The Cake is a Lie!

Gaming is one of the, if not the biggest forms of entertainment in the world today. You can now literally play a video game anywhere and any time that suits you. Gaming on mobile phones has grown in popularity in the past several years. At one point Angry Birds was one of the worlds best know video games and it originated as a casual game to play on your smart phone. It was not one of the 'blockbuster' games that major game developers spend a fortune on making and advertising. Gaming has evolved.

Gaming is such a massive part of our society now. You can almost play a game on any device you are given now. No longer do you need a TV and the latest console or even a computer to play a video game. You are able to do so in the palm of your hand. We enjoy when we are victorious at beating the game, but there are games we enjoy that we will lose at. "If you play Tetris, you are guaranteed to lose." (McGonigal, 2011, p. 24).

We still enjoy the failure as we progressed to a harder stage than before. Gaming is joyful largely as we are in control and know what is expected of use from within the game. It is the mirror opposite of our lives as we as a race have so many unanswered questions, such as what will the future hold, are we alone in the universe and is there life after death. These thoughts can easily sadden us and so therefore we play games as we are in control and know what we must do to exceed within the game's world, unlike our own real world. Also within the game's world we can be whatever we wish and aspire to be.

Vsauce- Why do we play games?

Bibliography:

McGonigal, Jane, (2011) Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, (The Penguin Press; New York)

Webliography:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5jDspIC4hY 

Video belongs to Vsauce youtube channel

Immediacy media

"Virtual reality is immersive, which means that it is a medium whose purpose is to disappear." (Bolter, 2000, p. 21)

Immediacy media is the attempt to try and convince the user of the technology that it is not a machine but is instead just a natural process of life. It attempts to hide any evidence that it is a machine doing different functions but is a living organism that can do what you want it to in the easiest possible way it can. It leads you into a false sense that it is not in fact going through designed programmes that it has been made to follow but instead, seamlessly does them as if it was breathing for you or I.  

Furthermore other technologies such as smart phones we can also witness the seamless nature that we have become use to in our devices. With the touch screen that the majority of smartphones use today we can do whatever we want with just one swipe of out finger. As use the touch screen it feels a though the movements of our fingers on it is more natural than pressing a button. We now do not see it as a device but as an extension of ourselves.

"... ten years ago we thought of computers exclusively as numerical engines... we now think of them also as devices for generating images..." (Bolter, 2000, p. 23)

Computers now appear to us to be more like canvas' to create new pieces of art, instead of the powerful calculators that they originally were designed as. We begin to see them as creative tools that we can use to help express ourselves in new ways. We can use them to create pieces of art that appear to be as realistic as possible without having to use another piece of technology such as a camera to take a photograph with. Tecnology has evolved over the years to become more than a machine, it can now be seen as a brand new creative organism.


Bibliography:
Bolter, J. D., (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media, MIT Press

Remediation, Hypermediacy and Immediacy

Bolter talks of remediation as new media keeping certain roots to its developed past. Remediation being "rivalry between the new media and the old" (Bolter, 2000 p.45) . Bolter suggests older mediums can be accessed through digitization on a computer screen but being transparent allowing the viewer to attempt to have the same experiences as they would with the original medium. Manovich argues that New Media is the digitization through numerical representation, modularity automation, variability and transcoding. If using Manovich's suggested principles of new media, Bolter couldn't argue his case for an original experience from an older media reprocessed on a new medium.

Having access to so many forms of media, from old to new, manifests into Hypermedia. An example would be through the use of new media technologies such as watching Television, Surfing the web and listening to music at the same time. Older mediums hympermediacy would be physical and representational through "stained glass, relief statuary, and inscriptions" (Bolter, 2000 p.34). Bolter also suggests we can see hypermedia within paintings much like a desktop of the computer. The example given is in Dutch "art of describing" being "absorbed and captured multiple media and multiple forms in oil. Much like the oil paintings, computers emphasis the idea of hypermedia, using multiple windows, and multiple recreations of images, pictures and paintings.

Taking from Debra Shaw's Technoculture, the idea that media creates ideologies through the development of technologies. Our hypermedia society we live in with the over crowded market of ideologies created by immediacy through the likes of musicians. Musicians such as Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce. Bruce Springsteen with his muscular but sensitive presence, and Beyonce with a strong feminine prowless. Like with the dutch oil paintings and technological advancements allowing corporations to go after ideologies "sought to satisfy this same desire" (Bolter, 2000 p.24). With digital technology it still uses the same immediacys although in a dffferent stance. Using the same connotations as we would use in everyday life, "Trash" or "Recycle Bin" for a digital files to be deleted, we put food and paper in to there respective trash cans or recycle bins.



Bibliography

Bolter, J.D., (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media New Ed., MIT Press.

Shaw, D. (2008). Technoculture: The Key Concepts; Oxford Berg Press

Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. MIT Press.

One to Another

"The representation of one medium in another" (Bolter, 2000 pg 45.) This is talking about the fact that we no longer just use are phone as a conventional ring and message it has now become our lives. We find ourselves not simply watching television we find ourselves watching it but also on our phones at the same time. It has come to the point where it just doesn't seem good enough to watch a television but that we now have to be on our phones checking Facebook or on twitter. We even find ourselves turned into cyborgs by the fact that we don't even read things on Facebook we find ourselves sitting there pointlessly scrolling.

We find that old media such as the television has been transformed as we can now interact with it bringing television from old media into the new media with the whole thought of second screens coming along but we find that second screening isn't enough any more as there is people out there who are trying to make a third or even fourth screen for us as become more and more active. 'At some point in the future we'll start thinking more strategically about the marketing value associated with a second or multi-screen content experience.' ( Forbes. 2012. The Big Problem with the Second Screen. [ONLINE] Available)

So we now find ourselves not happy with the conventional way of viewing but that we have to make our lives around phones and new media. Its like the fact when you are out with your friend you don't spend your unconditional attention to them but i bet that you are texting the whole time and eve on Facebook when you are with your friends. We never actually leave our phones down anymore. New media has took over society and culture as we know it.

Bibliography

Forbes. 2012. The Big Problem with the Second Screen. [ONLINE] Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmartin/2012/02/23/the-big-problem-with-the-second-screen/. [Accessed 06 November 13].

Bolter, J.D. (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press)

The Mighty Morphin' Desktop

An underling factor found inside Bolter's book, Remediation: Understanding New Media, is that the human mind can hide certain factors of reality right in front of your very eyes. What I'm talking about is the transformation or the "morphing" ability found with in our computer desktops. Our desktops don't just morph into a cat or a dog but into the fragmented realm in which we use to perceive time and space. In doing so it becomes a technique in "making the interface "transparent" and therefore more "natural"" (Bolter, 2000, p32) as well as making it an extension of our minds rather then our bodies.  

The metamorphosis begins with the contextual similarities to a physical object such as "file folders, sheets of paper, in-box, trash basket, etc" (Bolter, 2000, p23). Bolter conveys that this is down to a ramification that we need natural formats to help us understand new concepts. The desktop isn't a new concept but the way in which different software manufactures create their own desktop to help/interfere in the arbitrary nature of your minds. Now this doesn't mean we cant control new formats brought into our lives, more the fact that we need the natural formats to sync with the application in which we can again morph to a better future.

The morphing factor in this text is a symbolic factor that helps show the ideals of change and how we create three forms of marketing our personal woes of this transparent state. Form one is about the change in which the user becomes the desktop, the next form is the actual connection between the user and the desktop. The last form brings the transparency to stop by letting the user aware of it's unnatural state. Bolter has a similar point where he highlight the user is "brought back into contact with the interface" and they learn "to read just as she would read any hypertext" (Bolter, 2000, p33) creating this imbalance of pure and fictional.

This ideal has to become a conjunction of two forms the real and the fiction. If we cannot get over the metamorphosis then we can use our computers and desktops to their full advantage. Just like any form of window is transparent, so most we.

Bibliography:

Bolter, J.D. (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press) 

Are we too far to turn back?

Bolter, speaks of remediation in terms of technology and uses this to make examples. This is something which is not seen as much with theorists such as Jenkins or Manovich. So taking what Bolter is saying about technological mediation, I want to look at how this would transfer into the way our society and culture looks at remediation and how we accept that along side technological advances.

Bolter says remediation is "the representation of one medium in another" (Bolter, 2000: 45). So this is taking one media form, the example he uses is paintings and photography, and representing them in another, digital picture galleries.

When reading through Bolters work, I couldn't help but draw parallels between this and the Convergence Culture which Henry Jenkins writes about (Jenkins, 2008). Although Jenkins talk about the formation of multiple mediums into one.

"By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms" (Jenkins, 2008, p2)

Inline with Bolter's writing, these "multiple media platforms" would show representation of their Old Media forms in this New Media platform. How we can stand beside the Mona Lisa painting and either take a photo of it or download a photo of it will just never be the same. 

I came across a video shared on Facebook which outlines how mobile phones have taken over the human existence. Its portrayals different events where humans are on their phones or video recording a gig, when they would enjoy it much more if they didn't use their phone



Its shows the convergence and remediation of going to a concert (Old Media) and capturing it on video (New Media) even though you may never watch it again.

Remediation is really in the advancement of technology, but this advancement can often be for the worst. We can get so engaged in finding ways to interact with the media easier that we start to lose the sense of our own human beings. Soon they will be lost in cyberspace, forever

Bibliography
Jenkins, H., 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Revised., NYU Press.
Bolter, J.D. (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press)
CharstarleneTV, (2013) I forgot my phone [Online Video] 22 August. Available from; <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8> [Accessed: 6 November 2013].

Remediation Is New Media

Remediation is, according to Bolter, the term used to describe "the representation of one medium in another" (2000 pp. 45). To clarify this he goes on to give a fairly easy to understand example by discussing DVD picture galleries. In doing this, he raises an interesting point in that they are essentially "digitised paintings or photographs" (ibid.). This is interesting because, along with his description of remediation, we can see implicit links when talking about Manovich and his work on New Media. Furthermore, by referring to remediation as being "a defining characteristic of the new digital media" (ibid.) we can again, unquestionably, relate this to Manovich.

Numerical representation is Manovich's first characteristic of New Media, and decrees that "all new media objects... are composed of digital code" (Manovich, 2001 pp.49). We can argue here then that Bolter's cleverly chosen example candidly alludes to this, as the new media objects in this case are the digitised paintings/photographs in the picture galleries.

Another characteristic of New Media associated, perhaps even more overtly, with Bolter's idea of remediation, is transcoding which is described by Manovich as a process which "turns media into computer data" (2001 pp.63). This can be clearly seen in analysing Bolter's example, given that the physical paintings/photographs have had to be transcoded to be able to appear in the digital galleries on the DVD.

In relation to Jenkins, then, this process of taking the physical pictures and digitising them for use in a DVD picture gallery is a clear example of the fact that we live in a convergence culture, where "old and new media collide" (Jenkins, 2006 pp.2) and how easy "the flow of content across multiple media platforms" (ibid.) has become.

Bolter, J.D. (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press)

Jenkins, H (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press)
Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press)

Super "Meat" Identity

Our cultural cyborgification has been written into our very DNA and has left a digitized finger print on all that we perceive to be apparent in our everyday lives. Societies "retreat from the flesh marks the dissolution of the body in a incurably informed world in which the 'meat' is constantly manipulated and thoroughly mediated" (Shaw, 2008, p86).  

With regard to the above statement, Shaw looked at the connotations surrounding the idea of the prefect solider and later on in the text he states the unacceptable of a woman's meaty exterior versus their "technological solution to [their] 'problem'" (ibid). He found that the "super" solider worked well inside a team and used a common term "well oiled machine" (Shaw, 2008, p82) to illustrate his point of the prefect human and its fundamentals towards a formation of prefect technologies. As well as the soldiers inside fundamentals towards technologies we have to look at their intended sexuality.


Shaw goes on to write about the imperfection of the woman and the capitalist need to use a technological stance to change their appearance through external environment. Without context we state the soldier to be a man not underlining the fact that they could be a woman and vice versa with the stance towards appearance through external environment.

When reading Shaw's text you find a underlining meaning through his readings, which highlights the stereotypical format of technology. Seen through the points above and the study of Pat Cadigan's cyberpunk story Synners (1991).  Shaw breaks down the human interaction between the four main characters which stated the difference of the weak and their empowerment through the technological and new media stance.

This now leads to "the notion that the media now allows us to all create out own complex, diverse and many faceted notions of personal identity" (Creeber, 2009, p18)


Shaw may look at the embodiment of the "circulatory system" but his underlining factor shows us that technology identifies changes in the world and produces what we understand as the ordinary.


Bibliography:
Shaw, D, (2008) Technoculture: The key Concepts (Oxford: Berg Press)
Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in ED. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidstone, Open University Press.

Rise of the machines

We are living in a post-humanist age, the age of New Media. In this New Media era, Shaw (2008, p.81) argues that “the concept of ‘human’ is unthinkable without technology but we act as if it is”. In this way, Stelarc talks about an obsolete body (Shaw, 2008, p.81), since the body can now be seen as invaded and determined by technology.

During the period of modernism, the idea of the human body was dependent on accepted differentiations, such as the ones between humans and machines and between humans and animals (Shaw, 2008, p.87). These distinctions also legitimized the racial, gender and class divisions. In this respect, Michel Foucault introduced discourse, which has the function to make distinctions between what we recognize as normal or deviant. He sees the male white body as the normal, unmarked body, while all the other bodies are seen as deviant.  Moreover, discourse is reflected in media. Media institutions are disciplining and classifying our bodies and are also disseminating dominant norms, since we are constantly “plugged in to the technology” (Shaw, 2008, p. 86).

However, in our high-tech culture, the body has become obsolete since these binary distinctions are increasingly fading. Especially the opposition between the physical and non-physical is disappearing because of the use of smartphones and tablets. Haraway (1991, p.153) argues that “Modern machines are quintessentially microelectronic devices: they are everywhere and they are invisible”.  Therefore, it is uncertain who the producer or the product is in the relationship between human and machine.

Consequently, The body is now regarded as an unformed and nonstratified ‘Body without Organs’. Moreover, the body is being shaped as a cyborg, a fusion of human and machine, since it increasingly resembles the machines that determine our self-understanding. “We may have ‘made’ these machines but now, in a very real sense, they make us” (Shaw, 2008, p.88). Through the use of technology, we can create our own identity and replace our human shortcomings. We do not need to be a man or a woman, on the internet we are all equal.

Bibliography

Shaw, D. (2008) Technoculture: The Key Concepts; Oxford Berg Press

Haraway, D. (1991) "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.

Humans and technology

"In other words, the concept of 'human' is unthinkable without technology but we act as if it is." (Shaw, 2008: p.81)

Have we been overcome by machines or are still human? Without technology the human race wouldn't get on very well. Think about how many times you use technology, we are always using are phones and iPods and laptops we couldn't live without these appliances. Try for one day leave your phone down and not use it, I bet u struggle. This shows how new media has overcome and that we can't live without them this shows how new media revolution has took over. This is basically meaning that we aren't being ourselves and that new media and technology has become an extension from ourselves and that we actually need them instead of want them.

Although new media wouldn’t have come about if it wasn’t for us we wouldn’t have evolved if it wasn’t for technology. We have developed a lot over the pasts due to the revolution of technology I would say that we have got smarter but also that we have got lazier as we no longer find the need to do maths we just use a calculator on our phones or we don’t remember history we just google it.

Shaw looks at William Harvey's circulatory system this is telling us that the body is "produced by technology in the simple sense that Harvey had necessarily to use tools to examine the workings of the heart"(Shaw, 2008: p.82) Now a days we don't need tools to look at the heart but that we can actually use technology to look at the heart beat and to do blood pressure and all things like that.

So overall we find ourselves turning into cyborgs as we are no longer ourselves but that we are just a form of media and that we find that humans wouldn't have evolved that fast if it wasn't for technology but also that technology wouldn't have evolved that quick if it wasn't for us.

Bibliography
Shaw, D (2008) Technoculture: The Key Concepts (Oxford: Berg Press)

Shifting ideas of the self

One of the things Shaw discusses in his chapter on Technobodies is that new discourses are imposed throughout the changes in the environment a ‘body’ lives in. A society in which bodies are marked by social class and work implies different ‘truths’ than living in a society in which the emphasis is on capitalism, modern subjects and consumption. It actually comes down to a shift in the cultural consumption (Shaw, 2008, pp. 83-87). This notion goes back to the words of Creeber, who stated that the historical periods of postmodernism and modernism imply a shift in media, media consumption and ways of approaching media (Creeber, 2009, pp. 11-17). As Jenkins cites Pool’s Technologies on Freedom, there no longer exists a one-to-one relationship between a medium and its use (Jenkins, 2006, p. 10). So with New Media being transmitters of multiple messages and carrying out different functionalities, we should consider the way it influences a subject’s notion of how to act and what to be.

Furthermore, this shift in discourses also implies a change in which we would define ourselves as humans. When Shaw states that “the concept of ‘human’ is unthinkable without technology” he might be right in the sense that, in a contemporary culture, the mentioned discourses happen in connection with technology (Shaw, 2008, pp. 81-82). This means that with New Media making their way into our lives, and coexisting with Old Media (Jenkins, p. 14), we could consider their role in the change of this self-definition. The way we define ourselves happens in the extent of  what (new) media offer us. When technology is so engaged with the body, it will manipulate the body in a significant way, in that it offers us the necessary information about the body and determines what and how the body is. This makes us think of the body as a primarily ‘technology’ structure, with ‘technological’ processes coordinating it (Shaw, 2008, pp. 88-89).


Bibliography

Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009). Digital Theory: Theorizing New Media: digital cultures. Berkshire: Open University Press.  

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture, where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.

Shaw, D. (2008). Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Oxford Berg Press.

Modernism and Post Modernism

Creeber defines old and new media, through two time periods, Modernism and Post Modernism. Post-modernism can partly be understood as "the inevitable by-product of a consumer society, where consumption and leisure now determine our experiences rather than work and production" (Creeber, 2009, p.15). The increase 'Participatory culture'  creating virtual communities allows participation from individuals and corporations "to become ‘producers’ as well as ‘receivers’ of the media" (Creeber, 2009, p.19).
Creebers ideas of participatory culture coincide with Henry Jenkins' three key terms of "convergence, collective intelligence and participation" (Jenkins, 2006, p.47).

The participatory culture are able to then take a image from another, using digital devices such as cameras and computers to create a image or other mediums with there own take of an image. Using virtual communities such as Facebook and Tumblr along with video and image platforms such as YouTube and 4chan to create these texts. Although, this did not just happen with the invention of digital media or just within New Media. Marcel Duchamp, an artist who took images like the Mona Lisa, adding a moustache to the piece of art and anchored with some text. This under Lev Manovich's classification of New media would be a variability and also wouldn't not be because nothing was digitized but would suggest that the idea of New Media began with the age of mass production. 

Like Manovich, who wants a new theory of authorship to help us to understand media, Creeber believes that there should be a "new theoretical framework which allows us to understand and appreciate both the positive and negative features of our current media age" (Creeber, 2009, p.21). With there being no set theoretical framework and no authorship to understand the concept of new media, there will be a growth in technology, to try and understand, more collective knowledge to try to comprehend what is and isn't new media and more shifts in cultural dynamics of media.


Bibliography

Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009)  

Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. MIT Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide. revised version. NYU Press.
 

Modernism to Postmodernism

Modernism is, according to Creeber, the “term we give to the way that human society responded to the changes that took place during the industrial revolution” (Creeber, 2009, pg.11) This brought about what the Frankfurt School called the Culture Industry and they held the opinion that the media produced as a result of this was “standardized, formulaic and shallow” (Creeber, 2009, pg.17) This media was produced for the masses and lost the individuality that high art as media had. Due to this “modernism’s reaction to modernity is often perceived as intensely paradoxical” and also hostile. (pg.12)

After the industrial revolution came postmodernism where people “become actively involved in the very production of the media; moving power away from the ‘author’ into the hands of the ‘audience’” (Creeber, 2009. Pg.20) This audience involvement ties in with the idea of audience participation, one of Jenkin’s defining concepts of Convergence Culture. (Jenkins pg.3)

Postmodernism celebrates popular culture's lack of deeper meaning and Post-structuralism allows viewers to take their own meanings as they decode the meanings embedded in the semiotics of a piece of media, rather than taking the meanings that were encoded into the text.

People can now make the media they want to see and distribute it online for millions to view, however, not everyone has access to equipment or the internet to make their own media. Those with this access have far more control over what is produced and what becomes popular in todays culture.

After the industrial revolution came improvements in technology which ultimately lead to a switch from old analogue media to New Media in digital formats. This lead to a convergence in media which has also aided people in creating their own media.

The audience hasn’t been merely passive viewers of media for some time, but they are even less so now. Especially with “Theories of ‘fandom’ (...) with the Internet allowing the fans of different forms of culture to create virtual communities that add to the original understanding and even content of their chosen interests” (Creeber, 2009, pg.19) This coming together of fans to help understand their favourite content demonstrates collective intelligence, which is more prominent in todays culture than in the days before the internet.

This shows us that the ideas of New Media and Convergence Culture are closely linked together and are also linked with postmodernism and post-structuralism and that they wouldn’t be as they are without each other.

Bibliography

Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in ED. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidstone, Open University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2008) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2nd revised edition, NYU Press

Digital Theory

Glen Creeber (2009) discusses the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century and the changes that took place with modernism. the concept of modernism which was industrialised by the end of the nineteenth century is defined as,

"umbrella term we give to the way that human society responded to the changes"(Creeber, 2009,p.11)

As the indication of technology and science started to develop rapidly, so did the style of art movements, example Futurists that embraced the speed in which technology transforms. Although not just the style of art itself changed, the location also changed in the mass culture of society. Art can be found in printed icons and various screens, therefore blurring high culture with low culture, creating a mass culture that attracts the same interest.

"technology and science transformed our conception of society and ourselves, so artists and intellectuals sought new ways to represent and articulate.....'brave new world'." (Creeber,2009, p.12)

The Frankfurt School, who evacuated Germany due to the Second World War, came to American. They were interested on how the mass culture was relating to products of mass production, for instance mobile phones to date are mass produced which is available for consumers in new media. The Frankfurt School associated aspects of Fordism with the similar connecting of mass culture.

"Fordism was a term coined to descried Henry Ford's successes in the automobile industry,...became more accessible....were exactly the same." (Creeder, 2009, p.12-13).

As McLuhan reflects that consumers themselves can interact with media content, though new media to voice their opinions on any storyline at the presides moment, giving the consumer the ability to have more control and influence over media text.

"transforming us all from 'voyeurs to participants'"(Creeder, 2009, p.15)

The consumers' browses through virtual worlds, here they can create their own personality. Therefore portrays versions of themselves on social network sites, as a result of getting away from what is 'real', this can be seen as another life. However the consumer knows that it is 'unreal', although in the virtual space there are items that can be bought. In the series Lost (2004-2010) the consumers' could interact with buying items that appeared on the series, respectively these can be physically held in reality. Justifying that both the digital and real world are intertwined. Due to the circumstances that consumers can't differentiate one reality from the other.

"our sense of what is 'real' and what is 'unreal' is clearly undergoing a dramatic transformation...now place advertisements..."(Creeder, 2009, p.18)

Bibliography
Creeber, G .Digital Theory: Theorizing New Media (Maidstone: OUP)

From changing media to changing theories

In order to understand the world, it is necessary to understand the media. More specifically, we need to understand that media are changing and that, as Manovich (2001, p.43) states, we are in the middle of a new media revolution. This change of media implies the need for a new theoretical framework to analyse the specific characteristics of the media.  

In the past, media were analysed differently. During the period of modernism, the dominant theoretical approach reflected the pessimist ideology of the ‘Frankfurt School’. It represented media as producers of a mass culture that influenced a passive and powerless audience. This vision was also reflected in the formulation of the ‘hypodermic needle’ model. According to this model, a media message will exert powerful and relatively uniform effects on everyone who processes it (Sparks, 2012, p.58). However, this is a questionable statement since little attention is paid to the fact that people differ greatly and that they can respond in different ways to the same message.

This pessimistic approach was reinforced by the quasi-scientific method of semiotics, introduced by the structuralist movement. Creeber (2009, p.14) describes semiotics as “a clear and coherent methodology by which the meaning of any text could be read objectively as a system of ‘signs’.”. Based on this, Hall (1973) formulated his encoding/decoding model. It focused not only on the encoding of a media product, but also on the decoding by an active audience, where each individual has the chance to construct its own meaning.

Hall’s model reflected the vision of postmodernists and meant a shift towards the current more positive view of the media. Creeber (2009, p.21) describes this as technological utopianism, since it suggests that New Media will improve society. However, we have to bear in mind some negative examples, such as the fact that not all New Media participants are created equal (Jenkins, 2008, p.3), the decrease in cultural identities and the invasion of the private sphere.

Bibliography

Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in ED. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidstone, Open University Press.
Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. MIT Press.
Sparks, G. (2012). Media Effects Research: A Basic Overview, 4th ed. Stamford: Cengage Learning.

Auto-cultivation

In Creeber’s chapter “Digital theory: theorizing New Media”, he draws a line between old and new media by situating them into different historical periods of time, namely modernism and postmodernism. Old media is positioned in modernism, which is combined with a pessimistic theoretical framework approach, carried out by the Frankfurt School. A cultural shift occurred to postmodernism, in which new media play the main role. Postmodernist theory suggests an active audience with a developing public sphere (cf. Habermans)(Creeber, 2009, pp. 11-17).

Both in Creeber’s and Jenkins’ work, the notion of New Media combined with participatory culture is ubiquitous (Creeber, 2009, p. 19 & Jenkins, 2006, p. 3). This interactivity of the consumers, such as Web 2.0., implies a difference in  the consumption of media (Jenkins, 2006, p. 17). The ‘audience’, creating their own content with relatively equal power as the ‘media producers’, now face new opportunities, but also challenges to keep the content flow. In this respect, taking into account the Cultivation Theory by Gerbner might be useful. With old media, it was clear that, as Creeber states it too, one dominate ideology was cultivating the audience. However, applying this theory to New Media results in the understanding that now, audience have to cultivate themselves. With an unequal access to the New Media and less possibility to gate keep the information flow, those who have greater abilities to participate in this emerging culture (Jenkins, p. 3), which are usually the higher socio-economic classes, become the beholders of the ‘truth’, deciding what content will be consumed.

Furthermore, the Old Media theory of the hypodermic needle effect model should not be neglected. Media, whether old or new, do not differ in the fact that they both exercise consistent effects on those receiving it. But important to recognize is that the nature of the effects are changing. With the ‘audience’ as the main content provider, the content of the media is differing,  which is usually stated by critics as a decline in quality. And off course, it is self-evident that different content implies different influences.

Bibliography

Creeber, G. (2009) DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in Ed. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidenstone, Open University Press

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide. revised version. NYU Press.

Changes in New Media

"Modernism is the umbrella term we give to the way that human society responded to the changes that took place during the industrial revolution." (Creeber, 2009, pg11) New media wasn't simply discovered when the industrial revolution came along but through culture and how it has changed and this was mainly influenced by the coming of modernism.

'The Frankfurt School' has the idea about how the media is like mass production and that media is very like fordism as ford where well known for their mass production and how every car was nearly built the same.  "T. Fords were exactly the same. When asked what colours his cars came in, Ford famously replied, ‘any color – as long as it’s black’." (Creeber, 2009, pg13).

"A post-industrial (sometimes known as a post-Fordist) economy is one in which an economic transition has taken place from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy."(Creeber, 2009, pg15). The media went from a mass produced industry also known as the heavy worker society where people didn't have little office jobs but in fact sat  behind a desk, also known as the white collar worker. This was due to the growth in the financial industry and that people where becoming  more and more involved into 'new media' and this was taken the attention away from the mass production and now "consumption and leisure now determine our experiences rather than work and production. This means that ‘consumer culture’ comes to dominate the cultural sphere"(Creeber, 2009, pg15). 

This is a totally different look at what new media is and is saying that it has evolved from the mass production too the 'service based economy'. This means that people used to watch boring standardised rubbish that everyone will maybe like or be able to relate too but instead the media has to be changed as culture has changed so that it fits in with 'consumer culture'. Meaning that media is now tailored to what you like instead of a standard programme for everyone this is due to the mass about of channels that are now available in this modern time.

Bibliography 

Creeber, G. Digital Theory: Theorizing New Media (Maidstone: OUP)

The oppression of mass media

Following the idea that if you want to understand new media, you have to look at its history, that is also found in Manovich (2002), Creeber (2009) runs through the most important theories for the analysis of media texts from the twentieth century. Starting with modernism, he mentions the Frankfurt School who held a negative attitude towards the mass media that according to them oppressed the people, an idea that never really fully disappeared and which might hold truth. However, if someone likes Strictly Come Dancing it does not mean that he never engages in any more intellectually challenging activities.

Creeber (2009, p. 14) describes semiotics as a quasi-scientific method of analysis. Structuralism used this method to ground their opinion about the oppression of the masses. However, it should be realized that in semiotics the analysts can find the meanings they want to find, even unconsciously their primed attitudes might have effects on the results. Moreover, even if a certain underlying meaning seems obvious to the objective researcher, it does not mean that the audience will view it in this way, for "bias is very much in the eye of the beholder" (Cumberbatch et al, 1986, p. 15). This negative view on mass media was strengthened by the hypodermic needle view on media effects, which was also present among the audience ever since the radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds that had such a strong impact on its listeners (Sparks, 2011, pp. 56-57).

Postmodernism introduced a more positive way of looking at media effects. After a period with belief in a 'limited-effects' perspective on media in the 1960's (Sparks, 2011, pp. 63-64), an attitude that is less extreme than the hypodermic needle and the limited-effects came to rule the area of media analysis. An example of this is the use of Hall's (1975, pp. 1-19) encoding-decoding model that focusses on the reader. This gave way to the current more positive attitude towards new media enabling democratization.

Bibliography
Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in Ed. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidenstone, Open University Press.
Cumberbatch, G., McGregor, R., Brown, J., and Morrison, D. (1986). Television and the Miners' Strike. London: BFI Broadcasting Research Unit.
Hall, S. (1975). Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham: University of Birmingham
Manovich, L. (2002). The Language of New Media. MIT Press.

Sparks, G. (2011). Media Effects Research - a basic overview. Stamford: Cengage Learning.

Understanding New Media

In order to understand and theorise New Media, Creeber takes us on a journey, beginning with the notion of modernism and how it relates to "old media", before going on to look at post-modernism and its links with New Media, as well as looking at structuralism and post-structuralism along the way.

To begin with, modernism is defined as an umbrella term, describing "how human society responded to changes of industrial revolution" and how, through science, it challenged the traditional "theocratic, God-centred notion of society" (Creeber, 2009, pp.11). Originally providing optimism through its potential to advance society, industrialisation came to be described as "the enemy of free thought and individuality" due to the negative effects well documented, for example, in the First and Second World Wars (Creeber, 2009 pp.12). In an attempt to capture this hypocrisy, the modernist art movement sought to "represent the fragmentation of this new world" (ibid.).

Another notable example of those sharing an antipathy for the media would be The Frankfurt School. Their perception of the media being "a standardised product of industrialisation" led to the development of what they called "The Culture Industry" with the simple the idea that every part of mass culture was the same; TV shows, magazines, films etc. and were simply consumed passively by the masses. (Creeber, 2009 pp.13) This idea was further developed in the structuralist movement which employed the use of semiotics to "decode media texts as signs (to show that) "individuals are shaped by structures over which they have no control" (Creeber, 2009 pp.14).

This ideology is effectively reversed when applied to the notion of post-structuralism, brought about by post-modernism, which is described as being associated with "changes that have taken place after the industrial revolution" (Creeber 2009, pp.15). In comparison to its modernist equivalent, post-structuralism "takes a less deterministic view about the nature of the media as a whole" (Creeber, 2009, pp.15) and this could be due to the fact that, within such a society, there exists a "distrust of a stable and fixed notion of the 'real'"(Creeber, 2009 pp.18).

Creeber, G. (2009) Digital Theory: Theorising New Media (Maidstone: OUP)

Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in Creeber, G. (2009) Digital Theory: Theorising New Media (Maidstone: OUP)

Digital Media On The Production Line

Modernism, as Creeber puts it, 'is the umbrella term we give to the way that human society responded to he changes that took place during the industrial revolution' (2009: p.11). This came about around the mid 20th century, as the world was repairing itself from one war, and preparing to go to another. Industrialisation was perceived by many modernists 'as the enemy of free thought and individuality' (Creeber, 2009: p.12)

Industrialisation really only benefited the producers of products, beginning with Henry Ford's T. Fords. This was a way to cut costs, through production and staff, but also a way that companies could produce the same product on a large scale in half the time. The birth of the production line, as apposed to single product work, revolutionised the secondary sector. However, Theodor Adorno, a member of the Germany-fleeing intellectuals from the Frankfurt School describes the way that the music industry is just simply producing the same music over and over again, and selling it to make money.

Post-Modernism comes along slightly after the industrial revolution. Post-industial (or Post-Fodist) was an 'economic transition [...] from a manufacturing based economy to a service-based economy' which saw the 'decline of heavy industry' (Creeber 2009: p.15) Audience interactivity with this new post-modern idea was first thrown about as ideas by Marshall McLuhan, this is highlighted in Paul Levinson's Digital McLuhan (1999) where McLuhan sees the audience as transforming from 'Voyeurs to participants' (Levinson, 1999: p.65-79)

McLuhan really was stumbling across something which years later, is pretty accurate. Television audiences, don't just watch what is happening on the screen, but can also play along, influence and find about more about what they are watching. From the introduction of voting on (originally) Channel 4's 'Big Brother' and ITV's 'X Factor', to the mobile game which rang along side Channel 4's 'Million Pound Drop', to programs such as BBC's 'Children In Need' showing live tweets on-screen.

Bibliography
Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in ED. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidstone, Open University Press.
Levinson, P. (1999) Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millenium. Routledge, London.