Media has evolved over the years since its introduction. This institution has adopted into many different forms. The most common form being traditional media. However, a new form, known as new media, has become popular around the world. This essay will focus on comparing the pleasures and opportunities of new media to traditional media. It will also discuss the effects that new media has on the way people think and behave.
In order to understand the pleasures and opportunities that new media offers, it is important to first understand what new media is and how it is different from traditional media. Flew (2008) describes new media as digital media that “combines and integrates data, text, sound and images of all kinds; stored in digital formats” which is distributed through networks such as the internet (p. 3). Examples of new media are websites, video games and mobile (Flew, 2008). Traditional media is media that existed before the digital age such as television, radio and print (Kerr, Kücklich, & Brereton, 2006). A key difference between new media and traditional media is the way that the information is presented. New media uses digital information whilst traditional media leans more towards using analogue information (Feldman, …show more content…
The Google Generation have been reported to be less confident in their skills, have poor working memories and low capabilities in multitasking (Nicholas et al., 2011). Research has found that there has been an increase in poor multitasking amongst the younger generation and this in turn has affected their concentration, memory and cognitive abilities (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009). The experiment found that heavy media multitaskers were slow (Ophir et al., 2009). The study also concluded that by following fox traits, users have become “unresponsive, inaccurate and distracted” (Ophir et al., 2009, p.
In order to understand the pleasures and opportunities that new media offers, it is important to first understand what new media is and how it is different from traditional media. Flew (2008) describes new media as digital media that “combines and integrates data, text, sound and images of all kinds; stored in digital formats” which is distributed through networks such as the internet (p. 3). Examples of new media are websites, video games and mobile (Flew, 2008). Traditional media is media that existed before the digital age such as television, radio and print (Kerr, Kücklich, & Brereton, 2006). A key difference between new media and traditional media is the way that the information is presented. New media uses digital information whilst traditional media leans more towards using analogue information (Feldman, …show more content…
The Google Generation have been reported to be less confident in their skills, have poor working memories and low capabilities in multitasking (Nicholas et al., 2011). Research has found that there has been an increase in poor multitasking amongst the younger generation and this in turn has affected their concentration, memory and cognitive abilities (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009). The experiment found that heavy media multitaskers were slow (Ophir et al., 2009). The study also concluded that by following fox traits, users have become “unresponsive, inaccurate and distracted” (Ophir et al., 2009, p.