“New Media” is any format of sharing and receiving communication, whether it be factual information, storytelling, advertisement, or other communications, that is translated or created through some hardware or device. The “new” aspect comes from the ability of that information to be adapted and customized for the individual. Older media, like books, early photography, and newspapers, were set in stone when they were created. While they could be mass produced, they did not change once they were made. New media, however, shares “objects,” as Manovich calls any piece of media in The Language of New Media, such as a picture, web site, or movie in in a way that is adaptable to the user (14). Examples of new media include web sites, digital photography, blogs, iPhone apps, and other sources of sharing “objects.” New media refers to the combination of the hardware used to share objects as well as the software that adapts to the user. It is not purely the Internet world of wireless clouds and wifi hotspots, it requires a hardware to support it. According to Jussi Parikka’s “The Geology of Media,” “we are more dependent than ever on the geological earth.” Recognizing the significance of the physical devices that create and share new media, like cell phones, televisions, and computers, are essential to defining the term “new media.” So, it requires a physical device and some object to share. However, it is not totally dependent on computers and similar digital devices. In New Media: A Critical Introduction, Martin Lister states that the very general term of new media is similar to what many would call “digital media,” which “is accurate as a formal description, [but] presupposes an absolute break (between analogue and digital) where we will see that none in fact exists.” New media includes all digital media, but does not exclude all analogue media, as Lister argues that much of digital media is based on analogue media (12). For example, digital photography is a new media that is based on film photography, an older media. The photograph is the object to be communicated but the way it is created and shared is through new media. To conclude, new media is a very general term that applies to the way objects are created and communicated, which is composed of the information being shared and the device that communicates it to the user.

Bibliography

Lister, Martin. New Media: A Critical Introduction. New York, NY:     Routledge, 2009. Print.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. Print.

Parikka, Jussi. “The Geology of Media.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 11 Oct. 2013. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.