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”

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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

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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
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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

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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
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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)

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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)

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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 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)

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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
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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)

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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
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 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
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
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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

Cmns 130
Ideology of the Internet

 Electronic Freedom Foundation  Media Oligopolies ( Incumbent

Media)
 Neo liberal/New Media
 Social Responsibility model: but
 Free self not government regulation
 Egalitarian  For Profit
 Decentralized  Hierarchical
 Ad Hoc  Systematized and Centralized
 Open and peer to peer  Planned
 Experimental  Proprietary
 Autonomous  Pragmatic
 Anarchic  Accountable
 Organized
 Reliable
 Source: Richard Campbell, Media
and Culture, 41.

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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

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)
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

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

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’

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

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
Cmns 130
Canadian Copyright Agencies

 CANCOPY: 130 courseware

 SOCAN

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)

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
 Napster’s early success launched a wave of
imitators: Gnutella, I mesh and XXX

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)
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

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.

Cmns 130
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).

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?

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.
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
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
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

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

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
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

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

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

Cmns 130
Rhetoric & Reality

 Subversive/Freewhe  Corporatized/Contr
el ol
 Egalitarian  Ehaves/Ehavenots
 Anarchic Power to  Authoritarian
the People power to the dollar
 Globalizing  Americanizing
 Free  Marketing and
 Empowering and Advertising
Enlightening  Make Money
 Diversity  Conformity
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)

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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)

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)

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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

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
Cmns 130