New Media Literacies

Play: is the capacity to interact and experiment with new surroundings to create familiarity. learning the best way you can use new technologies requires ‘play’.

Collective Intelligence: is the pooling and collaboration of information from multiple individuals and sources to collectively improve the cognitive capacities of participants. wikipedia is an example of this. 

Multi-tasking: the ability to interact with multiple stimuli in your digital environment based on the perceived importance of those stimuli.

Judgment: the ability to recognize what is good and what is bad, in terms of quality, ethics, and morality in the content you see.

A Brief Review of the Pavlik article “Trends in New Media Research…”

In this article, aforementioned scholar John Pavlik discusses the effects of technology in revolutionizing media. In particular, Pavlik is focused on how the journalism world has been  affected by social media. The news is now an interactive experience, rather than a one-way experience. Users can shape and participate in their content instead of having it delivered to them. Social media has made word travel faster than traditional news media, something visible in the so-called Arab Spring, which is a social revolution occurring in Muslim nations. That revolution is almost wholly facilitated by social media, a method of communication that allows citizens to communicate in a way more difficult for the government to modify. Social media also has the potential to modify the content that journalists deliver. This is a tremendous change from old media, because what journalists covered in the news was what determined the information in public discourse. As social media becomes more prevalent, we may see an even greater paradigm shift in how news content is disseminated…and that’s fascinating. I hope that we can see different social media platforms promote responsible usership and actual contributions to society instead of the wasteful drivel that currently tends to fill that particular corner of cyberspace.

If participating in news content interests you, visit CNN’s iReport and start participating.

The Impact of Communication Technology on Healthcare

In the healthcare field, advancements in technology have done much to improve the quality of care, and as a result, the average quality of life of the global population. In the past, many advancements have typically been treatment and prevention oriented. In our digital age, the rate of expansion for communication technology is incredible. We have email, text messaging, video-chats, electronic patient records, and interactive medical care platforms. Many of these technologies have not been really taken advantage of in the medical field. New communication technology offers great potential for increased efficiency and accessibility in care. There are concerns among professionals that the benefits of technology are accompanied by harmful downsides. The issue of patient privacy is an especially serious question that must be addressed. It must be determined how present technology can be improved to become the new standard for medical care. Because concerns remain unaddressed, the healthcare field has been slower than most in adopting improved communication technology.

To read more, see the full paper here.

For a brief article about technology in the medical world, see here.

A Visual Comparison of Paper Records and Electronic Records

The Evolution of Social Media (one or two scattered thoughts)

As someone who chooses not to partake in social media (except to meet the odd class requirement or two, thank you very much Liberal Arts education), I tend not to follow developments in said media unless they make the headlines.

The only platforms I know are Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Myspace (if that still counts). I suppose by some definition blogs are a form of social media, but they aren’t quite a mass function in which the general population chooses to engage.

In discussions with my peers, I’ve observed a few things. The lifespan of social media platforms seems to be pretty short. Social media is a relatively new thing, and yet we’ve already seen a few things wax and wane in popularity (myspace, I’m looking at you!). These days, social media seems to get integrated with EVERYTHING, whether on the web or not. Augmented reality even offers the potential to integrate social media more completely with your natural body functions…because that’s just so necessary. All of this really just feels a desperate push by social media platforms to stay relevant. After all, relevance is what keeps the big bucks rolling in.

Oh yeah, I forgot Google+…that flared out quicker than a hollywood child star’s adult “comeback“.

Thoughts? Where do you see social media in 5 years? 10?

I see it being nowhere. See, if social media becomes a part of everything in this world, what do we really even have? Eventually people will realize that life is better when it’s simpler.

But what do I know…

Twitter In North Korea

I recently tweeted about the use of twitter in North Korea. North Korea, like many communist (and other) countries, is notoriously restrictive of social media use. Let’s just be honest…they’re notoriously restrictive in general. And of course, I’m sure the starving residents of that particular dictator-dominated country care far more about finding something to eat than tweeting about their day. That said, even if the average citizen could afford a computer, they’d risk the gulag by using it in a way that inflames Kim Jong-Un’s lovely dictatorial sensibilities. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, my butt. What a joke that is! In a democracy, we’re free to do all sorts of fun things like instagram pictures of our food, and tweet profanity-laden (and barely legible) rants. 

 

Luckily for those people inside the borders of NK that AREN’T citizens, social media does exist.

Of course, there’s the issue of even getting inside North Korea at all (and who would want to?), but that’s not really particularly relevant here.

Jean Lee, AP Bureau Chief of Korea, is granted regular access into North Korea and has taken to tweeting and instagram-ing from inside its borders.

CNN even wrote an article about it.

If you find that sort of thing interesting, it’s worth a read (I promise.)

Ms. Lee was a presenter at SXSW ’13, and while no video is yet available, you can view some information here.

John V. Pavlik

John Pavlik is the chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University. He studies and publishes on new media, journalism, and healthcare communication.

He has written four books, focusing on the impact of technology on journalism and communication. They are: Media in the Digital Age, Converging Media, Journalism and New Media, New Media Technology: Cultural and Communication Perspectives.

He is an accomplished author of dozens of scholarly articles, and has also written computer software.

Pavlik is the originator of the “Three Stages of Online News Content” concept:

• Stage 1: Posting repurposed content taken directly from printed or over-air media. This is currently the most dominating format used.
• Stage 2: Posting repurposed information augmented with original content.
• Stage 3: Enhancing the cyberspace community while establishing a willingness to experiment with new forms of storytelling.

Here, view him talk about his book Media in the Digital Age

Augmented Reality (AR)-SixthSense

Augmented reality is the integration of the digital world, usually graphics and interactive media, into the physical world. This technology is very new, and almost seems like a product of science fiction. It is, however, very real. Many people are familiar at this point with the concept of Google Glasses, but there are other, less known AR projects as well.

The MIT Media Lab has created a product they term ‘SixthSense’. “It is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information (Pranav Mistry, MIT Media Lab)”. 

The essence of the SixthSense project is this: humans have evolved to have five senses, which we use to observe and interact with the world around us. SixthSense enables us to add another dimension to our interactions with the world, bringing digital information to our most basic sensory level. 

This device consists of a pocket projector, a mirror, and a camera in a wearable device that couples with your smartphone or other mobile computing device. 

There is a danger of over-saturation with such technology. As we are able to move more and more digital content from that realm and integrate it with our lives, we begin to interact more with computers and less with people. Augmented reality could have interesting applications for those with disabilities. It is also useful for those in the law-enforcement and military spheres. Right now, it seems to me that this technology solves a problem that really does not exist.

If you want to know more about this device, you can visit the MIT Media Lab Site.

You can also view the creator delivering a TedTalk about his device.