5.8 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New media | 5/9 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:11:44.549298+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Social change === Social movement media has a rich and storied history (see Agitprop) that has changed at a rapid rate since new media became widely used. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation of Chiapas, Mexico were the first major movement to make widely recognized and effective use of new media for communiques and organizing in 1994. Since then, new media has been used extensively by social movements to educate, organize, share cultural products of movements, communicate, coalition build, and more. The WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity was another landmark in the use of new media as a tool for social change. The WTO protests used media to organize the original action, communicate with and educate participants, and was used as an alternative media source. The Indymedia movement also developed out of this action, and has been a great tool in the democratization of information, which is another widely discussed aspect of new media movement. Some scholars even view this democratization as an indication of the creation of a "radical, socio-technical paradigm to challenge the dominant, neoliberal and technologically determinist model of information and communication technologies." A less radical view along these same lines is that people are taking advantage of the Internet to produce a grassroots globalization, one that is anti-neoliberal and centered on people rather than the flow of capital. Chanelle Adams, a feminist blogger for the Bi-Weekly webpaper The Media says that in her "commitment to anti-oppressive feminist work, it seems obligatory for her to stay in the know just to remain relevant to the struggle." In order for Adams and other feminists who work towards spreading their messages to the public, new media becomes crucial towards completing this task, allowing people to access a movement's information instantaneously. Some are also skeptical of the role of new media in social movements. Many scholars point out unequal access to new media as a hindrance to broad-based movements, sometimes even oppressing some within a movement. Others are skeptical about how democratic or useful it really is for social movements, even for those with access. New media has also found a use with less radical social movements such as the Free Hugs Campaign. Using websites, blogs, and online videos to demonstrate the effectiveness of the movement itself. Along with this example the use of high volume blogs has allowed numerous views and practices to be more widespread and gain more public attention. Another example is the ongoing Free Tibet Campaign, which has been seen on numerous websites as well as having a slight tie-in with the band Gorillaz in their Gorillaz Bitez clip featuring the lead singer 2D sitting with protesters at a Free Tibet protest. Another social change seen coming from New Media is trends in fashion and the emergence of subcultures such as textspeak, Cyberpunk, and various others. Following trends in fashion and textspeak, New Media also makes way for "trendy" social change. The Ice Bucket Challenge is a recent example of this. All in the name of raising money for ALS (the lethal neurodegenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), participants are nominated by friends via social media such as Facebook and Twitter to dump a bucket of ice water on themselves, or donate to the ALS Foundation. This became a huge trend through Facebook's tagging tool, allowing nominees to be tagged in the post. The videos appeared on more people's feeds, and the trend spread fast. This trend raised over 100 million dollars for the cause and increased donations by 3,500 percent. A meme, often seen on the internet, is an idea that has been replicated and passed along. Ryan Milner compared this concept to a possible tool for social change. The combination of pictures and texts represent pop polyvocality ("the people's version"). A meme can make more serious conversations less tense while still displaying the situation at sake.
=== Music ===
The music industry was affected by the advancement of new media. Throughout years of technology growth, the music industry faced major changes such as the distribution of music from shellac to vinyl, vinyl to 8-tracks, and many more changes over the decades. Beginning in the early 1900s, audio was released on a brittle material called "shellac." The quality of the sound was very distorted and the delicacy of the physical format resulted in the change to LPs (Long Playing). The first LP was made by Columbia Records in 1948 and later on, RCA developed the EP (Extended Play) which was only seven inches around and had a longer playing time in comparison to the original LP. The desire for portable music still persisted in this era which projected the launch of the compact cassette. The Cassette was released in 1963 and flourished after post-war where Cassette tapes were being converted into cars for entertainment when traveling. Not long after the development of the cassette did the music industry begin to see forms of piracy. Cassette tapes allowed people to make their own tapes without paying for rights to the music. This effect caused a major loss in the music industry but it also led to the evolution of mixtapes. As music technologies continued to develop from 8-tracks, floppy discs, CD's, and now, MP3, so did new media platforms as well. The discovery of MP3's in the 1990s has since changed the world we live in today. At first, MP3 tracks threatened the industry with massive piracy file-to-file sharing networks such as Napster, until laws were established to prevent this. However, consumption of music is higher than ever before due to streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, and many more!