What is New Media and what is its impact on me as a journalist?

By Prince t.

© God’s Business Mag, 2008
All rights Reserved. To use this article contact: Prince on 0721290602/ 011 211 3651
Or email: monnapt@gmail.com
Offenders will be prosecuted.

Personally, my definition for new media is just that: New Media. In other words new media is for me any new ways of dispensing information which are aided and influenced by the recent proliferation in technological advancements. The latest forms of which is Digital and electronic communications forms, particularly the internet and the World Wide Web.

According to newpeoplemedia.org, these new forms of mass communication developed by society always tend to be given the label “new”. To further substantiate their claim they further argue that in years past it was radio, television, cable TV, satellite TV, but nowadays the term tends to be used primarily to talk about emerging digital/electronic communications forms, particularly the internet and the World Wide Web.

Using digital media and computer technology to create innovative and interactive instructional and presentation materials for delivery via CD, DVD and the Internet is as far as I am concerned descriptive of “New Media”. Never before has such achievements been made in the history of the media and information dissemination than now.
www.cmp.unt.edu/glossary.htm

For me “New Media” is indeed symbolic and of course truly representitative of a new tidal wave of media and technological change that has and is still happening paralleled with the on going changes in technology. According to Martin Lister, the newness of new media is in part real, in the sense that these media did not exist before now.(New media: A critical introduction: ed. Martin Lister).

According to Lister some so-called critics of new media often, substantially deny that there have been some change at all, either in the media or in the culture to which they form a part. Such critical accounts, Lister further argues do frequently stress the continuity in economic interests, political imperatives, and cultural values that drive the new as much as the old. They seek to show that the preoccupation with media’s difference, with the way that it outstrips and parts company with our old, passive, analogue media is an ideological trick, a myth, writes Martin Lister.

They argue that new media can largely be revealed as the latest twist in capitalisms ruthless ingenuity for ripping us off with seductive commodities and the false promise of a better life.

Having out lined the definition of new media and of course the historical trends it took for new to change, it now becomes very crucial that I say how much of an impact these changes have on me as a journalist. New media and all the changes that have happened are very influential in how information will be disseminated from now on. However, for me to make it as a journalist in this era I must embrace the changes that new media has brought for the journalism trade and also make use of the advantages of provided by this changes in media.

Also it should be noted that with the advent of new media especially the internet and the World Wide Web, journalism will be affected and those that keeps up with the technology are the only ones who will make it in this trade.