Effects of the Malleable New Media

New media is having ever changing effects on audiences and the behaviour of content. The level of interactivity with digital forms has never been higher. The typical media viewer or consumer has been replaced by the media user or producer. Anyone can now create and publish content using systems which were once exclusively used by professional media production groups. Lev Manovich draws our attention to the malleable digital factors found in digital content -  “size, format… shape, rhythm… the development of the plot — to name just a few dimensions of cultural objects in different media — all these can… be freely modified by a user. Do we want, or need, such freedom?” (Manovich: 2002: 62) Here Manovich identifies the fact that media users can now freely practice creating their own content, and altering content produced by others. From this we may derive that anyone can broadcast their own opinions and actively react to other's opinions, as well as establishing that various communication means are no longer exclusive to regulated media firms.

 

Manovich raises the issue that media content is much more malleable than it was before new media. Now, any number of videos may be edited together, a series of pictures can be composited into a moving GIF file, and music is frequently combined to make remixes and new versions of the original track. Manovich states that “since in new media the individual media elements (images, pages of text, etc.) always retain their individual identity… they can be "wired" together into more than one object.” (Manovich: 2002: 59) Here, Manovich refers to the popular remixing of content that exists online. Users frequently mash together content to construct elaborate parodies or even juxtapositions of creative editing. This can raise issues when content circulates that the producers did not have the rights to upload and share.

 

Another interesting point Manovich brings up is in his discussion of how a medium’s interaction with a user can develop - “in a first person shooter, such as ‘Quake’, the player may eventually notice that under such and such condition the enemies will appear from the left, i.e. they will literally reconstruct a part of the algorithm responsible for the game play.” (Manovich: 2002: 197) Here we begin to investigate that as our level of interactivity with a medium increases, media forms can now engage us in different ways. The direct example mentioned here is how an AI behaves towards the player in a game, but a more common instance of this is how browsers target users with adverts - based on our search history and online experience.

 

Bibliography:

 

Manovich, L. (2002). What is New Media and Principles of New Media from The Language of New Media. MIT Press (Pages 59, 62, 197)