Three key concepts in Digital Media

E-Learning and Digital Media

Being literate has traditionally meant being able to read and write using the media of the day. In the 21st century, being literate requires additional skills such as competence with digital media creation. Until recently, those who could afford and use equipment and applications to produce digital media content were typically developers and technicians. With the development of prosumer electronics, in conjunction with the use of mobile devices and tablets, a shift has occurred in the accessibility of these tools, becoming more affordable for the general population. Video sharing services, social software and Web 2.0 applications have made it possible to host a digital media ecosystem on the Internet, and this has led to the proliferation of User-Generated Content. These technological advances have changed how we communicate, socialise and learn. Effective communication using digital media is underpinned by a set of design principles which most students are not likely to be aware. T...

2013

system 1 that provides the infrastructure for mediated and interpersonal communication, and for social interaction. This infrastructure for “networked communication” 2 is characterised by 1) the connection of mass media and interpersonal communication; 2) a new articulation of the time/space structure; 3) different dynamics of value creation; and 4) different degrees of access, interactivity and participation both in media and through media 3 . It is a new communicative scenario full of “risky opportunities”, to quote Sonia Livingstone’s 4 catchy phrase in the title of a New Media and Society article. The article discusses these changes, and the ways that they have been a nd need to be thematised in academic research, from a slightly unusual perspective, as it is based on an analysis of the individual reports 5 produced by the members of Working Group 2

Interactive media defines a vast gamut of digital and computer-mediated systems, products and services which rely on the users’ input in order to generate an expressive and/or representational output. As such, interactive media are distinguished from traditional or linear media insofar as their design and development explicitly relies on user agency as a constitutive participation. Participants’ engagement is, thus, both a seminal principle as well as an intended system consequence. It is often the case that interactive media rely on determined levels of pre-specified hotspots and/or triggers, defined by the authors. Those can range from highly programmed paths to exploratory wandering. By definition, interactive media comprises fiction and non-fiction, including essentially all multimedia formats – text, audio, image, video, animation – in 2D and 3D spaces, spanning online and off-line worlds, virtual and hybrid environments, genres and formats, as well as academic disciplines and professional occupations. This entry provides an introduction to interactive media history, principles, and examples, while expanding it into innovative contemporary digital media, including information visualization, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning

Nordicom Review, 1998

Civitas - Revista de Ciências Sociais, 2009

My aim in this paper is to present an analysis of the concept of audiovisual interactivity and its evolution in relation to web 2.0 and participatory culture. A brief theoretical framework on the concept of interactivity and its evolutions in the last decades will be followed by an analysis of the traditional interactivity concept based on a closed user-medium relationship. Finally, I will further articulate my reflection on new forms of interactivity which are based on a more participatory model in which users interact among themselves and create communities within and through interactive media environments. Using Thompson's theoretical framework (1995) on media interaction, my attempt will be to define how new participative strategies of 2.0 tv are creating not only new forms of contents and languages, but also "mediated-quasi interactions" between media producers and their audience. These environments are thus characterized by an indirect dialogue and a complex competition for media imaginary dominance.

Selected Readings of the 8th Information Design International Conference - Information Design: Memories, 2019

Due to the convergence of media and the development of technologies for accessibility, many people with disabilities have access to digital media. Regarding deaf individuals, the technologies integrated to social media (videos, messages, translators, etc.) have helped these users communicate. Thus, people with different skill sets have the conditions necessary to produce and diffuse videos, images, sounds, among other contents, reappropriating the traditional media productions, giving it new meanings. The convergence phenomenon, according to Jenkins (2015), defines the technological, marketing, cultural and social transformations and it must be understood mainly as a process that goes beyond technologies that gather multiple functions in the same devices. Instead, the convergence represents a cultural transformation that depends strongly on the consumer's active participation, as they are encouraged to seek new information and make conections among dispersed media contents. According to Flor et. al (2009), multimedia is a form of media convergence that integrates texts, images, videos, sounds and animations in a new media form, which results in the concentration and grouping of these different means in a harmonic and redundant manner that reaches the user in a larger spectrum of their senses. Regarding the hypermedia by convergence of hypertext and multimedia, it is formed by a communication technique that stores data in a digital environment in a way that permits the user to navigate and seek information of their interest, which may be presented in the form of texts, diagrams, still images, animated images, sounds, animations, all supported by the non linear navigability and by new semantic relations (SILVA, 2006) (Flor, et al., 2009). The hypermedia has set a new paradigm of information, given that, historically, textual language has subdued visual language. According to Bonsiepe

Keywords for Media Studies Edited by Laurie Ouellette and Jonathan Gray

Critically understanding interactivity – the way people interact with media of various forms – has been a core concern of media studies since its inception. Long before personal computers and mobile devices arrived in family homes, media and cultural studies sought to make visible the different impact that mass media, including film and television, could have in people's lives. This undertaking is exemplified in Stuart Hall's model of encoding and decoding which, at its most basic level, argues that media is not passively received, but rather actively decoded and interpreted by every audience member, every recipient (Hall 1973). Hall's model acknowledges that media is produced and consumed within specific contexts and power structures which often promote a dominant reading, a way of interpreting a media text aligned with the producer's intended meaning. Yet it is Hall's argument that an oppositional reading is possible, that audiences may interact differently and take a different meaning from a media text, which is most important. Hall thus argues that all media viewing is an act of interpretation, and the perspective of the viewer and the context in which they are viewing will have an impact on how they interact with each and every media text in their lives. While interactivity at the level of meaning is comparatively difficult to make visible, in early studies of fan culture interactivity is particularly evident. From Henry Jenkins' canonical Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992) onward, fan studies have argued that fans' deep interaction with their chosen media is both an active and creative process. As fans started using the internet, and then the web, the scale of this creativity and participation has increased exponentially. As digital technology developed, the centrality of interactivity in terms of tactile engagement via an interface such as a keyboard, mouse, or screen led to a range of studies attempting to offer all-encompassing definitions of the term. However, consensus only came in the broadest possible terms, with scholars agreeing only that interactivity involves communication between people and technology (Downes & McMillian 2000; Kiousis 2002). The paradigm of human–computer interaction (HCI), and the fetishization of the digital and technological as new, repositioned interactivity as a tactile engagement rather than a process of interpretation. Yet in The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich (2001) warns that trying to define digital or new media in terms of interactivity is tautological: these media forms are accessed on computers or devices which are, by definition, interactive systems. Moreover, before the ubiquity of digital screens, accessing television or even books involved some level of interaction, from turning pages, to selecting channels on a dial, although this relatively minimal level of physical interaction pales in comparison to playing Angry Birds or other casual games on a mobile device.

Good communication is achieved when there is consensus regarding the terms being used. It is a rule laid down after observing that in common language, as well as in the more elevated circles or in the academic research community, misinterpretations are often generated by the fact that various terms are used with different senses. Even in the study of communication we come across such artificially created obstacles. The degree of imprecision is also increased by the great diversification in the fields of communication, as well as by the widening of the range of devices and methods used in message exchange. Mediatization thus becomes a complex phenomenon, at risk of losing depth due to a lack of adaptation, be it minimal, to the requirements of the digital era. Therefore, initiating and sustaining debates on concepts in current media communication represents one of the ways to reduce the difficulties of understanding. The current analysis is an attempt to circumscribe the meaning of certain terms and processes in the sphere of digital communication, in the contexts of their application. These concepts include: mediatization, online, intermedia, cyberspace, communication platform, media and technological convergence, social media and search for information.

Being literate has traditionally meant being able to read and write using the media of the day. In the 21st century, being literate requires additional skills such as competence with digital media creation. Until recently, those who could afford and use equipment and applications to produce digital media content were typically developers and technicians. With the development of prosumer electronics, in conjunction with the use of mobile devices and tablets, a shift has occurred in the accessibility of these tools, becoming more affordable for the general population. Video sharing services, social software and Web 2.0 applications have made it possible to host a digital media ecosystem on the Internet, and this has led to the proliferation of User-Generated Content. These technological advances have changed how we communicate, socialise and learn. Effective communication using digital media is underpinned by a set of design principles which most students are not likely to be aware. This paper built on two previous papers on the Digital Media Literacy Framework and the Taxonomy of Digital Media types for teaching and learning. It argues the importance of digital media principles to develop effective communication in the digital space. Students now require knowledge of these principles, in conjunction with conceptual and functional skills, for effective communication in the digital space.