The impact of new media over

society

CONTENT

Introduction………………………………………………………………………..…….……….3

Chapter 1: The rise of new media over the old media…………………………………………..4

Chapter 2: The effects of new media over business sector…………………………….………..6

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Chapter 3: New media and the Global Village phenomenon…………………….…….………9

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………….…….11

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….……12

Introduction

The Internet is becoming the

town square for the global village

of tomorrow. Bill Gates

In the new millennium, the communication channels have advanced at an amazing rate,

making it possible for two people separated by thousands of kilometers to get in contact and

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socialize as if they were face to face. These possibilities of human interconnection have transformed

the internet, as Bill Gates well says, into the meeting place of world population.

The outer shell of the internet and all of its services encouraged over time the

materialization of many computer programs, with features that help create numerous digital

extensions of the man, giving birth to the online generation. This generation is one that does not

conceive life without internet or gadgets, such as mobile phones or iPods and that is more

concerned to make their own news than to expect them from the traditional media, like the

newspaper or television.1 All the new programs created for the computer and internet use, like the

latest version of the internet, called Web 2.0, citizen journalism and life-imitating virtual worlds,

are part of a new movement that is named new media. The internet and new media are

interconnected, the last being unable to exist without the first.

The unlimited possibility given by the internet and new media attract people and make them

to forget about the existence of the old media. People rather create their own debating digital

channel, the making of a personal avatar in a virtual world or signing in on a social networking

website, instead of waiting for the news or information given by the old mass media, which does

not offer the right to interactivity. Interaction is probably the word that makes the most difference

between the old and new media.

The effects of the new media over society are obvious and undeniable. The traditional media

is losing ground slowly, but for sure. The business sector has changed considerably its operating

way, using the computer programs in small daily operations to important negotiations. Finally, new

media significantly changed the meaning of entertainment nowadays, and not only, by making it

synonym with the computer use. The fallen position of old media, the effective business

productivity and the new digital concerns of the people in our days, are all due to the emergence of

new media trend.

Chapter 1: The rise of new media over the old media

In the last century, mass media has become a huge power in the world, managing to

transform efficiently information into a real business. All mass media traditional forms, such as

television, radio, newspapers, film, music, books and magazines, in time, succeeded to transform

people’s curiosity in a dependency.

1 Gomez, Jeff, Print is dead: Books in our digital age, Macmillan Publishing, New York, 2008, pp 70-71

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The impact of mass media over the world population has led to ample transformations,

affecting the lives of individuals, in direct or indirect ways, with immediate or delayed effects, that

can last more or less, depending on how important the given information is for that person. For

decades, newspapers and television were the main communication channels, controlling the

information output, through a one-way process of message dissemination, making it impossible for

the receiver of the message to share his own opinion about it, to debate or to get involved in a way

or another.2 However, the advent of the internet has brought new changes in the media field, and not

only, resulting in a digital revolution.

In the last two decades, the technology has evolved remarkably leading to the appearance of

the internet and its services, like the web, email, newsgroups, file transfer, video streaming, instant

messaging, file sharing and voice calls, representing the biggest information source in the world at

this moment. The web stands as the most important service, being the most popular face of the

internet, having billions of web sites3, which are largely accessed by 2 billion people in the world.4

The programs created for the internet are easy to access and operate, allowing the user to juggle in a

personalized way, creating uncountable virtual works, like digital documents and modified pictures;

and to create personal videos and sounds, producing the mass need to share them with others. In this

context, the interactive websites came in sight, allowing the user to communicate with them like

playing a game or expressing his opinions. Thus, the users realized that this is also a new and fast

way to meet other persons, ultimately creating social networks websites.

Internet and all its services that allow interaction between people and technology at a high

level, users generating content instead of just discovering it, has reached a new stage transforming

WWW (World Wide Web) into WLW (World Live Web), or WEB 2.0, term used for the first time

by Tim O’Reilly at a internet conference.5

Because of the complexity of the word WEB 2.0, it is difficult to define what exactly it

means. Tim O’Reilly, as the first person to use this word, tried to give a good, satisfying definition,

which managed to capture the essence of the word’s meaning: Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social,

and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet—a

more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and network

effects.6 This description of the WEB 2.0 concept is perfect for the new trends in internet such as

2 http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTGOVACC/Resources/MediaEffectsweb.pdf3 http://courses.iicm.tugraz.at/inm/inm.pdf4 http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm5 Gutu, Dorina, New Media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2007, pp 18-19.6 http://oreilly.com/catalog/web2report/chapter/web20_report_excerpt.pdf

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social networks, blogs, podcasts, wikis, RSS Feeds and many other innovations that permit the user

to generate content. All these new sides of the internet and computer multimedia, that are allowing

the user to self-express or actively participate in numerous debates in various fields, are creating

together the new media, a virtual world full of possibilities and opportunities.

According to some belief, new media is divided into three main parts: WEB 2.0, social

media and citizen journalism. Social media are media for social interaction that uses web-based

technologies that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.7 Citizen Journalism

is expressed through various types of new media elements, like blogs and social networking

websites. And a blog is an online group or personal journal where the founder or founders are

sharing personal information based on their activities or opinions. Each allotment has contributed to

the interest reduction of people face to the traditional media. Television has lost ground to computer

games. Newspapers were replaced by internet instant news. Hardcover books were forgotten on the

shelf of the libraries. Each and every one of these changes are caused by the digitalization of

information with its essential features like interconnectedness, easy accessibility to individual, users

as senders or/and receivers, interactivity, multiplicity of use & open-ended character, ubiquity and

delocatedness, accessible with low costs.8 All these qualities of the new media, as opposed to the

traditional media, which is limited and does not allow interaction, the consumers being passive,

have made the new media the favorite of the public.

In recent times, people are using increasingly less traditional media and spending gradually

more time using the internet. All these virtual entertainments had a great impact over people’s lives,

affecting them in all aspects of their daily concerns, from leisure time to working hours. All these

innovations, related to computer science, have led to diminishing importance of the traditional

media, or also called, the old media, over the world population.

Chapter 2: The effects of new media over business sector

Internet innovations, that form new media, are playing an imperative role in the business

sphere nowadays. Business and new media are becoming quickly complementary terms because of

the all digitalized aspects that imply production and promotion, like the use of a computer with

accompanying software, and employment of social networking websites or weblogs to promote

their products.

7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media8 http://comstudies.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/new-media-theory.pdf

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The reflection of a company and its products is seen mainly through its advertising. A good

commercial can make the difference between the success and failure in selling a product, which is

why the marketing plan is extremely important. Now, in the internet age, the communication

between companies and consumers has shifted from monologue to dialogue. This means that the

consumers have the right not only to a reply, but now they have the freedom to involve in the

process of creation, developing products after their own ideas. The companies try to find the best

paths of communication with the new digital adopting generation, by conversing with them through

social networking websites, such as Facebook, My Space and Twitter and Weblogs, that are

allowing the consumer to criticize or praise the product or service in discussion.9 Even more, the

biggest companies are reaching all the virtual places that are used by large public mostly for

entertainment purposes, an important example being Second Life website, a game that tries to

imitate real life in all its aspects.

In the marketing domain, the development of internet services has brought also new and

more efficient changes. The biggest modification is given by the appearance of viral marketing, a

term used for the first time by Jeffrey Rayport, a Harvard Business School professor. One of the

many possible definitions of this term states that viral marketing represents a direct communication,

called word-of-mouth, which recommends products or services of a certain producer through the

internet.10

Viral marketing campaigns are very popular and successful in these times due to their

advantages of inexpensive advertising and operating possibilities. Distribution, reach, cost and

awareness are the major reasons for why a business prefers the internet as a promotion place instead

of the old ways product support. First of all, the message is going straight to the interested market,

in record time, without using the traditional media as intermediate, this way making it easier for

people to share the content with the close ones. The message is spreading like a virus from person

to person, making a product or service and its producers known to a large number of potential

customers. Second, all the costs and time that were needed for an old marketing campaign are now

almost inexistent, making it possible to focus on more important issues for the campaign.11 The

biggest challenge for them is to make their idea to take off on the internet, to spread from user to

user, through web content like a video, a blog entry, an interactive tool or an e-book, for free.

9 http://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/X762842R22349G46/gio_media_and_content_report_final.pdf10 Balaban, Delia & Iancu, Ioana, PR, Publicitate si New media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2009, pp 127.11 http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/Viral_Marketing.pdf

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Although it has some disadvantages related to privacy issues, viral marketing is a practice

increasingly used in a promotion of a product or service. An example of a Romanian success

campaign of this type was driven by the advertising agency, McCann Erickson, for Sprite in 2007.

The campaign was called Sprite Icstrim-Help Line and included a number of spots that incorporated

extreme sports themes. One famous spots is that one which shows that a bicyclist injuries in the

forest and calls the Sprite Help Line. The operator tells him to read a song from the bottle label, that

it will give him courage. To make it funnier, the operator actually starts to sing with him. The song

lyrics sounds like this: I am lonely, bing bang, among trees, bing bang, and I’m hurt, bing bang, and I’m

bleeding, bing bang, but really nothing, bing bang, will stop me, bing bang, from singing right now, bing

bang, a little song, bing bang, la la la… This spot was a huge success. The consumers started to access

the website of Sprite to download the famous spot because of the song and its funny lyrics,

spreading in the same time the message through word-of-mouth and internet channels to their

friends. This way the company has reached not only its goals, but also it managed to raise a small

community, that was sharing information about different artists and sports events on the product’s

website. The campaign has even won the award of Best Advertising Campaign at Portoroz festival.

This example of a successful viral marketing campaign shows us that this type of promotion is

largely accepted by the consumers, managing to change the old rules of the selling game.12

The viral marketing campaigns represent only a part of the many ways that businesses are

using new media to promote their products and services. Among others, the most important

methods of internet promoting are corporate blogs and online advertising.

A corporate blog belongs to a company or organization and expresses the views of the

referred enterprise through the words of its employees. Even though it is written in the name of the

company, the blog has a personal shade, to gain customer confidence. This type of blog is a

valuable source of product or service information and informal testing, when it is possible. There

are more types of corporate blogs, with their own characteristics, each being specialized in one area.

Basically, there are six types of corporate blogs, divided in two main categories, external and

internal blogs. External blogs have as an objective customer involvement, from which to drag out

three main effects: the brand awareness, the strengthening of relationships between seller and buyer

and the actual sales. On the other side, the internal blogs are completely only for the employees of

the corporation to share information related to the future activities, projects, news, and other

12 Balaban, Delia & Iancu, Ioana, PR, Publicitate si New media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2009, pp 138-139.

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materials. These internal blogs are also divided in three sectors: knowledge blogs, collaboration

blogs and internal political blogs.13

For the internet users the most visible side of business products promotion is represented by

the online advertising, which represents the use of internet as an advertising medium where

promotional messages appear on a computer screen.14 On every accessed website there is at least

one type of promotional communication, which is impossible to ignore. There are numerous

advertising formats, under different sizes, appearance, locations and methods. There are easy text

ads, without any graphic images, with a simple message. Display ads have a more complex

character, being available under the format of text plus graphics that catches the eye of the beholder

instantly. This type of online advertising can be found in many pattern shapes and sizes that include

banners, animated or interactive, leader boards, skyscrapers and many other graphical forms. Pop-

Up ads appear when opening a web page under the format of hover ads, floating ads and slide-in

ads. Animated ads or motion graphics are also a good way to attract attention because of the

powerful design of the message. Interstitial ads represent large graphics, which extend across the

whole web page. This type of online commercial appears between accessing of the web pages.

Advertorials are paid editorial ads that express objectively-written opinions about a website’s

content. Finally, an On-site sponsorship ad represents a company’s logo that is visible on individual

websites, for a fee. The three methods of targeting ads are contextual, behavioural and local

advertising, each arriving to help the potential customer to find the right and most accessible

information for him.15

Definitely the new media have changed the business environment in all its aspects, from

internal actions to public relations. The new computer programs and digital promotion methods has

made it possible for a business to be able to develop multidirectional, cheaper and effectively.

Chapter 3: New media and the Global Village phenomenon

Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global

embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964.

The media theoretician and philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, first used the concept of

Global Village more than 40 years ago, in 1967. Global village is the term used to describe the

13 Balaban, Delia & Iancu, Ioana, PR, Publicitate si New media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2009, pp 51-53.14 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/online-advertising.html15 http://www.webadvantage.net/internet-marketing-services/online-media-buying-planning/types-of-online-advertising

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world shrunk into a village by the means of the different media types, most especially the World

Live Web, making it easy to pass across messages (like the news), thereby making the world become

like a single village where people can easily contact each other quicker.16 This definition is one of

the many existent, which expresses best the reality that surrounds us today.

McLuhan was the first to describe the digital revolution that is happening today, saying that

the print culture will be replaced by what he called electronic interdependence and that the

communication barriers will disappear. He was right. In addition, McLuhan was the first to

highlight that the accent should be applied on the media itself, referring to the traditional media, not

on content: The medium is the massage. Throughout his books, he debated a lot about how the

media affects the cognitive organization of the humans, that is why he is using the term massage

instead of message, and further on the society. 17 The meaning of this quote is a little different

today. The medium is no longer just the message. For the messages promoted by the traditional

media, it was very important the appearance, because the only function it had was of one-way

communication. Now, in the digital era, the appearance of the advanced digital channels that allows

far communication has changed the old media rules.

WEB 2.0, social networking websites and citizen journalism are terms used not only in the

business environment, but also by the entire internet access population. Almost half of the world’s

population, two from six people, uses the internet for personal or professional purposes. The online

madness took huge proportions, many of the internet users having at least one account at one of the

social website or an online journal. The multimedia content has greatly expanded in the last years,

making it available on the market a numerous number of programs, which are easy to use. Although

there are a great number of these internet services, some have a huge popularity.

Adobe, Creator, Flash and, Nero are just some from the huge list of multimedia programs

that people use to assemble different sounds, images and videos to create their own personalized

works. Although it may appear only as an entertainment activity, the positive effects of multimedia

technologies over the human mind have been largely debated by the two main groups, the

traditional cohort and the digital upholders. The last group states that multimedia-based instruction

is much more efficient than traditional one, the combination audio-visual information being much

more attractive and dynamic, making boredom disappear.18 I totally agree with this statement

because more than a half of my knowledge baggage is due to the multimedia information. As for

16 http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_basic_definition_of_global_village17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan*-18.http://spnd423.com/readings/An%20Integrated%20Model%20of%20Multimedia%20Effects%20on%20Learning.pdf

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the entertainment use of these programs, most of the creators want to share their personal works

with others, which is why they use popular video-sharing, audio sharing and image hosting

websites. One of the most trendy websites is Youtube, a video-sharing digital place, founded in

2005 by three friends and bought in 2006 by Google for more than 1 billion$. This website become

so popular, having thousands of videos uploaded daily, and more seen, with uncountless subjects,

from cats playing to celebrity interviews, that in 2010 it reached the amazing number of one billion

viewers.19 This is definitely one website with a huge impact over digital culture.

As I mentioned in chapter I, citizen journalism refers to ordinary people that comments upon

different subjects or news events in a non-journalistic manner. This activity grew once with the

development of digital means of communication, creating special websites like NowPublic and

CyberJournalist, combining this movement with new media. People also use other online media

like wikis and blogs to express their opinions in a manner that a traditional journalist would never

do, a personal one.20 A wiki site is a free encyclopedia that allows everyone to add and edit content

about every subject. Even though ordinary, non-professional people write it, the site has gain

credibility, being used as an important source of information. Individual and group blogs are

written for many purposes. It can be a journal blog, in which the founder talks about himself and

his daily activities, feelings and opinions, or a commentary blog, in which are debated the public

news.21 For the first time in history, the opinions of the ordinary people finally come to voice

whenever and about whatever.

Social networking websites represent the most popular way of internet socializing. In the last

five years, these sites have become the digital park of daily people walks. Social networking

websites have become quickly a phenomenon, attracting a huge part from the internet users,

especially the younger ones. Websites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace of social networking

are the essence of new media. Here people can interact, exchange ideas, information and personal

data, creating a huge digital family.22 To express the importance of these sites in our days I will give

as example my own social networking experience. One year ago, when Facebook madness began to

manifest I did not gave it to much importance. I thought it was just another Hi5 type website, so I

refused to create an account. After few months, my friends started to ask me why I refuse to add

them as my friends on this website, so I told them I did not have an account. Shock! They were

19 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NQiVcdZRY20 http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7031.pdf21 Balaban, Delia & Iancu, Ioana, PR, Publicitate si New media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2009, pp 49.22 Gutu, Dorina, New Media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2007, pp 22.

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simply shocked about this. They could not believe that I prefer a walk in the park rather than

chatting on Facebook. After their face expression, they probably thought that I was mad. Well, after

few months I have created an account too.

The online revolution has reached so far that programmers started to create life-imitating

games, such as Second Life, an advanced digital medium. Linden Labs as a combination of

entertainment, opportunities, and appropriate business environment created it in 2003. This virtual

world is the perfect medium for internet-addicted people because it allows not only to socialize with

others, but also to do different businesses, just like in the real life.

Consequently, new media innovations, such as digital programs or social networking

websites, have had a tremendous impact over the people’s life, personal or professional, imposing

the change of the old rules, and creating new ones.

Conclusions

The use of all these media elements are unquestionably part of our daily activities. The

internet has changed not only the way we spend our time, but also the way we think. The possibility

to interact with people of other nations, through the help of social websites and other digital forms

of communication, has opened our eyes and minds, and showed us how diverse and complex is life

through its nature.

The personal and professional life of an individual are developing under a digital mask,

using the internet services for personal and social development. All these new media fundamentals,

like the WEB 2.0, citizen journalism and social networking websites have slowly entered our lives,

and changed them, bringing people together, for a small number of different purposes, creating

what Marshall McLuhan called over 40 years ago, the Global Village. This notion fits perfectly to

the phenomenon that is happening in our days, the togetherness of people from around the world

that have access to the internet.

To put it briefly, new media represents in our days a new way of life. What was called

computer addiction ten years ago, now it is described as an ordinary activity.

Bibliography

Hardcover Books

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Balaban, Delia & Iancu, Ioana, PR, Publicitate si New media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2009, pp 127, 138-139, 51-53, 49.

Gomez, Jeff, Print is dead: Books in our digital age, Macmillan Publishing, New York, 2008, pp 70-71.

Gutu, Dorina, New Media, Tritonic Publishing, Bucharest 2007, pp 18-19, 22.

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