DTC 101 – Spring 2013

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@brandonluc01

In Lev Manovich’s article “What is New Media,” he lists several media objects. Since the publishing of his article in 2001 numerous media objects have been developed because of the five characteristics they have that Lev Manovich uses to identify media. The characteristics are numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. A popular new media object today is the online social network known as Facebook.com. It is a popular site that allows one to communicate with others via internet, play games, and create a profile that has descriptions and images of the creator of the profile.

According to Manovich numerical representation is a “media object…converted from analog media sources…to digital code” (Manovich 2001). An example of digital code would be binary code, which consists of 1’s and 0’s (Manovich 2001). Facebook is multifunctional; it runs games, presents images made possible by the programs it contains which are created by sequences of binary code thus allowing Facebook to have numerical representation. Manovich describes modularity as being a “fractal structure of new media” (Manovich 2001). This statement is claiming that media objects like Facebook are composed of several fractional units that function together as a whole. Units of Facebook would include text, images, movies, etc. which function together to create each Facebook web page. Automation is the characteristic that a media object can be created or modified automatically. The website Facebook updates itself when improvements can be made to fix bugs in the website. But Facebook can also give the user automated suggestions when certain actions are completed, like posting images. Facebook will ask you if you want to tag people in the photos and it will also highlight the face of a person in the image automatically. The characteristic variability is described by Manovich as “something…that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (Manovich 2001). Facebook isn’t the first of social websites. Websites like Myspace.com existed before Facebook, which has nearly the same applications as Facebook but in a different format. To put it simply Myspace is a different version of Facebook but provides a different experience for the user. Finally the last characteristic of new media objects is transcoding. Transcoding is the ability for an object to combine “cultural layers” and “computer layers” to create a certain experience or mood for the user. For example Facebook combines cultural layers such as questions that humans would ask one another and its computer/program layers will use that info to create applications like status updates. In the status update bar of Facebook, a question will appear in the box for the user to answer, if they so choose, to help the user think about the question and compose a status based on that question. Some of the questions are “How was your day,” and “What’s going on, Username?” Facebook is a unique internet tool that can be considered a media object because of its compliance with Lev Manovich’s 5 media principles.

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.