Published by Emil Abraham, October 29th, 2019

• New: a term usually associated with consumer products, from fashions, to films to food, and, as a label, means simply the latest.
• With respect to New Media, not a novelty or fashion, but representing significant cultural and social change

• "delineated nature of media in its older forms."
  - Marshall McLuhan [Canadian, philosopher, media theorist. Coined the expression "the medium is the message" and the term ‘global village’, and predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented.]
• Delineated - Printed forms, images and sounds were totally different categories. But in new media, the internet and web now constitute all these media forms.
• Confluence - Printed media blends into other media; visual media is not isolated in its delivery systems of television and film exhibition.
• Web pages are usually a form of printed text. Contained in those web pages, however, are digital images and moving images. This confluence of media forms is what he described as ‘new’ in new media.
• "a 21st century catchall term used to define
  all that is related to the internet and the interplay between technology, images and sound."
  - Bailey Socha and Barbara Eber-Schmid
• The term "new media" is a relative term. One hundred years from now the media that we label "new media" will be considered "old media". It evolves and morphs continuously.
• New media refers to forms of human and media communication that have been transformed by the creative use of technology to fulfill the basic social need to interact and transact.
• It is the marriage of technology, communication and design.
• Making or developing ideas that may take of form of future technology.

• Digital- Digitalisation has also resulted in ‘technological convergence’, or the convergence of different forms of information (text, audio and visual) into one single ‘system’ – most web sites today offer a fusion of text and audio-visual information, and our mobile devices allow us to perform a variety of functions – not only reading text and watching/ listening to videos, but also searching for information, sending messages, shopping and using GPS functions.
• Analogue is the opposite of digital. It is stored in physical form and examples include print newspapers, records, and old films and T.V. programmes stored on tape.
  
  
• Interactive: ‘Old media’ tended to be very much a ‘one way’ affair, with audiences on the receiving end of broadcasts, for the most part able to do little else that just passively watch media content. New Media however is much more of a two way affair and it allows consumers and users to get more involved. It is much more of a two way form of communication than old media. Increased interactivity can be seen in simple acts such as liking a Facebook post or commenting on news piece or blog. However some users get much more involved and create their own blogs and videos and actively upload their own content as ‘prosumers’. New Media seem to have fostered a more participatory culture, with more people involved and the roles between consumer and producer of media content becoming ever more blurred!
• Hypertextual: Hypertext, or ‘links’ are a common feature of new media, which allows users more freedom of choice over how they navigate the different sources of information available to them.
  In more technical terms, links in web sites offer non-sequential connections between all kinds of data facilitated by the computer. Optimists tend to see this feature as allowing for more individualised lifestyle choices, giving users the chance to act more independently, and to make the most of the opportunities new media markets make available to them.
• Networked: Sharing content through the internet. Digital Media has also facilitated cultural globalisation – we now interact much more globally and via virtual networks of people rather than locally. These networks allow for ‘collective intelligence’ to increase – they allow us to pool our resources much more easily and to draw on a wider range of talents and sources of information (depending on our needs) than ever before.
• Asynchronous: Unlike broadcasting where everyone has to watch a particular thing the schedule, NM facilitates asynchronous consumption.
• Virtual:New Media presents to us a very different reality from face to face to ‘lived reality’ – for most of us this means a very fast paced flow of information with numerous products and people screaming for our attention. However, this situation has only existed since the mid 2000s, and it must be remembered that New Media reality is virtual reality. This is especially true when it comes to social media sites which give users the opportunity to present themselves in any way they see fit, and while most users don’t go full Cat Fish, most people choose to present only one aspect of themselves.
• Simulated: Simulation goes a step beyond the ‘virtual’ nature of New Media as usual. Simulation is most obviously experienced computer games which provide an immersive experience for users into a "virtual life" that is simulated through digital technology.
  These virtual worlds are synthetic creations that ultimately rely on algorithms which set the parameters through which events in the gaming environment unfold. Examples today include not only online RPG games, but also driving and flight simulations.
  However, this situation has only existed since the mid 2000s, and it must be remembered that New Media reality is virtual reality. This is especially true when it comes to social media sites which give users the opportunity to present themselves in any way they see fit, and while most users don’t go full catfish¹, most people choose to present only one aspect of themselves.

1. Catfish is a term for a person who pretends to be someone else online. A catfish uses fake photos, and sometimes a false persona, to find friends or romantic partners on the internet.