The chapter title’s question and quotation marks try to suggest a deep scepticism about the idea that ‘new media’ have totally transformed a deeply embedded set of cultural power structures familiarities. Yet there are signs that they are changing the world in substantial ways. You’ll find here a discussion of the major histories, figures and debates that shape this hotly contested part of contemporary media, and media studies. The chapter is organised under these headings:

  • ‘Newness’ and histories

This includes work on UGC (User Generated Content) which is also explored in Chapter 14 (From ‘audiences’ to ‘users’), as well as via a special Case Study on this website: UGC, Social Media and the BBC

  • Academic approaches
  • Openness, collaboration and ‘users’
  • ‘The long tail’
  • Digital copies and the ‘enclosure’ of information
  • New media, old metaphors
  • ‘New media’, vanishing resources

Chapter Links

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/literacy/moby-what-1.html?play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pouCAOPfYg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

http://www.onasia.com/content/story.aspx?storyID=669&page=1

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet

http://www.ted.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cluetrain_Manifesto

http://www.shirky.com/bio.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Editing_model

http://www.wordle.net/

http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxy-TxCXH6Y

http://creativecommons.org/

http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/will-nanotechnology-help-or-hurt-our-environment/

http://www.theyoungandthedigital.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/susanwatts/ 

NEW LINK! Student protests in the UK make use of social media