Multimedia:
its changing role, evolving function, and descriptive effects
mark antiqueno fma1 SYNTHESIS PAPER DEVC_207_SS_2013-2014
Multimedia: Its Changing Role, Evolving Function and Descriptive Effects A report on the nature of Multimedia, Social Media and Media Ecology All articles written by Mark Antiqueno unless credited or referenced. Design and layout by Mark Antiqueno All photographs used are royalty-free retrieved from http://www.sxc.hu and to their credited websites 1 December 2013 2013 Copyright Mark Antiqueno
Multimedia “Multimedia is many things rolled into one.” (Dowling 4) But in its core, multimedia is “a combination of two or more media,” though it can be much more than that. The use of multiple media forms creates a different experience and end product. This experience created by the combination of multiple media becomes different to when the different media are used or experienced separately. When they are combined and used together, they can produce new and more dynamic features, experiences and effects to the user. Media means to express or convey a message. Its purpose is to stand in between as a messenger of the message to the user or audience. It can come in different forms like images, sound, texts, video, animation and movement. And when these forms of media are used in conjunction with another, the resulting medium is
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referred to as multimedia. “Multimedia is a synergistic process whereby various media elements work together to make a stronger, more cohesive whole.” (Dowling 5) Multimedia can be divided into 2 forms: Linear and Non-linear multimedia. Linear Multimedia is meant to read sequentially. The creator defines specific starting and ending points. This form of multimedia is typically used simply for presentation or making the user or audience ‘passive participants’ who only receives information. This is commonly used to make the viewing and understanding of media more immersive because the user isn’t “distracted by decision making.” (Dowling 7) Typical samples of linear multimedia are powerpoint presentations, photo slideshows and videos.
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Multimedia is a synergistic process whereby various media elements work together to make a stronger, more cohesive whole. (Dowling 5)
A Multimedia Terminal in Germany that makes use of images, sound and interactivity (Wikimedia Commons)
DVDs, websites and hypernarrative videos and materials on the other hard are non-linear interactive multimedia. (Dowling 14) These call for the user to interact or control and make decisions with the media, usually through an interface or a visual connection between the computer program and the user. In nonlinear interactive multimedia, the interface presents a series of options and pathways for the user to select.
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Multimedia, through the help of technology using hypertext and hypermedia, has taken itself up a notch by incorporating the user into the multimedia experience. Users are given the choice of which options to select depending on their preference or need. They are given the choice to read supplementary materials, watch supplementary videos or view slideshows. This new development is referred to as interactive multimedia. Project Xanadu, developed by Ted Nelson, aimed to create a way to store, present, and manipulate data in a non-sequential manner. This ability to navigate multidirectionally and non-sequentially through links is called hypermedia. Hypermedia helped develop the field of multimedia by adding interactivity, or the ability of the user to select and manipulate media through hypertext, or texts which redirects to other data, making media or multimedia an active medium instead of the passive one it was before. The project resulted to the use of the Hypertext Markup Language or HTML necessary to create and view Internet websites.
The growth of technology paved the way for hypertext and hypermedia systems, which are nonlinear and flexible, thus easily manipulable and manageable to proliferate. Hypertext, hypermedia, as well as digital libraries, because of its flexibility have become increasingly used in scientific inquiries. (Puntambekar, and Goldstein 3)
its changing role The Internet has also become a powerful business medium this past decade; and websites have become a staple and key to success to businesses. Companies are now revolutionizing the way they do business by adding the World Wide Web to their medium and channel for selling their products and services. Findings have indicated that a key factor to the success of commercial websites is its design and its interactivity. “As a critical concept in computermediated communications, the interactivity of a web site is known to be a key motivation of consumers’
Ted Nelson, the pioneer of hypermedia and hypertext (Wikimedia Commons)
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use of the Internet, an important determinant of web site quality, and one that leads to a positive attitude toward the site.” (Boushra 3) Boushra concluded in his paper ‘The influence of web site feature-based interactivity on users’ attitudes and online behaviors’ that users perceive websites with a higher level of interactivity in its features as having higher quality, thus having a higher quality brand, and a better attitude towards the brand. Al Tompkins, the Broadcast/ Online Group Leader at Poynter Institute wrote a series of news articles and special reports in 1997 about the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia. The articles were written in then unique format, employing hyperlinks on words that direct to external supplementary materials like videos, photographs and audio recordings. These links directed to materials created by other writers and documentarians, which the reader can choose to click and read or to leave or leave for later. This interactive feature provided a way for readers to access related and supplementary data. Tompkins believes that ‘interactivity is the future of news’ because of how if is able to make information transparent and accessible to everyone who likes or are in need of them. He
also notes: “The most important part of the word ‘newspaper’ is not the ‘paper.’” He gives particular importance to the information and the accessibility of it, regardless of the medium. The interactivity or participation of users, readers and writers alike is quickly become the direction of information media, examples given were Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia and OhMyNews, a South Korean news site that is contributed by thousands of online users. (“Interactivity is the Future of News”) In relation to Boushra’s research findings, people perceive websites with more interactivity as better and foster a more favorable attitude towards it, and a more favorable online experience. This positive attitude makes users revisit the website and recommend it to other users. (Boushra 3)
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Users perceive websites with a higher level of interactivity in its features as having higher quality, thus having a higher quality brand, and a better attitude towards the brand.
The interface of the Wikipedia website
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This positive attitude towards interactive media has become more and more influential and important to users’ activities. People have become “mediadependent” to the point of being neurotic. (Lewis) People have become eager to receive updates in their respective media devices and websites to feel secure about their position, or to “to keep their own internal maps adjusted to a larger map of the world.” (Lewis) It has even come to the point wherein people base judgments on how well, how often and how interactive their messages are. One such medium, that has greatly influenced people’s perspectives are Social media. These are websites that provide a platform for the social interaction of people. Through these social mediam people can share contents like photos, music, texts or messages with other users. Social media can take on many forms like blogs or microblogs, closed communities and forums. (Curtis) Some of the most accessed social media websites include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, which have grown to as much 44% in registered users in as short as 1 year. People have become dependent to social media that 93% of marketers today use social media to conduct business or interact with customers, 70% of brands now have online presence via Google+ while 70% or marketers report to have successfully used Facebook to grow their customer base. (Jones)
A sample of a facebook profile page
The use and influence of social media did not stop at external relations. They are now also being used in the workplace as platform for communication between parties to occur. This however posed problems to the privacy of communication. Because of becoming a platform rather than a channel for communication that is a closed or private, social media is digital, thus more publicly accessible and more instantaneous. In addition, unlike physical platforms like conference rooms and offices, social media is more open to public social interaction. (Leonardi, Huysman, and Steinfield 2)
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Knowledge becomes knowing because of the use and reuse or the “recontextualization and reconstitution” of knowledge by individuals who use them. (Leonardi, Huysman, and Steinfield 3)
Social media has been an enterprise medium in two different ways: first, as a communication medium for companies to communicate with the public, including customers and vendors; second, as a communication medium for internal interaction and conduction of business matters. As a communication platform, social media networks generally mimic the look of
5 popular social media websites but with additional functionalities particularly focused on the conduction of business rather than a social networking tool. (Leonardi, Huysman, and Steinfield 2) However, Enterprise Social Media provides several opportunities to users by providing a public venue to address concerns and ask questions and broadcast announcements to everybody in the network, regardless of their actual or real-world affiliation. It also creates the possibility of making one’s work visible to the public within the network, which normally wouldn’t be. Social media has allowed information to be shared from a traditionally centralized process to a decentralized one. Users can share post and share or repost information in whatever way they prefer, either in formal or informal methods or language. Knowledge becomes knowing because of the use and reuse or the ‘recontextualization and reconstitution’ of knowledge by individuals who use them. (Leonardi, Huysman, and Steinfield 3)
evolving function Marshal McLuhan’s statement: ‘the medium is the message’ aptly describes his overall theory on Media Ecology which studies the effect of different media and communication technologies on the personal and social behavior of people. (Griffin 321) McLuhan presented 4 divisions or epochs in human history characterized by the type of communication technology were prevalent and how this technology shaped the environment or ‘ecology.’ The 4 epochs are: the tribal age, literacy age, print age and electronic age. (Griffin 324)
An oral community from Cambodia Photo: Brett Matthews, 2006 (Wikimedia Commons)
The Tribal Age and Primary Orality The Tribal Age is characterized as era when “the senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell were developed far beyond the ability to visualize.” (Griffin 324) In the Tribal Age, speech or the spoken word is a “communal experience,” (Griffin 325) thus people in the Tribal Age had a more wholistic experience of the world. Ong, in his book Orality and Literacy calls communities who use speech as the primary mode of communication as communities of ‘primary orality’. Primary orality developed as verbal expression of thought without the knowledge of writing and print. Primarily based on sound, primary orality makes use of sound, and verbal words to create, tell, and share stories, songs and poetry to the community, from generation to generation. In oral cultures, words do not have any visual or written connotation but simple words or sounds spoken. Important to oral cultures is
6 memory. Because stories and messages are not written, they are memorized by individuals or by folksingers. (Ong) Milman Parry recorded the songs and poems memorized by folksingers and found similarities and differences in their versions. These differences posed interesting questions and provided scholars with substantial understanding of their cultures. Literacy, Writing, Print and Secondary Orality The next epoch in McLuhan’s Media Map of History is the Literacy Age. It is the ages when in sounds were transformed into symbols. From a soundcentered communication system that favored a sense of community, humans developed visual-dependency. The passing and temporal medium which is sound lost its value and was substituted by more long-standing media like writings and visual symbols. Reading and looking, which as McLuhan described are more private and individual, overtook the community-forming characteristic of sound. (Griffin 235) This epoch was then followed by the Print Age, which allowed written media to be mass- produced and mass- distributed. This created “uniformed individualism.” People were reading and absorbing the same information but are experiencing it individually. (Griffin 326)
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People were reading and absorbing the same information but are experiencing it individually. (Griffin 326) Writing, as Ong described is ‘secondary orality’. It is a ‘self-conscious’ form of communication, which employs writing and printing to express messages. Unlike primary orality, it is more deliberate in the sense that it is formulated, constructed and written. It is “based permanently on writing and print.” Today paperless movement however, substituted print media with electronic media such as eBooks, applications and websites that can be read on various electronic devices The secondary orality is now dominated by electronic media like the television, telephones, music cd’s, and in recent years, by the paperless media. The dominant media in today’s second orality makes use of both chirographic and and the orality modes of thought through the marriage of both pictures, illustrations and words and as well as sound through music, voice recordings and sound effects, also called ‘multimedia.’ McLuhan called this epoch as the Electronic Age. The electronic age transformed communication from private experience back to a communal one. The age enabled messages to be transmitted to multitudes of people akin to a village, where everyone knows e ve r yone a nd e ve r ything. He c a lle d th is th e “Global Village.” (Griffith 324)
Indian man reading. (www.sxc.hu)
7 Both the primary and secondary oralities evoked a sense of community in people. Primary orality or the spoken word created groups with which we can communicate and share stories and information with, but through the developed technology in the secondary orality, this group has exploded to a global village.
A camera crew covering the news (www.sxc.hu)
descriptive effects Hugh M. Lewis, in his essay The Media Construction on Everyday Reality, wrote about the function of media in changing the “worldview and cultural and psychological patterning of human behavioral response.” (Lewis) And this occurs through ‘horizontal transmission’ or spreading out, ‘integration’ or infusing into a culture or mentality, ‘organization’ which puts order into systems and groups, ‘mobilization’ which moves people and ideas into action, of media and messages, which ultimately leads to the ‘reform of human systems.’ According to Lewis, this happens at two levels: reporting the factual
details or ‘objectification of reality’ and the utilization of communication and media for the reinforcement or persuasion of people towards certain beliefs or desired behavior or ‘subjectification of reality.’ (Lewis) Organizations like the governments and corporations have become dependent to Media is transforming their messages and broadcasting them to people to then transform their behavioral responses. Media has become a powerful tool and institution in the manipulation of communication and messages to consistently manage and construct worldview. This is not limited to news programs that are supposed to be showing facts or ‘objective reality.’ Television and movies are also major media influences. Graphic and repeated displays of violence have increased peoples threshold and tolerance for such, to the point of ‘normalizing’ them. According to Lewis, the correlation between the increase of violence in the media and the ‘prevalence of actual social violence’ may be strong and positive. And it has become the primary source of information, thus the biggest influencer of public perception of reality today. (Lewis)
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The Media’s ability to move and transform itself and messages had a great impact on how we communicate and understand messages today. Marshal McLuhan believed that the Medium is not merely a vessel for the transportation or relay of messages. It is a message in itself. (Griffith 324) And our continuously transforming communication systems are too, messages in themselves. If our communication systems have become fast- moving, and ever- changing, what does that say about the type of messages we transmit today? It is also interesting to understand what it says about the type of messengers we are becoming. Social media has enabled user to post short messages or snapshots anytime and anywhere. It has also allowed people to follow and comment on these short updates. News websites are also following the same direction, writing shorter news but with supplementary materials. Businesses are also following the trend of applying these characteristics of social media to their websites. The four epochs listed by McLuhan characterized us based on our communication media not only because it illustrates what types of media we use, but also it shows to what kind of media are dependent to.
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It [Media] is a message in itself. (Griffith 324)
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references Boushra, Manal W. “The Influence of Web Site Feature-Based Interactivity on Users’ Attitudes and Online Behaviors.” 3325891 The Pennsylvania State University, 2008. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 29 Nov. 2013. Curtis, Anthony. “A Brief History of Social Media.”University of North Carolina at Pembroke. n. page. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html>. Dowling, Jennifer. Multimedia Demystified. 1. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 1-16. eBook. Griffith, Em. A First Look at Communication Theory. 8th. New York: Wheaton College, 2012. 324- 326. Print. “Interactivity is the Future of News.” Belmont University News and Media. Belmont University, 6 Apr 2005. Web. 27 November 2013. <http://forum.belmont.edu/news/2005/04/26/interactivity-is-the-future-of-news/>. Jones, Kelsey. “The Growth of Social Media v2.0 .”Search Engine Journal. N.p., 15 Nov 2013. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://www.searchenginejournal.com/growth-social-media-2-0-infographic/>. Leonardi, Paul, Marleen Huysman, and Charles Steinfield. “Enterprise Social Media: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies in Organizations.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 1.19 (2013): 1-19. Print. Lewis, Hugh. “The Media Construction of Everyday Reality.” Lewis Micro-Publishing. Lewis Micro-Publishing, 9 Feb 2005. Web. 28 November 2013. <http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/SystemsEssaysIII/>. Puntambekar, Sadhana, and Jessica Goldstein. “Effect of Visual Representation of the Conceptual Structure of the Domain on Science Learning and Navigation in a Hypertext Environment.” Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 16.4 (2007): 429-59. ProQuest. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.