This document discusses the history and development of new media. It covers topics like the definition of new media, the information revolution brought on by digitization and networking, the building of the internet through international cooperation on standards, and the characteristics of new media like convergence and interactivity. It also addresses social issues around new media like the knowledge gap and challenges around privacy and intellectual property.

1. Cmns 130
New Media ( Chapter 8 in
Text)
 Definition & the Information Revolution
 Changing economics
 Changing regulation
 Social Issues
 Social Challenges:
 The Knowledge Gap
 Surveillance and loss of privacy
 Sharing and Market “Hacktivism”

2. Cmns 130
History of New Media
 Since 1970s, but especially 1990s, nations concerned with the “
information highway”
 Treated the Internet like an 1840s challenge of the telegraph
 Concern that to remain competitive in a global trading economy,
nations needed to “wire up”
 Provide businesses, workers and consumers access to the
Internet for education, retail, entertainment
 Frontier metaphors often used
 Essential for economic transformation away from industrial to service/
information economies: the so-called “innovation agenda”
 In Canada, wired telco/cable providers dominated agenda: wireless
only now emerging

3. Cmns 130
Building the Internet
 Nations regulate telecommunications internationally:
agree on bandwidth of electronic transmission, spacing
of satellites, sharing of costs/ interconnection
 Also develop technical standards for interconnection (
IP protocols such as MP3)
 This is the international standards role of nations,
businesses and technical experts in creating a market
for technology, and ensuring consumers don’t buy
technology which will not work
 Business play a bigger and bigger role influencing this
shadow world of standards: citizens underrepresented
 But: companies still need states to rule on standards

4. Cmns 130
Definition of New Media
 Digital communication
 Used in the production, distribution and
reception of communication
 Involves use of new communication
networks: Internet as mass medium

5. Cmns 130
Information Revolution
 Digitization: using computers to
store,manipulate and transmit information in
form of speech, text, data, and video more
cheaply and faster than every before.
 Networking: distributed, fast digital networks
wired and wireless
 Convergence: refers to merging of what were
three separate industries: telecommunications,
computing, and electronics or broadcasting

6. Cmns 130
Characteristics of New
Media
 Convergence of telecommunications
and entertainment/broadcast media
industries
 Wire or wireless communication
 Point to point or addressable
 Interactive ( two way) ( now multiple
conferencing)

7. Cmns 130
Characteristics Continued
 Interpersonal: ie. The terrain of telephony treats
telephone calls ( discretionary contact between two
consenting persons) as PRIVATE not PUBLIC
communication ( where telco distributors are not
responsible for content of message)
 Multiple: can be Mass/Broadcast which is PUBLIC
communication ( broadcasters are responsible for
message in exchange for spectrum monopoly: hybrid
character)
 Now a grey area of semi public/private communication
( can monitor cell phones, amass, monitor and store
unprecedented personal communication)

8. Cmns 130
Digital Communication
 Where image text or sound is converted into binary
numbers- ones and zeroes ( 0/1)
 Digital codes can duplicate, track store or play back
complex kinds of content
 Strong when combined with ever greater chip capacity
in computers, and bundles of glass fibre ( fibre optics)
capable of carrying large quantities of information
 Current “revolution”: the Digital Video Disk
 DVDs: higher resolution, no rewinding,now coming
recordable for storage and intending to replace CDS
 Also: wireless Internet ( games on the cell phone)

9. Cmns 130
Implication of Digitization
 Drive to animation and special effects
 Actors worried about cyber simulators
replacing them
 Domination of nature: totally simulated
worlds?
 Question of authenticity of image

10. Cmns 130
The Role of the Media in the
Age of Digital Reproduction
 Walter Benjamin, a noted cultural scholar, suggests that the infinite
reproducibility of the communication product ( CD, video, internet)
due to its low marginal cost of duplication changes the nature of
the work of art
 But western capitalism has conceived of the realm of ideas and
expression as proprietary
 Books, stories or photos may be copyrighted so they ‘belong’ to the
author and no one may borrow or copy them without permission,
attribution or payment
 The high risk nature of entertainment ( so called hit rule) calls for
imitation or ‘clones’ in popular culture ( riding the next so called
fad or wave)
 Infinite reproducibility, repackaging,repurposing and presenting
information as original
 There are many pressures on ‘news’ or ‘entertainment’
manufacture for cutting corners on production: ethical standards to
prevent recycling content and presenting it as original are weak–
digital watermarking is a weak barrier

11. Cmns 130
Technical Potentials of
the New Media
 Costs of production dropping: makes
media creation more accessible ( digital
camera and access to the net)
 Costs of distribution down
 Interactive// less hierarchical
 Faster…more global

12. Cmns 130
The Internet
 What: a vast network of high speed wires and
satellite relays linking computers worldwide
 No central hub: thousands of computer nodes (
it is highly distributed)
 Uses a type of switching that is hard to trace:
designed after WW2 in the RAND corporation
to avoid worldwide military attack
 Now used for: email, commerce, chat lines,file
sharing etc.
 Sometimes synonmous with on line world

13. Cmns 130
Components of the
Internet
 World Wide Web
 Internet Service Providers (AOL Time
Warner; Sympatico,Telus, Shaw@Home,
AT&T)
 Portals ( MSN)
 Browsers: Explorer, Netscape
 Search Engines and directories ( Google,
etc)

14. Cmns 130
Rate of Diffusion
 Each generation of technology ( telegraph,
telephone,radio, satellite to cable TV, VCRs) had an
increasingly rapid rate of diffusion
 Key is where it reaches ‘mass’ or majority ( 60% or
more) of consumers.
 Internet has done so within one decade: only other
technology to do so, but not quite as fast were the VCR
and cell phones
 Now well over 75% of Canadians have access: that
number rises to 100% under 25
 The Internet the fastest techology in rate of social
adaption

15. Cmns 130
Impacts
 Changed the way we work
 Accellerated space time compression:
globalization processes
 Convergence of computers and distribution
allows greater efficiency of control and
communication
 Much cheaper to sell via Internet than in person (
1/100th cost per transaction for banks, airlines)
 Average person is now estimated to spend 187
hours a year on line ( source: Penguin Media and
Information 2003)

16. Cmns 130
Social Transformations of
the Internet
 Utopic Visions
 Breaks oligopoly power
 Allows user control over media
selected, compiled, used
 Provides new forms of social
connection beyond space based
 New communities of interest may
form ( beyond borders)
 Together with other technologies
allow development of artificial
intelligence/body/intelligence
augmentation
 A Democratic Realization
 Dystopic Visions
 Reinforces and extends it ( US
controls 65% share of world Internet
server hosts)
 Keeps user in ‘invisible walled
gardens’
 Has enabled social predation: largest
use for pornography /weapons and
illicit drug/and stalking on line
 New market intelligence aggregating
in unprecedented scope: data
shadows and on line surveillance
 Few use the Net for political news,
mobilization: while alt.news and other
organizations are growing:
commercial search engines bury
them so they are difficult to find…thus
an authoritarian politics continued,
not a democratic one

17. Cmns 130
World Wide Web
 Between 22 and 800 million sites– less than
half indexed
 Main search engines:
 Google (500 m page estimate)
 Alta Vista294)
 Yahoo
 Iwon,
 Northern Light
 Fast

18. Cmns 130
Industry Structure
 No one owner of Internet
 ISP providers route through a tangled web of other providers
 One dominant PC software manufacturer: Microsoft ( Internet
Explorer)
 Decade long anti trust suit settled out of court
 Like AT&T, US Department of Justice concerned about dominant
market power, and predatory competition
 Until 1990s, little competition between telephones and cable
companies: now starting
 Late 1990s a wave of Stock Speculation and large scale mergers
for dot com sector just before its crash
 AOL ( which owns Netscape) tookover Time Warner: sign of new
technology surpassing old
 Emergence of little known Netscapes of Power

19. Cmns 130
Ideology of the Internet
 Electronic Freedom
Foundation
 Neo liberal/New Media
 Free
 Egalitarian
 Decentralized
 Ad Hoc
 Open and peer to peer
 Experimental
 Autonomous
 Anarchic
 Media Oligopolies (
Incumbent Media)
 Social Responsibility model:
but self not government
regulation
 For Profit
 Hierarchical
 Systematized and
Centralized
 Planned
 Proprietary
 Pragmatic
 Accountable
 Organized
 Reliable
 Source: Richard Campbell,
Media and Culture, 41.

20. Cmns 130
The Business Case for On
line Start Ups
 Sector characterised by rapidly falling costs
 Transistorization etc.
 Costs for average computer falling 30% per year ( just 0.01% of costs
in 1970)
 E commerce applications growing, but still less than 5% of retail(
slower than supposed)
 Personal messaging ( email) very high
 Use for Information /Research high: but rise of subscription media
( eg. Newspaper on line, growing only among global travel
segment)
 Drive to get video downloadable for entertainment (video cell
phones banned in washrooms)
 Still largest volume of business is porn worldwide

21. Cmns 130
Globalization of the
Internet
 US has privatized domain names but retained control
over their allocation
 This is a sore point for Europe and other powerful
economic regions
 Internet content providers are estimated to be 98%
English, 87% commercial, and dominantly US in origin
 Other foreign governments now trying to:
 Invest in promotion of infrastructure
 Offer government services on line
 Promote the development of indigenous services
 ( eg. Canada: New Media Content Fund at Telefilm and the
Canadian Television Fund)

22. Cmns 130
Canadian Shape of
Convergence
 Links telecom and broadcast and news
 No computer sector
 Does link portals and so on
 First impacts of convergence have been
to de-localize news and media production
 Consolidation of media production
 Centralization in a few cities

23. Cmns 130
Regulation of the Internet
 Canada ‘s CRTC decided in 1999 not to regulate the Internet : to
leave it to open competition
 Australia and Europe are taking very different directions
 1996 US Telecommunications Act ( calling for deregulation) is
opposed world wide:
 It is essentially impossible for one country to act as a content
gatekeeper for a world community– Michael Epstein, quoted in
Campbell, 57.
 Hate and offensive contents are of growing social concern (
especially sexual predation on the Net)
 1996 US Communications Decency Act made it a felony to transmit
obscene, indecent, or harassing material on the Internet where
children might see it: struck down n grounds Internet no different from
a book store: not like broadcast ACLU v. Janet Reno, 1998)23
 Rise of ‘filters’/ ratings? On line entertainment

24. Cmns 130
“Hacktivism”
 Development of Open Source Code: Linux which is free open
source operating system challenges Microsoft
 File sharing “coops” of the type of Napster ( trading MP3s)
growing
 “junk” and growth of viruses
 Romantic vision of small content providers surging on the net
 Eg. The ‘garage bands’ now can find an audience; the poet
self publish, the digital video camcorder allow the production of
broadcast quality documentaries for $20,000 versus 1.2 million
in the TV industry
 A technologically optimistic view: technology as emancipatory,
“revolutionary” shattering the powers of entrenched business,
cultural authorities
 What Winseck in the courseware calls ‘fantasy’

25. Cmns 130
Intellectual Property Law
 Part of Intellectual Property Law
 Governs the realm of inventions ( Patent
Law) and brands or names ( Trade Mark
Law), Trade Secrets ( Commercial Law)
and Copyright

26. Cmns 130
The Canadian Copyright
Act
 “protection”
 For the life of the author plus 50 years
 Where the creator has the sole right to perform the creative act,
grant permission or a “license” to reproduce it, or copy it.
 What is not copyrightable:
 Facts– but the compilation of them ( i.e how they are interpreted, is)
 Ideas- unless they are manifest in a drawing, paper, or written form (
see Vivian and Maurin, page 365)
 Copyright: important in book publishing, sound tracks to films,
films, music
 All TV and radio based on copyright payment to the performers
they use
 Increasingly important in international trade, all forms of academic
expression

27. Cmns 130
Canadian Copyright
Agencies
 CANCOPY: 130 courseware
 SOCAN

28. Cmns 130
US Digital Millenium
Copyright Act ( 1998)
 Computer users who copy or distribute
the digital expression of others without
their permission are liable to prosecution
 ISP’s may avoid liability if they police and
remove offenders
 Arose because of spread of MP3 ( a
digital compression technology)

29. Cmns 130
Napster
 Before 1999, just 5 companies, court
cases on price fixing underway
 Developer launches Website wi 2 mi per day
 Called P to P networking
 Allowed visitors to search for files on other MP3 users’
hard drive and download to burn their own CDs: control
over compilation shifts to consumers
 ‘freeware’: since Napster’s server did not house or
archive the music, the owners thought they were
exempt from copyright law and reasoned that
prosecution should happen at the individual level: since
so dispersed and large ( estimated in the millions a
month) it was believed it was not possible to enforce
the law

30. Cmns 130
The Napster Case (see
Fleras: 262)
 Musical Recording Industry argued Napster
infringed copyright– even Metallica!
 Damages estimated in the millions
 Refused to admit free sampling in fact
increased exposure to music: eventual
purchase
 Lined up a number of musicians to argue that
the financial damage was to artists ( not the the
multinationals)

31. Cmns 130
Napster defense
 An information source
 Not ‘housing’ or copying
 Intention to move to a subscription
service
 Struggled to settle out of court
 Agreed to charge a monthly fee
 Purchased by Bertelsmann
 Lost Case

32. Cmns 130
Effects of Napster
 Now usurped in the market ( Morpheus , Kazaa and others) but
trying a comeback
 Victor? : to large companies:
 BUT– they introduced 2 tier pricing to allow new artists to break in
 They reduced price of CDs
 More services experimenting with subscription and transaction fees
 Major transformation in Music Happening
 Victor? To consumers
 Forcing a major rethink of copyright
 Hierarchy of value: new versus brand artists merit more protection
 Should IP be free? It takes a community to raise an artist.

33. Cmns 130

34. Cmns 130
The Argument
 Fleras: intrusion of commercial interests
and government regulation has
compromised the regulatory potential of
the Internet
 McLuhan: the inception of a new media
casts into sharper relief the premises,
priorities and power relations of existing
media ( page 249).

35. Cmns 130
Crucial Questions
 Should those who control the medium
also control the message?
 Cases: GayTV and Shaw Cable
 BCE /CTV and Independent Film
 Sympatico(Bell) and Oliver Hate Site
 Issue is: will gatekeeper show
preference/discriminate against
competitors, or evade responsibility?

36. Cmns 130
The Consumer’s Guide to
the New Media
 1.Question Everything that is seen, heard or
read in new media. ( no FDA)
 2. Conclude almost everything is to make
money for someone.
 Assume everything is a potential threat to your
privacy:
 Source: John Pavlik “ The Structure of the New
Media Industry: in The Media Entertainment
Industries, Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

37. Cmns 130
The Myth of Convergence
 Not new
 Since 19th century
 Telegraph and global news agencies born
together ( Winseck)
 AT&T ran RCA/Films until State department
busted it
 In Canada today, we have one of the most
consolidated media systems in the world, with
a high degree of cross-media ownership

38. Cmns 130
Risk and Political
Economy Game
 Inventors of new technologies generate new patents ( ham
heaven)
 When market become established: patents bought or litigated (
crisis of capital for development)
 Incumbent industries either block development or buy out new
technology
 If new technology threatens core business of old, then predatory
behavior, or massive buyout
 If new technology too risky, then businesses buy not make new
service.
 Thus new technologies rarely challenge the incumbents, but over
50 years can see major change in owner players: market efficient
at reducing risk and adapting to change

39. Cmns 130
The Critical Political Economy View: Lost
in Cyberspace by Dwayne Winseck
 Sees Intellectual Property Disputes as masking the
larger problem: oligopoly of power and control
 Internet now dominated by big players, not an ideal
perfect competition
 Convergence not new: 19th and 20th century waves and
predicted in Canada since 1971
 In Canada:
 Rogers allied with Microsoft and AT&T
 CanWest: news and TV and radio
 Bell Globemedia, CTV,Expressvue, Globe and Mail and
Sympatico, largest ISP

40. Cmns 130
Impacts of Cross Media
Ownership
 Now vertically and horizontal
companies can control all
aspects of message
 Should those who control the
medium also control the
message?
 Yes: allows economies of
scale, more money reinvested
in content, better assumption
of risk, more choice and
convenience for consumers
 No: debt means less
investment in content, loss of
jobs, avoidance of risk, less
choice and higher prices for
consumers ( Winseck, 326)

41. Cmns 130
Canadian Argument
 Canada does have more choice among services
 Highest level of cable, cell, Internet penetration in G-8
 Chronic shortage/ market failure in high cost production
 Shrinking public investment in non commercial or community media
 Indicators News
 More news services, fewer private foreign news bureaus, more reliance on
wire services; diminishing number of jobs
 Indicator Entertainment
 Digital channels not allied with big Canadian companies on verge of
bankruptcy
 Can’t get carried by cable companies, or carried at too high a wholesale rate
 Services high level of repetition( estimated more than 66% reruns)
 Lag of asymmetry: late on video file swapping, speed of video downloads

42. Cmns 130
Winseck’s conclusion
 In short, there is a resilience in the “old media”
that will not yield
 Incumbents battle new entrants and either buy
them up or forge partnerships, or force them
out of business
 People still mostly rely on TV for their political
information
 Internet works to extend and conserve existing
market dominance in cyberspace

43. Cmns 130
Netscapes of Power
 Must watch “netscapes of power”: rise of
gatekeepers and “walled gardens”
 Trend to bundling services for convenience
 Styling information services for personal
preferences– and not challenging these ( narrower
and narrower homogenous taste communities)
 Technologies of discrimination: owner preference in
placing subsidiaries at front of retail shelf and
burying competitive service providers

44. Cmns 130
Fleras: Rhetoric and
Reality ( p.269)

45. Cmns 130
Rhetoric & Reality
 Subversive/Freewheel
 Egalitarian
 Anarchic Power to the
People
 Globalizing
 Free
 Empowering and
Enlightening
 Diversity
 Corporatized/Control
 Ehaves/Ehavenots
 Authoritarian power to
the dollar
 Americanizing
 Marketing and
Advertising
 Make Money
 Conformity

46. Cmns 130
Social Issues:
Surveillance
 Network architecture is now “smart”
 Before, telcos did not know the content of messages
 Now, they do. Bits are monitored, stored in charting
flow and effective service
 Nortel and Cisco can establish network architectures
which:
 Identify each traffic type-Web, email, voice, video…and isolate
the type of application even down to specific brands, by the
interface used, by the user typeand individual user
identification or by the site address (winseck:331)

47. Cmns 130
Surveillance 2
 Rise of “cookies” ( spies on content, personal
information and preferences jeapordizing privacy)
 Technological potential of building a complete ‘data
shadow’ of the consumer, to better market to them
 Emerging self regulation of services
 Eg restrictive private contracts for use, limiting video
downloads, for example, in absence of regulation permitting it.
 Or: @Home…wide open powers to remove offensive matter
which is too prone to authoritarian censorship
 Still major fights: first over spam ( reaccessing your
email accounts, and next data shadowing/market
surveillance)

48. Cmns 130
The Walled Garden
 AOL Time Warner term
 Disney too
 Keep users within designated zones for as long as
possible ( Winseck, 335)
 How?
 By creation of content and service menus, organization of
hyperlinks, bias of search engings, network architecture,
promotion, content synergies,elimination of bypasses
 Creation of walled gardens: safe, predictable, branded
 Eg: Disney assumes role of immigration officer in AOL’s world:
if people enter their site, and then leave AOL, contract can be
cancelled ( Winseck, 336)

49. Cmns 130
The Information Gap
 Rest of the World is less than one-tenth on the
way to cyberspace
 Vast continents ( Africa) left out of “global
information highway”
 Rich consumers and those educated elites the
first to embrace computers and the Internet
 Poor, uneducated slow: many countries do not
have policies to help individuals(eg. Computers
in the home), although do help schools

50. Cmns 130
The Knowledge Gap
 Information and Knowledge gap is widening:
despite mass penetration of the Internet in
Canada, still high levels of illiteracy, ( under
25%) relatively low levels of university
education ( several points below Europe), and
growing child poverty: estimates place one in
four to one in three kids below poverty level
 Structurally higher levels of unemployment,
precarious jobs
 Gendered landscape of technological control