Just What Is "New Media," Anyway?

 
"New Media" is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days.  But what exactly do we mean when we refer to "new media"?

Many definitions, each with a different focus, have been offered in recent years, and I'll summarize a few of them below (emphasis in all of the quotes below is mine):

EVERETT E. DENNIS & JAMES ASH
--"When the study was initiated the term was most commonly associated with New Media was 'convergence,' meaning the uniting of all forms of communication into one, as well as the integration of various media industries -- publishing, broadcasting, and telecommunication -- into a single amalgamated enterprise.  Thus New Media's definition was a blurred mix of media functions, content, and business arrangements marked by little agreement" (27).
--"When asked the most accurate way to describe their own New Media business, the executives preferred 'multi-media,' meaning a mix of cable, Internet, and broadcasting, rather than more singular users of the Internet" (28).
--"If anything, there was a reluctance to name specific individuals in a field 'where collaboration and even plagiarism is the rule,' as one respondent put it" (30).
--"Integration of useful content linked to specific audiences with great precision thanks to digitalization is a clear theme in New Media's future" (31).

KATHLEEN BLAKE YANCEY
--"immediate, direct, and substantive" (739)
--"More generally, however... the medium is suggestive rather than deterministic.  The virtues of the digital outlined here are more potential than realized, but this articulation demonstrates potential for a new identity, one not fully determined by medium, but possible within and through it" (753)

MARY E. HOCKS
--Interactive digital texts can blend words and visuals, talk and text, and authors and audiences in ways that are recognizably postmodern" (630).
--"help audiences take more conscious responsibility for making meaning out of the text.  Audiences can experience the pleasures of agency and an awareness of themselves as constructed identities in a heterogeneous medium.  How that agency gets played out, however, depends on the purpose and situation for the text in relation to the audience's need for linearity and other familiar forms" (633).
--"In a space where multifaceted identities can be constructed, experienced, and even performed, this experience of hybridity works to the audience's advantage by increasing the experience of pleasure through identification and multiplicity" (643).
--"The beauty of hypertext is…that it propels us from the straightened 'either/or' world that print has come to represent and into a universe where the 'and/and/and' is always possible" (653).

(will all of our desks look like this one day?  maybe so, at the rate New Media is growing.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/4braham/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

It seems, then, that there are certain values inherent in New Media and its near-ubiquitous presence in our modern lives:

-- blending of separate "traditional" media, thus blurring the lines between them

-- audience segmentation

-- new definitions of authorship and intellectual property

-- immediacy and easy access

-- hybridity and multiplicity

-- a greater awareness of our own identities

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the last one.  I think many people are less self-aware in the New Media age because they use things like the Internet to disassociate and escape from their everyday lives.  There are also reports that people are more narcissistic than they were before the effects of the Internet permeated into many aspects of our existence.

However, I don't think all hope is lost here.  New Media can, as Hocks suggests, help us to become more aware of how we construct our identities, provided that we pay close attention to how and why we choose to use New Media.  Like anything else, New Media is what you make of it.

I look forward to learning more about New Media and its psychological ramifications, both through my own experiences and by reading the theories postulated by others.

As always, feel free to share you thoughts by posting a comment.

Works Cited:

Dennis, Everett E., and James Ash. “Towards a Taxonomy of New Media: Management Views of an Evolving Industry.” International Journal on Media Management 3.1 (2001): 26-32.

Hocks, Mary E. “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Visual Writing Environments.” College Composition and Communication 54.4 (2003): 629-656.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Postmodernism, Palimpsest, and Portfolios: Theoretical Issues in the Representation of Student Work.” College Composition and Communication 55.4 (2004): 738-761.

When Words Fail You: The Impact of Images

While much of the information we take in during the course of a day is driven by text (and, indeed, schools are placing more emphasis on their writing programs these days), it's important to also analyze how information can be conveyed through images.  Images can take the form of illustrations, photographs, icons, navigational aids/"wayfinders", symbols, charts, and graphs.  Images can be particularly useful from a usability standpoint, since, if presented and created properly, they can quickly communicate ideas and serve as supplement to, or even replace, words.  The power of images to take the place of words will be my focus for this particular blog post.  Specifically, I will give examples of effective uses of illustrations (both photographs and human-created images) and icons to convey ideas.

Illustrations

Illustrations, whether they're photographs or images created "by hand," can be an integral part of providing instruction.  They are often used to clarify or supplement the text-based directions included in the instructions.  Many "how-to" sites exist on the Web, but one that makes particularly effective use of photographic illustrations is Instructables.  According to the "About This Site" page, "Instructables is a web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others."  As the screenshot below suggests, you can find instructions on how to create anything from Halloween costumes to computers.

(Happy Halloween, btw!  What are you going as?)

Here is an example of one of the instructions found on in the site.  It teaches you how to use a brown paper bag as wrapping paper.  Note the use of multiple images for this single step.

(Hooray for saving money!)

Illustrations can also be used in other contexts, and even if they serve as decoration, they can still be informative.  Consider this example, found on the "Customization" page for Mozilla Firefox.

(My computer wishes it could look like that.)

Note how a complete list of Firefox themes and extensions is not offered on this page.  That would probably be an overwhelming amount of information for the casual browser of the page.  Rather, the illustration of the computer give the viewer an idea of the kinds of features can can add to Firefox, while also serving as decoration for this particular page.  For example, the remote control coming out of the computer suggests that you can add multimedia functionality to Firefox, and the bullhorn is meant to convey the idea that you can enhance Firefox so that you can use it to receive important updates and alerts from your favorite sites.

Icons

Icons, like photographs and artistic illustrations, can be powerful communication tools.  Many designers have realized this, and, as a result, icons are found in just about every medium, including catalogs, websites, blogs (like this one!), computer desktops, and mobile phones.  If well designed with a target audience in mind, they can be particularly useful navigation aids.  Because they serve people from various cultural backgrounds, hospitals are one type of location that relies on icons to help patients and visitors make their way through often-confusing building layouts.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored studies that resulted in the publication of a guidebook "designed for health care facilities and graphic designers interested in learning about and using newly developed health care symbols for wayfinding programs," which is also available online.  As mentioned in the document's executive summary, "Universal symbols can be flexible and simple to implement, yet

can be integrated into complex and far reaching sign, print, and internet programs."

Here are some images from the guidebook (page 1:6).  Can you guess what they stand for?

(OK: the last one's probably pretty easy.)

Here are the answers (from left to right):

-- Top Row: Surgery, Billing Department, Intensive Care Unit, Family Practice Clinic, Social Services

-- Second Row: Cardiology, Radiology, OB Clinic, Immunizations, Waiting Room

-- Third Row: Chapel, Ambulance Entrance, Pharmacy, Laboratory, Medical Records

-- Bottom Row: Pediatrics, Emergency

These 17 icons were "found to be 'most meaningful' by at least 88% of the tested multilingual population group"  (RJW 1:7).  During this same testing session, "participants walked one foot per second faster to find
their destination when guided by symbols than when guided by multilingual word signs" (RWJ 1:7).

I would be interested in hearing about any experiences you may have with images, be they positive or negative.  Did a particular image help you in a situation when you need a quick answer?  Or did an image confuse or mislead you at some point?

The Deliciousness of Social Bookmarking

As I talked about in my last post, social bookmarking, or the tagging and sharing of links among members of a network, has become a mainstream practice.  The other day, I finally succumbed to the trend and decided to give the four-little-square site (or, the site formerly known as del.icio.us) a try.

In keeping with the technical communication theme I seem to have going these days, I've decided to, at least for the foreseeable future, limit my bookmarks to those that pertain to the field in some way.  I hope that, if you ever decided to join my Delicious network, you would find my bookmarks to be of interest to you, as well.

If all goes well with the code, you should be able to see a link offering you the opportunity to join my network:


Because the tags applied by users are not standardized in any way and could very well be relevant only to the individuals who create them, one is left to wonder if folksonomy/social bookmarking is a "democratic taxonomy that allows the community to peer review the content of the Web" or "a disorganized collection of personal preferences."  I believe that it has the potential to be both: on a macro level, it's almost certainly the former, but on a micro level, it can indeed be the latter. 

Since every user gets a "homepage" listing all of his or her bookmarks and their tags, users can, if they so choose, create tags and categories that only make sense to them.  For example, if I want to keep track of all links relevant to a research paper I'm working on, I can tag those links "paper," regardless of whether or not those sites have any content directly related to "paper" as conceptualized by the rest of the world.  Therefore, if someone who didn't know what I was working on looked at my list of links and (micro-level) tags and didn't have any prior knowledge of how social bookmarking "works," that person may conclude that social bookmarks are "a disorganized collection of personal preferences."  However, as Prof. Ken Ronkowitz explains in a podcast called "Web 2.0 for Designers," the tags applied to the collective list of links on a social-bookmarking site are based on which tags are the most commonly used to describe those links.  Thus, the tags that would be relevant only to me would be "pushed to the bottom" and would not be reflected in the site's public (i.e., macro-level) tags.

Because there are no rules governing tags, a group/network could agree on a tag that would be used to designate links that are relevant to its members.  In this way, social bookmarking can be used to share links among colleagues or classmates.  This method of gathering and sharing links can be particularly useful when group members are collaborating on a project and will be using the same resources, and that usefulness is compounded when they are not working together in a single location.

A handout on social bookmarking (which, incidentally, is included in my list of Delicious bookmarks) published by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative also points out that social bookmarking can, over time, transform how we think about and find information: "Tagging information resources with keywords has the potential to change how we store and find information. It may become less important to know and remember where information was found and more important to know how to retrieve it using a framework created by and shared with peers and colleagues. Social bookmarking simplifies the distribution of reference lists, bibliographies, papers, and other resources among peers or students."

That handout from EDUCAUSE is just one of the eight sites that I currently have bookmarked on Delicious.  Here's a screenshot showing you the rest:

 (have you been to any of these?)

The short descriptions that I wrote for each site describe why I think they might be relevant to those in the field of technical communication.  In particular, I wanted to include sites that provided a quick reference for certain topics, like usability and proposal writing, that may be germane to a professional technical communicator's work.  Through these sites, users can get the specific information they need about a topic, without having to delve deeply into it.  I also included several sites that can have very practical, immediate uses, particularly with regard to web design.  Web design can seem overwhelming to beginners and those who don't design or maintain sites on a regular basis, so I wanted to collect links that could make the process seem a little less daunting.

My favorite link so far has to be the Colormatch Remix Color Scheme Tool.  It takes away some of the mystery behind how colors work together, and it gives you the hex and RGB codes for the color you create/designate and some coordinating colors.  Give it a try!

Here's a sample color scheme:

(pretty cool, huh?)

If you come up with any cool color schemes (or find any other interesting technical communication sites), feel free to post them.

Has Anyone Seen the Readme for Web 2.0? Because I Can't Find It.

The concept of Web 2.0 has been refined and debated over the years since it was introduced by Tim O'Reilly in 2005.

In this essay, O'Reilly presents a comprehensive analysis of Web 2.0.  I feel that, on the whole, he is accurate in his assessment of what distinguishes Web 2.0 and Web 1.0, especially considering that he wrote the essay in 2005.  Some of what he writes is downright prophetic: in the section entitled "Software above the level of a single device," he says that "This is one of the areas of Web 2.0 where we expect to see some of the greatest change, as more and more devices are connected to the new platform. What applications become possible when our phones and our cars are not consuming data but reporting it? Real time traffic monitoring, flash mobs, and citizen journalism are only a few of the early warning signs of the capabilities of the new platform."  Other things he predicts, however, make him seem overly optimistic: "Much as the rise of proprietary software led to the Free Software movement, we expect the rise of proprietary databases to result in a Free Data movement within the next decade. One can see early signs of this countervailing trend in open data projects such as Wikipedia, the Creative Commons, and in software projects like Greasemonkey, which allow users to take control of how data is displayed on their computer."  While this is true in some ways, I'm not sure the Free Data movement has taken off as much as O'Reilly thought it would.

In case you're curious about O'Reilly's overall picture of Web 2.0, here's a summary, as presented at the end of his essay:
"In exploring the seven principles above, we've highlighted some of the principal features of Web 2.0. Each of the examples we've explored demonstrates one or more of those key principles, but may miss others. Let's close, therefore, by summarizing what we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:
-- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
-- Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
-- Trusting users as co-developers
-- Harnessing collective intelligence
-- Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
-- Software above the level of a single device
-- Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
The next time a company claims that it's 'Web 2.0,' test their features against the list above. The more points they score, the more they are worthy of the name. Remember, though, that excellence in one area may be more telling than some small steps in all seven."

In his blog Serenpity35, Ken Ronkowitz expands on O'Reilly's definition of Web 2.0 to include such factors as the need for new security functions and economic models, as well as the issue of sharing and stealing content.  While I don't view this characterization of Web 2.0 as incorrect, I don't think that these aspects of Web 2.0 are as prominent as Ronkowitz may have thought when writing his 2006 post.  He was totally on-point, however, when talking about the increased potential for collaboration and interaction, which has become a hallmark of Web 2.0. 

Here's my definition of Web 2.0, based on my readings and personal experience:
Web 2.0 is characterized by:
-- User-generated content (which includes content submitted and/or refined by users, as in Wikipedia; pages tagged by users, as on delicious; and page settings that are customized, directly or indirectly, by users, as in iGoogle)
-- Data presented in a variety of ways (which may involve a "cloud" of data; or using the same data on multiple platforms, like PCs and mobile phones)
-- The creation of networks and subnetworks (whether they are determined directly by the user, as in Facebook, or indirectly, as illustrated by social bookmarking sites' users' ability to share and discuss sites with people of similar interests)
-- Ever-evolving services (which may include behind-the-scenes tweaks or revisions to site layout and functionalities)

Web 2.0 is touted as being the "user-run Web," but I believe that the power users have over their Web experience is mostly an illusion.  Ultimately, our experiences and the extent of our contributions are greatly influenced by the companies running sites with Web 2.0 capabilities.  One example of this is this year's debate over the ownership of Facebook content.  When does our content stop being "ours" and start being "the company's"?  Also, a site can only have so much functionality.  Site features may be added or taken away at any time.  The best and most successful Web 2.0 sites are the ones that best maintain the illusion of user power and make their influence over user experience as transparent as possible.

Do I think we're past Web 2.0?  No, but I do believe that we're on the cusp between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, whatever that may be.  Web users now take the functionalities inherent in Web 2.0 for granted, and the technology behind it has become mainstream.  Such mainstreaming is necessary before any distinctive features that are beyond the scope of Web 2.0 can be introduced to the public in any meaningful way.  Now that "everyone" has accounts on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and that people have become "addicted" to Twitter and iPhone apps, the groundwork has been established for more evolved uses of data and ways of networking.

There has been much speculation about what Web 3.0 will look like and how it will be different from Web 2.0.  The main buzzword for Web 3.0 seems to be "semantic," implying that computers will be able to more intelligently determine meaning.  As Cade Metz at PC Magazine wrote in an article on the subject, "In essence, the Semantic Web is a place where machines can read Web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the Net and find what we're looking for. 'It's a set of standards that turns the Web into one big database,' says Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, one of the leading voices of this new-age Internet."  In addition to the vision of the "Semantic Web," other presented possibilities for Web 3.0 include "3D Web," "Media-Centric Web" (as opposed to a mostly text-driven Web), and "Pervasive Web".  Like Web. 2.0, there are conferences centered around the idea of Web 3.0.  The homepage for one such conference states, "The core idea behind web 3.0 is to extract much more meaningful, actionable insight from information...The goal of Web 3.0 is to reorganize information so users can capture what things are and how they are related. This seemingly simple concept will have a profound effect at every level of information consumption, from the individual end user to the enterprise.  Web 3.0 technologies make the organization of information radically more fluid and allow for new types of analysis based on things like text semantics, machine learning, and what we call serendipity — the stumbling upon insights based on just having better organized and connected information."

Until such Web 3.0 functionality materializes, we'll have to rely on human users to categorize information, a practice often referred to as "folksonomy."  I find folksonomy to be a particularly compelling aspect of Web 2.0 from a usability standpoint, since the very point of it is to make the Web easier to navigate and to give users the ability to quickly find information of interest to them.  It does have its imperfections, since the leeway it gives users leaves room for misspellings and debatable tags (for a more full treatment of this topic see Elaine Peterson's essay "Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy"). Nonetheless, it does provide a useful look at how "the masses" characterize and interpret content, and it can also give us insight into the psychological underpinnings of how people choose to describe what they see and read.

Folksonomy has become a dominant feature of Web 2.0 and can be most readily seen on social bookmarking sites and other sites that rely on user-determined tags.  One such site that has received relatively little publicity is Mixx. As described in a press release, "'By providing tools that let users build their own interest-based start pages and supporting free-form tag entries, Mixx makes it easy for users to find and vote on the articles, videos and photos they like and against the ones they don’t like within specific categories and locations. The result is that Mixx is useful to everyone—not just the techie crowd that dominates traditional, one-dimensional recommendation tools,' says Chris McGill, CEO and founder at Mixx.  Mixx allows users interested in all types of digital media to discover, share and engage in conversations about the content they find most interesting by submitting and discussing relevant items."  When users submit links, they tag them according to the content they present.  Each user's homepage is customized with links having tags matching that user's list of interests.

Here's a look at mine:

(I hope no one's surprised by this partial list of my interests!)

And here's what the Front Page looks like, featuring Popular Stories and tags for "Hot Topics":

 

 ("Total Tweets Tweeted Nearing 5 Billion"?  Dang.)

Do you have any favorite Web 2.0 sites?  How do you feel about Web 3.0?  Maintain the Web 2.0 tradition and share.