There is no set method or theoretical framework for studying New Media. as David Bell points out in the following chapter, the theoretical complexity that typifies New Media may even reflect the state of play in current Net and Web research, suggesting the openness of New Media to ‘cut and paste’ different methods and theoretical approaches together. However, although there may not actually be something as clearly discernible as ‘digital theory’. If we are to appreciate what these new theoretical approaches to New Media might be, it is crucial that we first outline the way the media has tended to be analysed and explained historically. In order to clarify this historical debate, I will first discuss (old) media analysis within a largely ‘modernist’ context, and then move on to discuss the connections between postmodernism, post-structuralism and New Media.
Modernism and ‘old media’
Beginning approximately at the end of the nineteenth century, modernism is the umbrella term we give to the way that human society responded to the changes that took place during the industrial revolution. With its roots in the Enlightenment period of the eighteenth century, modernism tended to challenge the theocratic and God-centred notion of the world that had helped define human society in the past. Ideas such as evolution in biology. With its belief in the scientific inevitability of progress, many aspects of modernism tended to have an optimistic belief in the power of modernity to transform human life for the better. However, as the twentieth century progressed, so the brutal effects of science and industrialization on human life (particularly in both the First and Second World Wars) became increasingly evident. In particular, many modernists came to perceive industrialization as the enemy of free thought and individuality; producing an essentially cold and soulless universe. with these contradictions, modernist artists attempted to reflect the chaos and dislocation at the heart of the modernization process. As the growth of technology and science transformed our conception of society and ourselves, so artists and intellectuals sought new ways to represent and articulate the fragmentation of this ‘brave new world’.
As David Harvey puts it, the ‘struggle to produce a work of art, a once and for all creation that could find a unique place in the market, had to be an individual effort forged under competitive circumstances’ (emphasis in the original, 1990: 22). As Andreas Huyssen points out, modernism was almost consistently ‘relentless in its hostility to mass culture’ (1986: 238), arguing that only ‘high art’ (particularly a strain of it known as the ‘avant-garde’) could sustain the role of social and aesthetic criticism. It was this tension between these two extremes (a ‘mindless’ mass culture versus an ‘enlightened’ avant-garde) that perhaps most explicitly defined modernism’s reaction to the media’s early development during the twentieth century. For example, the BBC’s notion of ‘public service broadcasting’ was based on a number of cultural, political and theoretical ideals akin to modernism. In particular, its first director General, John Reith, argued that broadcasting should be used to defend ‘high culture’ against the degrading nature and influence of mass culture. This is one of the reasons why he argued so strongly that the BBC should be financed entirely by taxation, thereby avoiding the heavily commercialized nature of the American media. Although he would have been politically apposed to the Marxist beliefs of The Frankfurt School, Reith would have shared their concern for the corrupting influence of mass culture on a powerless and uneducated audience.
‘It is occasionally indicated to us’, he famously wrote, ‘that we are apparently setting out to give the public what we think they need – and not what they want – but few know what they want and very few know what they need’ (cited by Briggs 1961: 238). Adorno’s ([1941] 1994) work on popular music, Lowenthal’s (1961) studies of popular literature and magazines and Hertog’s (1941) studies of radio soap opera, all revealed similar preoccupations with the ‘standardization’ of mass culture and the media.
Postmodernisme and New Media
Whereas modernism was generally associated with the early phase of the industrial
revolution, postmodernism (first identified in architecture (see Jenks 1984) is more
commonly associated with many of the changes that have taken place after the
industrial revolution. A post-industrial (sometimes known as a post-Fordist) economy
is one in which an economic transition has taken place from a manufacturing-based
economy to a service-based economy.
This society is typified by the rise of new information technologies, the globalization of financial markets, the growth of the service and the white-collar worker and the decline of heavy industry (see Bell 1976). Not surprisingly, it is seen that the culture and politics produced by a ‘post-industrial’ society will be markedly different to that which was dominated by the industrial
context of modernism. These changes in post-industrial society have clearly influenced the way that
critical theory now understands and conceives the role which the media currently
plays in society. These changes in post-industrial society have clearly influenced the way that
critical theory now understands and conceives the role which the media currently
plays in society. Theoretical shift in the conception of the media and the audience was then performed by a lot of work information by post-structuralism.While structuralism generally reflect the need to uncover the meaning latent modernist ideology embedded in the text of the media, post-structuralism tends to take a less deterministic view of the nature of the media as a whole. Influenced by the work of theorists like Louis Althusser (1971) and Antonio Gramsci (1971), media analysis gradually began to recognize the ideology that is more complex than first imagined, that the media audience may reject the meaning of ideology and that texts themselves can be ' polysemic ', namely, which consists of some significance.
New Media may seem to offer a world of glossy images and limitless communication, but it
is also important to keep in mind who and what is left out of its postmodern
embrace. Technological utopianism might suggest that New Media will automatically
improve our world for the better, but our future well-being clearly lies in how and
what we do with the choices we now have on offer.
Conclusion
‘Digital theory’ may not yet be discipline in its own right, but its presence will be felt throughout this book and the way that we conceive New Media long into the future.
Kesimpulan :
Tidak ada metode yang mengatur untuk mempelajari New Media. Namun, meskipun ada mungkin tidak benar-benar menjadi sesuatu yang jelas dilihat. jika kita ingin pendekatan teori baru ke media baru mungkin pertama kali yang dilakukan adalah cenderung dianalisis dan di jelaskan secara histori(sejarah). untuk membahas sejarah media lama dan media baru yang sudah dijelaskan diatas.
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