Researching New Media

Media access happens to be at the center stage of all debate on the digital divide. Most of the discussion however, focuses on technological access to the exclusion of content access. Bucy and Newhagen’s (2003) elaboration of the differences between content access and technological access provides a new forum for policy discussion and understanding media access. The issue of media access then, becomes a question of “cognitive access” as much as technological access. Bucy and Newhagen’s (2003) collection of edited essays also draws attention to the fact that there are a plethora factors spanning psychological, cultural and social dimensions that may act as barriers to media access. As Lievrouw, (2003) points out these studies lay an important groundwork for further research but they do not say much about media access per se or how it works (p.271). New media researchers are still grappling with the complex interplay of the three dimensions and their role in access to media. The important question therefore, is does there exist a hierarchical or a synergistic relationship between these psycho-social-cultural dimensions? Considering it was feasible to remove the psychological, social, or cultural barriers to media access, would the removal of these barriers level-the-playing field for all users of media? Another important point that Lievrouw (2003) raises is that most of the discussion on media access has been viewed through the lens of barriers as opposed to factors that promote access but he does not describe what those factors are that promote media access.

Despite the debate on media access, the number of people online has been growing with 70% of Americans being online in December 2006 (http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Internet_Adoption_4.26.07.pdf). New media have become so embedded in the social lives that they have come to mediate various spheres of social life including political, economic, and cultural life. In the collection of essays edited by Howard and Jones in Society Online, the emphasis is on the different uses of Internet and its effect. These independent research projects has exposed me to different research methods used in investigating people’s use and motives of the Internet but it has not introduced me to research methods that are uniquely suitable for conducting online research.

Readings from this class has however, forced me to critically think and evaluate issues concerning the use of new media and children and the impact of copyright and regulation through the works of Lessig’s “Free Culture.” It is scary and frightening to see how the copyright laws seem to favor the powerful and how its interpretation changes on the Internet. The copyright laws seems especially inordinately powerful in the case of music industry granting them with power to control the distribution of music on the Internet. Another great advantage that I derived from this class is, learning to use blogs to post comments; however, it is unfortunate that we did not get a chance to visit second life. It was with trepidation that I started using bogs but once I started posting on it, I enjoyed posting on it and will most likely set up another blog soon. In addition, I felt that readings from this class provided me with new insights into the black box of the Internet technology. Earlier for me, only the output/information coming out of new media system mattered. The readings exposed me to the structure of the technology and how even that can be used to manipulate information. Now I have a much better understanding of how even technology structure can massage information at the behest of the technologically well-informed users. In sum, readings from this course have rounded my learning of Internet technology and policy and have successfully helped me to loosen my inhibitions in using Internet technology.

Finally, I would like to draw the attention of this class to a fact that in my opinion has not been addressed suitably in any of the discussion about the Internet. The focus on the Internet (the means to information) is so much that the Internet (means) has become an end in itself. The effort to get everyone on the information superhighway (or expressway!) has blinded most to the ultimate destination. The debate is all about how to get everyone to the information highways not really focusing on where the destination is. Where do we want the online society to head? Is there a common destination? It is all very well to think of getting everyone on the information highway. Is information just valuable for information sake or information in context is valuable? How much information is too much information? What are the downsides of human information overload or does something like human information overload even exist? I would like to have answers to some of these questions and I am hoping we can have a productive debate on that in class.

Generation Digital

It is hard to escape any discourse on the digital generation without alluding to or referring to the digital divide. It has become the sine-qua-non of any debate centering on the impact of the digital media on the have and the have-nots. Most of the literature on digital generation chronicles the seamless integration of digital media such the Internet, video games, iPods, cell phones, and text messaging in the lives of the techno-savvy young generation and their invariably adverse impacts. Kathryn Montgomery following the same tradition attends to the “forces shaping the digital media culture and the ways in which the young people are involved with it (p. xi). Her focus on politics and commerce, coupled with her background as a founder of an advocacy group and an educator does provide a different angle at the forces that shape the digital generations interactions with the new media. Some of the examples however, that Montgomery uses to illustrate her point are not original and have diminished in their significance. For instance, in Chapter 7, in discussing the impact of Internet on the political thoughts and views of the digital generation Montgomery cites the example of Vermont Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s Web campaign. Given the fact that this book was published in 2007, these examples seem dated. One may argue that these are classic cases and their mention does warrant merit. Nevertheless, since developments in digital technology and the concomitant change in digital media constantly generate newer ways of interacting with it, it would have been more meaningful if Montgomery had traced these new developments.

Her disclaimer at the beginning of the book, that some of the studies might have become outdated, is an inadequate apology for the disconnect between the examples and the current state of technological impact on the moral, social, economic, and political fabric of the digital generation. Her rationalization that even though some of the developments discussed may seem out of step, the underlying deeper social, structural, and economic patterns would not change significantly in the years to come is naive. It can be argued that unless the change is dramatic, it is not visible immediately. Changes are taking place in more subtle ways as more and more people are adopting the Internet and the new media technologies. The S-shaped adoption curve has more or less flattened out. This indicates that as the initial novelty and attraction with the new media gradually fades and blends into the lives of the digital generation the influence of media would be more subtle and less pronounced. Therefore, overtime the changes may not appear significant but at two different points in time, the changes would be significant.

Her example on p.200 where Montgomery discusses the reengaged generation, she provides the example the Web site Rock the Vote to illustrate how re-positioning and repackaging the Web site may have been instrumental in increasing the voter turnout. Voter turnout between 2000 and 2004 did not seem significant until the US Census Bureau released its results. The Web site Rock the Vote forged a new model for democratic participation, one that merged the role of fans, consumers, and citizens in the digital age. Researchers expressed caution in interpreting the increase in voter turnouts as a new trend or a spike observed in 1992. Though it would be difficult to predict the level of engagement would remain this high in future elections, it was clear these trends would most likely continue. A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that 75 million Americans “used the Internet to get political news and information, discuss candidates and debate issues or participate directly in political process by volunteering or giving contributions to candidates” (p.201.). It is evident from the above that initial changes are easy to observe and record. It gets more challenging to observe the more subtle changes that follow. Probably that is why it is easy for many social scientists to discount these subtle changes. The small increments in change may account for substantial change during two periods in time.

The chapter on social marketing was a refreshing change in terms of the outlook and approach to the concept of social marketing in the digital millennium. Even though dissemination of public education information through the Internet does not require tons of money it took the wealth of Kaiser Family Foundation and the popularity of Reality TV shows genre to make public health information popular on topics such as teen pregnancy, planned parenthood, smoking, AIDS, and drug abuse. The Internet has provided a new tool to the social marketers, non-profit organizations, and advocacy groups to reach the teens without the fear appeals or scare tactics. According to the American Legacy Foundation, the concept of talking with teens rather than to the teens, and instead of telling them what to do and what not to do, these symbiotic relationships seems to work to each other’s benefit. The Internet also fosters greater relationship building within the GLBT (Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgender) communities. It becomes imperative for social and political scientists to study how these relationships and interactions are evolving over time, and how they are subtly but surely changing the cultural milieu.

Most people have become either so numbed or conditioned to the hegemony of the powerful media organizations that they fail to notice what Lawrence Lessig, 2004, has so correctly articulated in Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. Lessig’s call for a more balanced framing of the copyright laws in the changed environs of new technology is met with skepticism or downright ridicule for envisioning a more balanced copyright law in the creation and regulation of cultural capital. The comment on Lessig’s web log bears this sad and sorry state.
“He’s only talking about the world as it should be, …………..and always pay attention to the distinction between Lessig’s world and ours” (p.267).


I agree with Lessig’s central argument of the book that free culture is necessary for the development and nurturing of cultural capital. In addition, as history demonstrates and as Lessig points out, certain amount of latitude or freedom has served as a catalyst in the past in sowing the seeds of future innovations and creations. For instance, the development of Eastman Kodak’s film rolls is a testimony to the less regulated copyright act. Had the earlier copyright act not been so compliant, photography would have flourished only among the professionals who were able to bear the cost/burden of clearing rights and permissions. Fortunately, however, the earlier decisions were in favor of those who pirated. Therefore, it was possible for the development of photography among the masses. The world would have been poorer if photographic rights were the sole domain of professionals. Nevertheless, with the passage of time the copyright laws have become so restrictive that they have succeeded in creating a “permission culture” (a culture that requires permission) that the laws are liable to stifle the development of future creativity.


In explaining the subtle nuances that have changed the copyright laws over time, Lessig has successfully deconstructed the copyright laws. His model consisting of the four modalities – architecture, norms, laws, and market explain the constraints that operate in restraining the freedom of future innovations or creations. He however, does not explain what steps or actions that can be taken to counter the effects of the three modalities- architecture, laws, and market How can these three modalities- the architecture, the laws, and market be prevented from overwhelming the fourth modality, norms? He recommends actions such as those taken by organizations like the Creative Commons headquartered in Stanford University as a reasonable alternative to the more extreme laws currently prevalent. This alternative helps people to build upon other people’s work by developing a free set of licenses that people can attach to their creative content, these tags then linked to machine readable versions of the license enables computers automatically to identify contents that can be easily shared. The combination of a legal license, a human-readable description, and machine-readable tags form the basis of Creative Common License. The Creative Common License appears to be a laudable effort in this direction but may no be enough to combat the effect of the monstrous copyright law, which it has become in the current times. In addition, this effort may have its own loopholes. For instance, many people may not have access to the new technologies, second certain forms of creative work may not be amenable to being tagged on the Internet, and third people may not be aware of such avenues.


Lessig utilizes an engaging manner in explaining the implications of the copyright laws in reference to the new technology, especially the Internet, however, it would have been more useful if he had first attended to the changes or modifications in the copyright laws with regards to new technology. What is disappointing about Lessig’s Free Culture, is the absence of clearly articulated methods to deal with this monopolistic attitudes of organizations. His description also provides the impression that all the copyright holders are major corporations, which may or may not be the case. It would have provided an interesting perspective if he had included those facts. In the absence of such figures, his descriptions at times borders around being a diatribe against the large corporations. Additionally, it would have been insightful if Lessig had provided details on how international copyrights concerning new technology factor into users dilemma in accessing new technology and clearing such permissions.


Surprisingly enough Lessig does not recommend reducing the validity period of copyright ownership so that creative works may enter the public domain sooner. In my opinion that should be a first step in this direction. This may seem highly improbable or even seemingly impossible but given the stringent control of the copyright owners on their work and derivative works originating from their work, at least an attempt can be made. If it is possible to increase the validity period of copyrighted work it should also be possible to decrease the validity period of such copyrighted works. In the same vein, the fair use doctrine can be made more potent so that it not just an ornamental component of the copyright law. The lawyers have become more powerful than the law that they fail to recognize the fair use doctrine, for instance, the case of filmmaker Jon Else who was asked to pay $10,000 for 4.5 seconds of Simpsons unsolicited use in a documentary. It would be no exaggeration to state that all copyright laws are reserved with the lawyers and until the changes in copyright law hurts the common sense of the common man the implications of the evolving copyright laws will continue to be debated amongst the intellectuals and those most immediately affected by it.

convergence culture

In Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins explores how businesses are integrating content across different media platform and the growing impact of individuals and grassroots groups in affecting the media landscape

Jenkins notion of cultural convergence extends beyond technological convergence to encompass media convergence and corporate consolidation that is forcing mass media into cultural convergence. Economic changes like the decreasing impact of television commercials are forcing increased collaboration between advertisers and content providers. Jenkins argues that the content of these media depict convergence of a much more subtle kind than the Coca Cola cups seen on the American Idols judges’ table. When fans watch American Idol, they learn about the contestants as individuals rather than as generic artists. There is a greater sense of participation when media consumers create new modes of engagement with media content. This can have two fold implications. First, as Jenkins suggests that greater interaction among fan communities and media content producers may lead to the creation of micro markets. These micro markets would allow content producers to attend to the demands of fans’ virtual communities and incorporate grass roots input into artifacts. Such participation in the manufacture of media artifacts would generate not only profit for content producers and advertisers but also increase diversity in commercial culture.

Second, greater participation and greater engagement can be capitalized upon to kindle people’s participation in democratic processes, perhaps revitalizing America’s moribund democracy. Using the Howard Dean-fueled grassroots online campaigning of the 2004 US Presidential election as backdrop, Jenkins argues that collective intelligence on the blogosphere demonstrates how pop culture consumers repurposed their knowledge of convergence culture for political activism. Jenkins argues this sort of participation gives a sense of empowerment that is woefully lacking in today’s democratic processes. Drawing a corollary with Spoiler community of the Survivors where small numbers of highly devoted viewers are able to discover or predict the outcome of the show by collaborating in online discussion groups, people involved in democratic dialogue may derive the same sense of achievement. Jenkins highlights spoiler hunting as example of participatory culture. Jenkins suggests one of the reasons why Americans do not participate in public debates is that our normal ways of thinking and talking about politics requires us to buy into expert paradigm. To play the game they have to become a policy wonk or let the policy wonk do their thinking which ostensibly is not very attractive or appealing. Jenkins view of increase in political engagement through greater interactions between online communities is a utopian view because engagement in politics or political discourse is not solely a matter of means of engagement but dependent on other factors such as predispositions and disenchantment or disillusionment with the political processes or the candidates per se.

Jenkins uncovers important cultural transformations that are taking place as media converge. Content producers see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets while at the same time media consumers envision a liberated public sphere. Struggles over convergence will redefine the face of American popular culture. The emergent knowledge culture cannot escape the influence of commodity culture (commodification). Levy suggests that knowledge communities will gradually change the ways later commodity culture operates. They serve as sites of collective discussion, negotiation, and development and prod individual members to seek out new information for the common good. This perspective will become a useful one for analyzing current and future media trends in contemporary American culture.

Cultural Differences and Cyberculture

Cultural Differences and Cyberculture
In concluding our readings on critical cyber cultural studies, my attention is drawn to the introduction. In introducing the readers to critical cyber culture studies, David Silver notes that the field of Internet study is relatively new stretching back only fifteen years, and that the time is ripe for deeper and a more critical examination of culture studies of the Internet. In doing so, he draws attention to the fact that the Internet being a relatively new field has much to borrow from cultural theory and cultural studies. With that as a backdrop, reading the section on cultural differences in/and cyber culture, one would expect that the individual contributors would anchor their articles in established cultural theoretical precepts in generating new cultural theories for the Internet. This would have served two purposes. First, it would have made it easier for unsophisticated readers like me who are unfamiliar with works of other critical cultural researchers to provide some contexts and some basis to draw references and arrive at conclusions. Second, most of the contributors deal with different aspects of cyber culture and provide different trajectories for exploring further. Thus, there are several promising routes to be taken but unfortunately reading this collection of well–informed articles leaves the reader with the feeling of loose disjointed ends hanging free. It does not provide a cohesive or a unifying framework for looking at cyber culture and definitely does not provide for the development of theory, which would further the development of the field of critical cyber cultural studies.
Three different researchers, Phillips, Schaap, and O’Riordan, study three different aspects of online gender identity within three different contexts. In Cyber Studies and the Politics of Visibility, David J. Phillips investigates the issue of online sexual identity through a three pronged autobiographical research project. He examines how his sexual identity as a gay man causes him to reframe his scholarly investigations about online identities as being about visibility and identity rather than privacy and surveillance. His three-pronged research project aims to understand historically and empirically how individuals and sub-cultures negotiate the meaning of context, place, and identity. The second prong aims at exploring the various technologies of visibility and identification. And the third prong investigates the link between the technologies and their role in mediating social and historical practices. For Phillips, an individual’s sexual identity is the site and object of economic and political struggles. There occurs a continuous vital redefinition and realignment of identities and relations. According to him, sexual identities not only help in organizing physical and virtual space but they also help in organizing the relationships themselves. Since this is just an autobiographical project, which never takes off, his observations about, sexual identity of gay men remains unexplored and unproven.
Schaap in Disaggregation, Technology, and Masculinity, deals with problem of mainstreaming masculinity. In his view, the normative view of masculinity in most gender studies on the Internet rightly appears problematic from a feminist or a queer point of view but it may also be problematic for the regular heterosexual men too. The construction of the conventional heterosexual white male can be restrictive for the regular male since the conventional male’s aggressiveness is equated with violence in video games or his non-communicativeness and technological “obsession” is likened to geekiness or nerds. This representation is surely not all encompassing and may be true in very small cases.
O’Riordan in Gender, Technology, and Visual Cyber culture examines femininity through an analysis of a simulated newsreader Ananova. According to her, the desire to produce perfectly friendly and contained women and perfectly friendly and contained technology through simulations marks the desire to realize the technology and the female in control. Her question is what implications these simulations have in the equation of power relations. She urges researchers not to dismiss simulated figures as insignificant through a discourse of animation but investigate their objectification within the cultural context.
Thus, we have three different approaches on gender identity on the Internet and their implications within different cultural contexts. I was hoping the contributors or the editors would either provide a meaningful framework for the explanation of the differences or reconcile the differences through some unifying concept. I would agree with David Silver’s opening comments that the bad news is we have a long way to go in developing and understanding critical cyber culture studies and the goods news is that the work in this area has began.

New Media Campaigns

It is undeniable that information technologies have come to play an increasingly important role in contemporary political campaigns and in all likelihood, their role in future political campaigns is going to increase rather than diminish. Howard’s methodology of ethnographic immersion in exploring the dynamics of political communication on the Internet moves beyond media effects to expose the power of the political consultants whom Howard, 1996 recognizes as the power brokers mediating the political communications between the citizens and the political leaders. The important question is what implications this changing equation of power has for citizenship and the notion of democracy where values and ideologies of the architects of technology define how to conduct political campaigns on the Internet. The political consultants have no scruples in surreptitiously mining confidential data or buying it from political data vendors. Political preferences have been reduced to information bits stored in relational databases mined through unsuspecting people’s personal confidential data. What this data therefore, represents is not the political preferences of the voter but his “data shadow, the political personality deduced from the data about the voter” (p.189). Moreover, like all probabilistic models, the political preferences or choices deduced from these stolen or proprietary data are at best predictive never truly indicative of the true opinions. Few might argue however, that research conducted through traditional survey methods is also not completely free or without their biases but the probability that the data obtained through conventional survey methods is more closer to their true political preferences is much higher.
In discussing the role of the community of e-political consultants, Howard does not discuss the role of other competing sources of information such as interest groups, advocacy groups, individual bloggers, journalists, many of whom have their own independent blogs, or other independent organizations that provide alternative views in countering the effects of the community of e-political consultants. Howard’s interpretation of e-political consultants invests them with more power than they probably exercise This outlook may not represent the whole picture since it does not take into consideration the other interactions that are simultaneously occurring for instance, the voter interacting with other sources of information. It assumes that the voter is a passive receptor of messages as hypothesized in the hypodermic needle theory. In the absence of concrete data on the contribution of narrow casting, a service provided by the consultants, in determining the success of political campaigns it would be pre-mature to state that the e-political community has become very powerful. In addition, factors such as the quality and the subsequent analysis of the data by the e-political consultants should also factor in determining the power of the e-political consultant community.
The grand notion of the e-political community that the Internet will revolutionize the democratic participation by improving the quality of democratic deliberation and participation seems like a whitewash. The Internet has afforded the developers of information technology greater latitude in controlling information. This is evident by the redlining technique that Howard describes that political consultants use to target the most likely voters. Thus, narrow casting and redlining information might serve to be inimical to the ideals of democratic participation. This is not to say that the Internet has not improved the democratic deliberation but the results have not been as spectacular as envisioned. In all likelihood, the Internet will have greater impact on the generation Yers or the generation dotcomers, as the newest generations are variously called. Born into the internet environment they would not be shy of using the Internet. As more and more human transactions shift to the Web sphere, it is not improbable to assume that future elections will be fought on the Web sphere and the Internet may have a greater impact in deciding the outcome of election campaigns. Another assumption here is that the people of the coming generation would be aware of the manipulations of the e-political consultants and would be able to make true contributions to the democratic processes.

Social Capital, Community, and Content

It is remarkable that women have caught up to men in being online. The question that comes foremost to my mind is what could be the probable reason for the closing in of the gap between the men and the women? Can we draw a causal relationship between the feminization of content and the rise of women Internet users? It is arguable that online shopping (transactions) could account for the increase in a greater number of women accessing the Internet. Since the only categories where women lead men are health and medicine and religion (Fallows, 2005). Could it be that the differential rate of adoption of technology has evened out? Furthermore, the Internet has been gendered through its social use and more importantly through its design. Shade, 2004, points out that the absence of a substantial number of women in the computer technology workplace has contributed to more male-friendly computer hardware and software designs. She however, does not advance any explanations or reasons for women catching up on men. She provides an array of descriptive statistics on how men and women differ in their use of Internet, with women tending to use the Internet more for bonding and men more for bridging roles, but fails to provide any implications that these findings might have.
Foot and Schneider, 2004, in examining crisis communication on the Web immediately after September 11 call to action the bridging role of the Internet in communicating within a dynamic environment across a multi-dimensional set of relationships. Their focus is on social mobilization through online structures during a crisis. They enumerate the different functions that the Internet fulfils during the crisis but do not provide any information on which functions helped in garnering the maximum mobilization. Foot and Schneider note that since the credibility of the source is important during a crisis, news media will retain their dominance as the content provider of choice. In my opinion, this equation may change with Internet news media or bloggers growing in power. It is another matter that they might be co-opted by the big media organizations.
With online journalism, making its presence felt more strongly, the dynamics for producing and disseminating news on the Internet has created new challenges. According to Dessaeur, 2004, these implications may include news audiences becoming more fragmented and a loss of economic credibility for some of the Internet news organizations. The news audiences may shrink in numbers but unless the news sites are content specialized, the fragmentation would be just about the numbers and not perspectives, As for the economic concerns about internet news organizations not being financially viable, most likely we will see greater collaborations or hyperlinking between online news sites or a few big Internet news organizations similar to the one observed in print and broadcast world. The journalists, however, will have to put on different hats, multitask, and contribute across different platforms. Online journalism is still evolving and to predict its future implications would be a matter of conjecture however, the manner in which it is progressing does provide sufficient insights of what to expect. We will just have to wait and see in which direction it evolves.