Similarities Between Traditional Media And New Media

In recent years, especially through the advent of digitalisation and the internet, new media has become more and more intertwined into the web of our everyday lives. New media provides a much more intense range of pleasures and opportunities than those offered by traditional broadcast media, however new media can also cause a loss of these pleasures. That being said, pleasures have become a more common feature as new media has emerged, as stated by Kerr, Kucklich and Brereton, “As theorists have attempted to grapple with the uniqueness of new media, the concept of ‘pleasure’ has emerged with more frequency.” (2006, pg 64.) While comparisons can be made between new media and traditional broadcast media, the two are vastly different in a number …show more content…
Immersion is, according to Kerr, Kucklich and Brereton, “regarded here as not primarily deriving from taking on someone else’s identity, but rather from the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ and the resulting ‘loss of self’.” (2006, p. 74) While immersion into new media as a whole is much easier than it was with broadcast media, immersing one’s self into one specific outlet of new media is an incredibly uncommon thing. With new media, it seems that some users prefer not to get too immersed, and avoid immersion in only one form of media altogether. (Kerr, A, Kucklich, J, Brereton, P. 2006) For example, one might see someone watching Netflix or another streaming outlet, but will likely be on their phone using Facebook or another social media outlet at the same time. Another thing that causes immersion levels to be low is the “Google Generation” inclination of today’s youth. A study with the BBC by the Department for Information Studies at University College London found that, when researching a question they were given, people born in the “Google Generation,” that is those born after 1993, were more likely to find an answer almost instantly, while also using only one or two sources for their information. This was compared to the more in depth, slow research process of older generations studied who would cite several sources for their …show more content…
A common example of this in the current day is the new habit that many people have of checking their new media connections, such as Facebook, Twitter, and news websites, before they’ve even got out of bed in the morning. As the cell phone becomes more entwined in people’s lives, it takes on the role of the fixed phone (Wei & Lo, 2006), but also takes on the role of a computer and several other everyday tools. This has caused people to become dependent on their cell phones, making it much easier to access things through their phones. With this ease of access at any time, new media is able to shape people’s outlooks on their day, their week, and even their entire life, before they’ve even left their bed each day. This has dramatically shaped the way people live their lives, as their opinions and outlooks can be shaped at any moment of the day. Another way that new media has shaped people’s lives is in how much control they have over, and how they respond to content. Broadcast media was different in its range of content. This is because before digitisation, there were only a limited number of channels, and the range of content available had to be selectively chosen in terms of what was sent out on the airwaves. Broadcast media was fully reliant on general society’s demand, and so rather than a wide range of new content, popular existing content was repeated, or new variations of it were created.