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

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)