witnessed and interpreted through the reporting of traditional media – local and global news organizations, the Internet, radio and printed media. Yet most vitally, Occupy Wall Street was characterized by a new form of representation captured through the camera phone lenses of localized practitioners experimenting and rapidly realizing, often in real time, the value of mobile phone cameras within the new media ecology of social activism. Perhaps nowhere are the implications of recent digital video technologies more influential than in the synthesis of activist movements, citizen journalism, documentary practices and emerging forms of new media, such as the live streaming application – Ustream. Analyzing the practices that matured during the Occupy movement through the lens of Manuel DeLanda’s interpretation of assemblage theory this article offers a critical reflection of the technological, cultural and networked diagram that was present at the time, including but not limited to access to available technologies (the proliferation of cameras, web technologies and protocols and other telecommunications standards and the networks they form). I examine the video practice of Tim Pool, a practitioner whose evolution from citizen to citizen journalist to journalist reflects the complexity, spontaneity and often contiguity of assemblage. Furthermore, using assemblage as a key-mapping device, this article explores the emerging practices and networks birthed, reinforced and reworked during the Occupy Wall Street movement and throughout New York City in the months after the Zuccotti Park encampment dispersed.

Changing the game? The impact of Twitter on relationships between football clubs, supporters and the sports media

Twitter is making headlines as footballers and supporters use the social media platform to get their fix of football news or vent their views on the game. This essay explores how football clubs are coping with this relatively new form of media and how it is changing their relationships with fans and journalists. The essay’s new empirical material is based on a survey of Football and Premier League clubs, combined with analysis of Twitter content. Findings show that Twitter is opening up new, direct forms of communication between clubs and their fans. These are challenging the traditional roles of sports journalists. However, journalism’s continued strength lies in its detachment and independent voice. Twitter is also allowing players to find their voice and create powerful personal brands. There is currently a lack of leadership, clarity and coherence among clubs and football authorities over how to regulate and manage this.

Plugged in: Remote Australian Indigenous Youth and Digital Culture

For most Indigenous people in central and northern Australia the encounter with the western world has been relatively recent. Yet even in the most remote Indigenous communities, global influences pervade everyday life and new forms of media and communications are reshaping youth culture. This paper draws on ethnographic case study data from research with Indigenous youth who are participating in non-formal community-based media and music production and digital community archiving projects in remote regions. For these young adults the generational shift has been rapid, as many of their elders once lived a precontact nomadic existence. Now they are firmly part of global youth culture, taking on the role of mediating between old cultural knowledge and new digital technologies. Such generationally differentiated arenas of social practice are also changing the ways in which youth in remote Indigenous Australia are using oral and written language.

Rebels with a pen: observations on the newly emerging media landscape in Libya

The role of social media as a catalyst of the ‘Arab Spring’ has been subject to much debate – both by academics and the press. Likewise, the impact of international media, such as Al-Jazeera, has been thoroughly examined elsewhere. While acknowledging the significance of these players, this article explores the emergence of a new landscape of local print and broadcast media in revolutionary Libya that is both the result of the dramatic changes that the country has undergone and one of their facilitators. This article analyses the political impact of these new forms of media during and after the 2011 Libyan uprisings, with an emphasis on how the role and the self-image of journalists and media producers has evolved alongside with Libya's political transformation. It is demonstrated that the new Libyan media began their life as ‘partisan advocates’ and that different societal currents are now struggling to set the new role of media. It concludes with an analysis of the newly implemented legal framework and institutions which govern the Libyan media. It remains unclear if recent legislation will protect independent media from the authorities or, conversely, allow the state to exert censorship and consolidate its ownership over the media. This article analyses the various approaches to media jurisdiction prevalent in post-Qadhafi Libya as reflecting various degrees of state intervention. This discussion reflects the inherent contradictions of a society which, with very little preparation, has had to manage the change from conditions of absolute governmental control to conditions of relative anarchy.

Avatars of Whiteness: Racial Expression in Video Game Characters

Video games are an enormous segment of popular media today, comparable to television and movies. Moreover, video games represent a new form of media distinguished from previous forms due to the interactive element, where game players have the ability to change and influence the game world. This paper contributes to the study of race and popular media by examining how race is presented in role‐playing video games through the feature of avatar creation. Capabilities for avatar creation are analyzed in over sixty massively multiplayer online role‐playing games (MMORPGs) in service as of early 2010 and twenty offline role‐playing games (RPGs) published over the past 10 years. The analysis shows that the vast majority of games, both online and offline, do not allow for the creation of avatars with a non‐white racial appearance. Forcing an Anglo appearance on avatars that purport to represent the player has the potential to reinforce a sense of normative whiteness as well as shape the social composition of online worlds into all‐white virtual spaces, contributing to the creation of a virtual “white habitus.”