Author Archives: cburke

I have two pictures from opposites sides of the world.  The first one is from Bangkok  Thailand in the heart of Chinatown.  I was there just last summer, it’s a crazy chaotic place, and it is very common to see parents ride with their children in this manner.  The second one is from Chicago, and from the looks of it right under the L train.  Perhaps this bride is going to get on the L train to go to her wedding, or perhaps she’s going to celebrate at the bar.  I choose to believe the latter because that’s what I’d be doing.  Walter Benjamin says, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be,” (p.3).  These two photos existed in a particular time and space, their time has passed but these images eternalize that specific moment.  Google street view allows us a way to peer into the lives of other people all over the world, but in a very detached way, which I find fascinating.

Print media can be considered an old dying media object, losing ground to the digital news media.  While traditional mass media like the AP still exists online, new competitors are undercutting them.  The game is changing and new media objects like Gawker media are leading the way.  Gawker media is an umbrella blog network; they own eight different blogs, which cover a variety of topics.  Their main site Gawker covers gossip and news, Deadspin sports, io9 science and science fiction, Gizmodo gadgets, Jolopnik cars, Lifehacker productivity, Kotaku gaming, and Jezebel focuses on issues affecting women.  This substantial variability allows Gawker to pull in a broad spectrum of readers, which makes them more profitable.  Their profit is mainly based on advertising revenue.  What makes Gawker have high earnings than other blogs is their ability increase interent traffic and maximize revenue with such a limited staff.  This in itself encapsulates many characteristics of a new media object; obviously their use of html code shows their numerical representation, but also their accounting of page views which generates revenue, shows both numerical representation and automation.  Having eight different blogs allows Gawker to cross-link stories that might be of interest to the other blog’s readers.  As Manovich points out this form of modularity only exists on the web, print media does not have the ability to branch off, as it only exists on the tangible paper it is printed on (41).  Old media often references new media, perhaps in an effort to stay relevant.  Now old media like print and radio have blogs and podcasts and facebook pages.  This old media is transcoding into new digitized media as Manovich points out (47).  Yet another way transcoding works is how new media objects are acknowledged by old forms of mass media, i.e. print, radio, and TV.  Gawker has done this by braking stories on politian’s affairs, and Viacom’s treatment of employees.  They also have a controversial map program called gawker stalker in which gawker readers point out where they point out and update where they have seen a celebrity.  Many celebrities view this as dangerous, but Gawker editors say it is in good fun.