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.
 

Goggling the Gogglebox

When a theorist studies different forms of ideals and theories they inclose their ideals into small groups relating to their time, whilst thinking about where their proposals can go. Such as Modernists look at, the improvement of the production line and industrial revolution. Post-modernists look at the "changes that have taken place after the industrial revolution" (Creeber, 2009, p15).  Here each set of theorists use their corresponding era's to identify the audience/reader in which they use as evidence to their ideals.

Modernism is identified with a ruthless nature towards mass culture with it's structural high standards. Providing a hostile environment to any form of art other then high art, creating a tension that develops "modernism's reaction to the media's early development during the twentieth century"(Creeber, 2009, p12). One aspect of modernism's disdain is found through the studies of 'The Frankfurt School'. The School looks upon media as a rotating production line that processes the same tried blueprints, which revealed mass cultures gullibility.

If we take this brief understanding of modernism and apply it to the ideals of the television show Gogglebox (2012, television programme, Channel 4, UK) we soon find out that mass cultures gullibility no longer identifies with the lower class state, but uses the emergence of the classes to pinpoint the unending growth of post-modernism.

"If the “post- modernism” of the 1980s was the first, preliminary echo of this shift still to come—still weak, still possible to ignore—the 1990s’ rapid transformation of culture into e-culture" (Manovich, 2002, p32) changed our belief in the construction New media.

The new form of e-culture lead the change by letting the viewer goggle upon the gogglebox, in which the user of the medium could view all that goes on behind and in front of the screen. With connections with the collective community found inside the online sphere. We can now find that the productive nature behind modernism only found theoretical states, allowing post-modernism to power above the psychical territory and preform along side the goggle crazed society.

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 (2002) What is New Media and Principles of New Media from the Language of New Media (Cambridge, Mass :London MIT Press)

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.

The cultural changes of New Media

The ideas of New Media were not simply created by new technologies alone but though cultural changes in society, changes such as Modernism. As Creeber notes, "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, pg.11). A world transformed by ideas of a beneficial and progressive industrial society, diminishing previous societal structures such as a religious monopoly of dominance.

The faith of the masses now invested in technological advancement and material goods to help deal with the stresses of daily life rather than relying on spiritual guidance, "A triumph of consumerism, commercial culture"(Manovich, 2002, pg.31). The Fordism production line ethic resonated this change across all layers of society, the same product replicated cheaply, quickly and with little collective thought, as the "Modernists came to perceive  industrialization as the enemy of free thought and individuality", (Creeber, 2009, pg.12). Manovich notes this practice in today's media production, where "modern media follows the factory logic", dividing a singular project into repetitive jobs such as an artist who only colours backgrounds for an animation, (Manovich, 2002, pg.51).

In Post-Modern society, focus changed from the consumption of material goods to that of information. Leading to the rise of "information technologies, the globalization of  financial markets, the growth of the service and the white-collar", an information age, (Creeber, 2009, pg.15). The Frankfurt school feared the "ideological influence of the media on a gullible and powerless audience", the masses drooling over their mass produced, mind numbing, popular culture? (Creeber, 2009, pg.15). The elites who dismissed popular culture as a low brow mind control underestimated the complex relationship between the reader and the text. Audiences are not mere puppets of media but "active  participants in the production of meaning", they can interpret the meaning of texts using their own cultural means (Creeber, 2009, pg.16).

Identifying how elements such as popular culture cannot be categorised as high or low brow, "as the 'real' and 'unreal', the 'authentic' and 'inauthentic'", as the meaning  lies within the cultural view of the reader (Creeber, 2009, pg.17). This is identified in today's culture where the meaning and status of media is being blurred, using multimedia mediums such as YouTube. Where low brow mash-ups such as the "What does the wolf say?" become more significant than professional industry standard media. The masses now hold more power and influence over the media they consume, sharing, choosing, participating and driving New Media.

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

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.

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.