Midterm Notes 1. Folksonomy - user-generated system of classifying and organizing online content into different categories by the use of metadata such as electronic tags. - Move from personal websites to blogs and blog-site aggregation; from publishing to participation; from web content as the outcome of a large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process; and from content-management systems to links based on tagging 2. Immaterial Labour - Participatory media is vulnerable to the accusation that the immaterial labor of participants is being co-opted by owners of websites without any meaningful control over how it is being used - Believes that the labor exists outside of the minimum wage based labor consideration and actually includes the time invested in producing these activities as well as the activity itself of producing these commodities 3. California Ideology - Promotes technology as the solution to localized issues. The ideology believes in the positive impact of technology on society. - E.g Facebook’s free basic programs offered access to selected websites to phone users in India. - Linked with Marshall McLuhan’s idea of Technological determinism - Exploitation of information will lead to wealth creation as well as growth 4. Hypertext - Allows linking of information, where links from one information source provides a simple point and click access to related information from other sources. - A word that contains the link to a website 5. Time-binding - Has great durability and the power to carry messages across long periods of time, but is incredibly difficult to move - Includes mediums where the stories are aimed to be carried out through generations but the medium reaches limited audiences 6. Digital Divide - The differential access to and use of the internet according to gender, income, race, and location 7. Space-binding - Is more ephemeral and easily destroyed, but can be moved across space without difficulty - Examples include radio, television and mass circulation newspapers that convey information a many people but usually last for limited time only 8. Harold Innis - Developed a theory of new media being either space binding or time binding - Wanted to motivate current societies to approach a balance between space and time binding mediums, as they have the greatest power 9. Mechanical switch - Gave users the freedom to make calls without involving other people - Saved labor and also gave privacy to callers. - Mechanical switch made network neutrality a reality - It gave users the privacy they wanted without interference from the service providers 10. Network Neutrality - A principle that internet service providers must treat all internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers the same speed and rates. - users of the network should be able to exchange and use data as they choose, without interference by the organization providing the network data transport services 11. Common carriage - This law meant that everyone should pay according to a common fee/charge structure and telephone companies could not discriminate on the basis of what callers were saying - Willingly making these variations in payment 12. Granularity and Modularity - Modularity: The properties of a project that determine “the extent to which it can be broken down into smaller components, or modules, that can be independently produced before they are assembled into a whole” - Granularity: The size of the modules, in terms of the time and effort that an individual must invest in producing them, which sets “the smallest possible individual investment necessary to participate in a project” 13. Telegraph - First universal method of communication constructed in the 1800’s, had a binary code of dots and dashes that was globally standardized. - People could now communicate with each other while remaining in different parts of the world in a matter of a few hours - - Made instantaneous communication seem normal - most powerful at this point Allowed businesses to expand as you could now communicate with other institutions in different parts of the world Telegraph lines were constructed between different countries. Allowed information to travel across great distances in a matter of hours instead of months Advanced new media’s technological development The telegraph became commercialized, but had to be regulated by the government In 1870’s, the telegraph in the US was almost entirely in the hands of the Western Union In Canada, railways were the primary operators of telegraph systems ● It was the primary mode of transportation and was owned by giant corporations Text culture changed - switched to the philips code instead of the morse code ● Done to ensure that any part of a message was understandable, even if some part failed to reach the other end When the telegraph became commercialized, there were times when the line would be extremely busy. To avoid this, the side sending the signal would not sit down on a paper tape which would automatically send when the rush lowered. The receiving end did the same wherein it received all the information but translated it on paper at later times 14. Dot-Com Crash - Stock market crash as result of the dotcom bubble - Resulted when the market started producing a bunch of technologies and people started to blindly invest in them - These businesses did not have a well-planned business plan, which resulted in them to use up their capital, but with no net gain - The stock market ended up crashing, people lost a lot of this money 15. SMS 16. Mass Communication Model - Communication is the transmission of a message with the effect as the result - The effect is measurable as there should be apparent changes after the message has been received - The effect is caused by the various elements of the communication medium 17. Marshall McLuhan - A communication theorist - His well known statement “the medium is the message” - Studied how media influences what people think and how people think - His theory states that the important thing about media is not the messages they carry but the way the medium itself affects human consciousness and society. - Stresses the extent to which societies and cultures become so immersed in modes of being behaving according to the technology around them cultural content was embedded within specific technological forms, meaning that media influence not only what people think but how people think 18. Raymond Williams - Cultural theorist - Had a social shaping of technology approach, focused on how people, groups, and social institutions have the power to make decisions about the development and adoption of new media technology and the alternative uses of these technologies. - He was interested in the question of how technologies are shaped by social, cultural, economic and political factors. - Accused McLuhan of promoting technological determinism - interested in understanding how technologies are shaped by social, political, and economic forces 19. Social Network Analysis - When tools are used to analyze patterns of relationships among people in groups. - Useful for examining social structures and work patterns. 20. Social Capital - The assets one possesses in the form of relationships with others. - It appears that the growth of blogging and other forms of social software are having both positive and negative effects on the development and maintenance of social capital 21. Obsolescence - Information format technologies that are no longer in use - Could be due to the rise in contemporary technologies, becoming outdated or have gone out of production for one reason or another 22. Metcalfe’s Law - Explains why at some point, most people do end up getting a telephone number or email. 1) Value of networks grows as more people join 2) Not being part of a network means not having access to something increasingly valuable. - More of an observation, describing the increasing value of network according to the number of conditions - Value of the network increases at the square of the number of connections - O(n^2) where O is the value and n is the connection - Exponential increase instead of linear - Powerful economic force for network owners and subscribers 23. Web2.0 - Refers to websites that emphasize user generated content. Now known as social media. - Highlights participatory culture, ease of use - The web 2.0 makes it easy for end users to access user generated content 24. Atoms (or Atomization) - Ideology of breaking down a larger topic or theme into several small pieces that eventually group together for one idea - In today’s time, businesses are often atomized. Have individuals that are specialized in a certain field 25. Cellular radio systems - A method of mobile radio communication that distributes the transmitting/receiving responsibilities into small hexagonal cells that are responsible for a small area - The small cell requires less power on the part of radios enabling smaller phones and the reuse of radio spectrum. 26. Network information economy - Based on communication - A system of production, distribution, and consumption of information goods characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through widely distributed, nonmarket means that do not depend on market strategies - Online internet reservation systems are an example of this. The information being available on one page makes it easier for consumers to determine which service they deem adequate 27. Technological determinism - the opposite of social shaping of technology, sees social relations as the inevitable outcome of technological systems - An inevitable consequence of technological determinism is that it shapes social relationships - Technology determines society and the relationships in the society - Social change is driven by technological change - New technologies are constructed independently, and these then create new societies or now human conditions 28. Social shaping of technology - - approach argues instead that social, institutional, economic, and cultural factors shape the choices made about what forms of technological innovation are created, the content of technological artifacts and practices, and the outcomes and impacts of technological change for different groups in society Major alternative to technological determinism Three models; diffusion of innovations model, political economy model and theories of culture and technology Diffusion of innovations model - model that sought to display the rate of adoption and eventual spread of innovation in the social system to through communication technology Theories of Culture and Technology - see technology as part of the interplay of power and domination in society. Draws attention on how politics is embedded in research and construction of technology 29. Political economy - Focuses on the politics and power relations embedded in technological development - An understanding of how technologies develop, both historically and currently, requires that close attention be paid to dominant economic relations, social relations of production, military priorities, the role of the state, gender relations, and the maintenance of racist hierarchies of power, intentional or otherwise - It follows money - Access to resources at various levels influences the directions that new media developments take - These resources include access to investment capital; political influence; and to the technologies themselves on the part of potential users - Inequalities in accessibility relate to social inequality 30. Convergence Culture - Media technologies that were first dominated by a one-way flow of content are giving way to media forms that are interactive and two way - Development of multifunctional devices from a simple one function device - Example; switch from GPS to apps in mobile phones - A term popularized by Henry Jenkins (2006) to describe media forms and consumption that cross many different sites and formats and incorporate both professional and amateur aspects 31. SMS messaging - Made an enormous contribution to the bottom line for business and had tremendous social implications - Initial idea was to have a medium through which the service provider could send a message to the customer - The decision to let customers send out messages to others was an afterthought Medium eventually grew, which led to phones and different features such as ringtones 32. Social production - The creation of goods and services including informational goods in a social or collaborative way. - User generated content is included here. - Goods or services produced solely for the service of the social groups Chapter One Notes New Media ● Defined using three C’s - Computing and information technology (IT) - Communications networks - Content and digitized media, arising out of another process, a fourth C, convergence Convergence ● Interlinking of the three C’s that occurred with the development and popularization of the internet ● Instead of having individual devices performing specialized functions, we now have one device that performs all of those functions ● Digital media - forms of media content that combine and integrate data, etxt, sound and images of all kinds; are stored in digital formats; and are increasingly distributed through networks such as those based on broadband fiber-optic cables, satellites, and microwave transmission systems. Media has characteristics of being - Manipulable - Networkable - Dense - Compressible - Impartial Internet History ● Internet refers to - Technical infrastructure of computers and other digital devices permanently connected through high speed telecommunications networks; and - The forms of content, communication, and information sharing that occur through these networks ● Hypertext - allows for the linking of information, where links from one information source provide simple point-and-click access to related information available from other sources. ● User-generated content Digital Divide ● The differential access to and use of the internet according to gender, income, race, and location. ● Long tail of languages Globalization and New Media ● Globalization - term used to both describe and make sense of a series of interrelated processes, such as the rise of multinational corporations; international production,trade, and financial systems; international communications flows; global movements of people and the increasingly multicultural nature of societies; developments in international law; global social movements; the development of international governmental organizations, regional trading blocs, and international non-governmental organizations ● Interface - users accessed websites, typically through a web browser and search engine ●
