Digital media can be anything from videos to photos to mobile phones and computing, it covers such a broad range of things. The digital culture of today includes things such as Youtube, Facebook, instagram and mobile media plus many more.
When comparing digital media to analog media we can think about analog in relation to our senses. Analog is the physical, chemical, mechanical, material transformation of ‘data’ Analog works in a way that is similar to the human sense organs; for example, the camera lens replicates the human eye, just as the gramophone replicates the human ear. All input data i.e. colour, light and sounds etc is converted into a physical object. A good example of this is the analog waves which represent sound (see picture below)
However, analog problems include issues such as noise, distortion and reproductions that can wear out within time. Digital recording translate analog waves into a stream of numbers; an example is the way in which a digital camera can use chips that act like solar converters, taking light waves and turning them into electrons, they then read the accumulated charges as numeric values.
Analog media
↓(broadcast media) < Symbolic realm of mathematics
↓
digital media
However, further consequences of the above can include some of the following:
•Media texts being ‘dematerialised’
•Data that may be compressed into very small
spaces
•Increased possibilities for interactivity
[Lister,
M. (2003,) New
Media: A Critical Introduction.
London: Routledge. Chapter 1]
Digital Media Culture is a culture that represents the
movement into technology, we are now a culture that rely
heavily on technologies to communicate in day to day life.
Stuart Hall (1997) notes that culture "is the participants in a
culture who give meaning to people, objects, and events
... it is by our use of things and what we say, think and
feel about them - how we represent them - that we give
them a meaning.”
(Stuart Hall, 1997, Representation)
Some questions to think about in the lecture were:
>Has digital media changed our culture and practises?
>Are there political and social consequences?
>Are there dominate digital media practices and culture?
Marshall Mcluhan's three main ideas about some of the
above questions are as follows:
Media is anything that extends the human senses:
For example we use cameras to see better then our eyes
and instant replays to remember. We use headsets to hear
clearer, we travel with cars/on railroads as an "amped up"
form of walking and we chat on the phone/the web as an
"amped up" form of face-to-face communication.
The medium is the message:
The idea of understanding a graph better then a table of
figures, the idea of text messaging
to break up etc
Technology is turning the world into a global village:
The idea of media making it easier for us to connect on a
global scale i.e. information about the London riots were
passed on instantly between mediums such as Facebook
and Blackberry, enabling people to organise group looting or
speak about what was happening.
The drawbacks of Mcluhans ideas are that he promotes the
idea of technological determinism. The alternative
viewpoint of Raymond Williams emphasises the social
shaping of media technologies and focuses on human
intention and agency.
"There
is nothing in a
particular technology which guarantees or
causes its mode of use, and hence its
social effects”
(Lister, 2003, p. 81)
Issues to think about during the lecture were does the
rise of
simulation, hyper-reality;question authenticity and originality…
During this lecture we also spoke about what we will be
covering throughout the module, some of the subjects we will
be covering have a strong relation to my questions around the
selfie, for example:
-Sociality & Democracy
This subject matter can look at if the digital mobile
photographic practice of taking selfies,can have implications
on our social relationships with others. For example so many
people upload pictures of their selfies and hashtag them to be
found by other users but why? is it a form of trying to fit into
society and communicate with each other, by sharing up to
date pictures of yourself to sustain web based relationships
with users we will probably never communicate with in real
life? or are there deeper reasons behind popularity of the
selfie, including ideas surrounding narcissism.
-Information
capitalism
This subject matter in relation to selfies can develop into
questions such as 'why are selfies so popular among online
profiles such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter is it a
type of participatory culture?
-Digital
Technologies & Aesthetics
This subject matter can look at our (embodied) engagements
with,
and relationships to, digital images such as the selfie
-What
privacy?
The idea of your online profiles being public, so that anyone
can view your feed thus your selfies. For example, when
Facebook made the home feed changes allowing everyone to
view each others details, (before it was accepted the way it is
now) there was a huge protest as people felt that they had
lost their privacy settings over their accounts however,
Facebook stuck with the changes as they believed ultimately
people wanted to see what other people were doing and
wanted people to see what they were doing; now the idea of
the home feed across online profiles are normal, this could
support ideas of the selfie being seen as narcisstic as most
online profiles such as instagram and Facebook make your
taken selfies available for everyone to see across there feeds.
Virtual
Revolution (BBC,
2010). 4 part series. Part 1.
djs61257 (2010) The virtual revolution episode 1 part 2. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrsxhRnjWCs (Last Accessed: 28th March 2014).
This video spoke about the impact of the world wide web on
society, during its first 20 years. Some of the ideas
throughout the video linked closely with some of the questions
we spoke about during the lecture, such as:
-Is the form of web based information reliable?
-The changes and idea of putting power into peoples hands
using the internet, what are the
advantages and disadvantages?
-Are there social/political consequences?
-What effects does digital media have on our culture? Our we
now a digital media culture?
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