What's New Media?

New media is an abstract concept with a general meaning. According to Martin Lister (2003), new media is defined as media established with a sense of interactive communication, whereas the conventional media refers to established institutions and organizations such as the press, broadcasting, publishing, and so forth. In late 1980s when the media and communications looked quiet, different the idea of new media has been emerged. New media refers to the techno-culture, which is entailed of technological, cultural and social change. It is called new media as the term “new” in it carries the ideological implication of “the most recent” or “the cutting edge,” derived from a modernist belief in social progress arising through technology. New media is classified as websites, blogs, vod-casts, social networking, rich multimedia, virtual reality such as virtual shopping malls, video conferencing, mobile TV, podcast, and so on (Lister, Dovery, Giddings, Grant, & Kelly, 2003, p. 9-13).

The characteristic of new media employs technology based on interactivity, hyper-textuality, digitalism, dispersal and virtuality. New media makes the communication interactive and the information more accessible in the digital age. The traditional media tools use to be only one-way communication, which includes TV, radio, and newspapers. Traditional media walls have been broken down by the new technology; it provides the interactive communication tools. The convergence of new and old media is an emerging phenomenon in the whole world, with an accelerated movement toward the use of new media among businesses.

Lister, Martin, Dovery, Jon, Giddings, Seth, Grant, Iain, & Kelly, Kieran. (2003).
New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.