Reflections

Four months ago, new media played a limited role in my life. Sure, I read newspapers online, perused certain blogs and watched my share of interactive advertisements. But I was mostly a passive observer, watching as the "old media" I grew up with was slowly taken over by the internet. The Epic video about Google's eventual takeover of the world effectively captures this change and lists all the developments in media since 1989, the year the world wide web was created. The narrator of the film makes the point that in the future, all media will be run by individuals. All citizens of the world "will be able to contribute and participate to create a living, breathing media-scape." While I don't how far we will have gone by 2014, I know how far I, as a participant, have come in the last few months.

Since the act of writing remains the most basic element of new media, I must consider how my own writing has changed since I first dipped a toe into the new media world. I have come to realize that successful blogging, while sometimes defined as a quick, unedited and often updated post of thoughts and ideas, requires a flare for words. The most popular blogs usually display wit and creativity that I imagine only comes with much practice and dedication. Like successful advertising campaigns, words must be kept short and sweet, to the point, void of excess baggage that might confuse or bore the intended audience.

I found that one way of achieving blog style prose was to figure out which images I would include in my post. As an art history major, images are a huge part of my life, and my academic writing is usually inspired by a specific aspect of a painting or sculpture. Lucky for me, images and visual arguments are a huge part of new media. Using a picture to explain a concept is completely acceptable in the blogosphere because an idea conferred in text can be both complicated and simplified by images.

Furthermore, the interplay of text and image that we have explored in the course all blur the standard definition of "media." Dictionary.com defines media as "the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely." It's interesting that there is no mention of the internet in this definition. I think Dictionary.com needs an update; as I've learned over the last semester, the future of media is online.


The cartoon above makes a joke about "investigative tweeting" while displaying awards for blogging, texting and "facebooking." In recent years, Twitter more than any other social networking site has captured the attention of new-media enthusiasts. After hearing several classmates mention Twitter in class, I decided to create an account and see what it was all about. While it took me a few hours to become accustomed to the website's layout and various options, I began to "follow"--Twitter lingo for subscribing to someone's news feed--various friends and a few celebrities (see my previous post on celebrity Twitter users here). A few weeks in, I can definitely see why the website's short 140-character updates have become a popular tool for marketers. In one scroll through my home page, I can get updates on the NYT's style section headlines, Martha Stewart's newest cookie recipe and W magazine's most recent blog post. Twitter is basically a personalized news aggregator and "micro-blogging" site all in one. Many are quick to judge those who use this website as overly narcissistic, but I think there is some value in learning to capture your thoughts in a very small amount of text. Isn't that essentially what successful advertising does? Moreover, most interaction with new media, from keeping a blog to updating a Facebook profile, is self-indulgent to some degree.

After reading What Sort of Revolution in The Economist, I have realized that we are in a revolutionary period. Blogging has forced me to take a step back from what seems normal in my life to better understand how the Internet has changed the way the world works. When I look to the future of new media, I'm optimistic that the Internet will become more available to everyone, not just those who can afford a broadband connection. I am hopeful that publishers of books and newspapers will find a way to make a profit online. I am certain that new media will continue to evolve and surprise its users. But I really don't know if Facebook will be popular in a year or if Twitter will have taken over the world instead of Google. New media develops so quickly in this day and age that it is hard to pause to consider how far we have come since the invention of the printing press.

Is this our future?

This semester, new media has allowed me to push myself in new ways. I created a blog, a website and a podcast, all of which required thinking about text, images, sound and audience at one time. I participated in my first web-cam Q & A. I was even inspired to venture into the world of Twitter. As I head out into the world, I can't help but be proud of the knowledge I have gained through these experiments with new media. And I wonder what the future holds for us both.

Image 1: http://www.jesslaccetti.co.uk/uploaded_images/media_cartoon-730769.gif
Image 2: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/50-twitter-comic-strips/
Image 3: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/n/new_media.asp