Multimedia studies

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Multimedia studies is an interdisciplinary field of academic discourse focused on the understanding of technologies and cultural dimensions of linking traditional media sources with ones based on new media to support social systems.

Contents

History

Multimedia studies as a discipline came out of the need for media studies to be made relevant to the new world of CD-ROMs and hypertext in the 1990s. Revolutionary books like Jakob Nielsen's Hypertext and Hypermedia lay the foundations for understanding multimedia alongside traditional cognitive science and interface design issues. [1] Software like Authorware Attain, now owned by Adobe, made the design of multimedia systems accessible to those unskilled in programming and became major applications by the end of the 1990s [2]

Recent challenges

The Internet age that has been growing since the launch of Windows 98 has brought new challenges for the discipline including developing new models and rules for the World Wide Web. Areas such as usability have had to develop specific guidelines for website design [3] and traditional concepts like genre, narrative theory, and stereotypes have had to be updated to take account of cyberculture. [4] [5] Cultural aspects of multimedia studies have been conceptualised by authors such as Lev Manovich, [6] [7] Arturo Escobar and Fred Forest. [8]

The increase in Internet trolling and so-called Internet addiction has thrown up new problems. Concepts like emotional design [9] and affective computing [10] are driving multimedia studies research to consider ways of becoming more seductive and able to take account of the needs of users.

Media studies 2.0

Some academics, such as David Gauntlett, have preferred the neologism, "Media Studies 2.0" to multimedia studies, in order to give it the feel of other fields like Web 2.0 and Classroom 2.0. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] The media studies 2.0 neologism has received strong criticism. Andy Medhurst at Sussex University for instance wrote of the media studies 2.0 neologism introduced by David Gauntlett, "Isn't it odd that whenever someone purportedly identifies a new paradigm, they see themselves as already a leading practitioner of it?"

Issues and concepts

  1. Media ecology and information ecology
  2. Cybercultures and new media
  3. Online communities and virtual communities
  4. Internet trolling and Internet addiction
  5. Captology

Universities offering degrees in multimedia studies

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypertext</span> Text with references (links) to other text that the reader can immediately access

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web, where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.

Hypermedia, an extension of hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks. This designation contrasts with the broader term multimedia, which may include non-interactive linear presentations as well as hypermedia. The term was first used in a 1965 article written by Ted Nelson. Hypermedia is a type of multimedia that features interactive elements, such as hypertext, buttons, or interactive images and videos, allowing users to navigate and engage with content in a non-linear manner.

New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic art</span> Art that uses or refers to electronic media

Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media. More broadly, it refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electronic music. It is considered an outgrowth of conceptual art and systems art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet culture</span> Culture that has emerged from the use of computer networks

Internet culture is a quasi-underground culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet who primarily communicate with one another online as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and information communication technology, specifically the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lev Manovich</span>

Lev Manovich is an artist, an author and a theorist of digital culture. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Manovich played a key role in creating four new research fields: new media studies (1991-), software studies (2001-), cultural analytics (2007-) and AI aesthetics (2018-). Manovich's current research focuses on generative media, AI culture, digital art, and media theory.

George Paul Landow was Professor of English and Art History Emeritus at Brown University. He was a leading authority on Victorian literature, art, and culture, as well as a pioneer in criticism and theory of Electronic literature, hypertext and hypermedia. He also pioneered the use of hypertext and the web in higher education.

Intermedia was the third notable hypertext project to emerge from Brown University, after HES (1967) and FRESS (1969). Intermedia was started in 1985 by Norman Meyrowitz, who had been associated with sooner hypertext research at Brown. The Intermedia project coincided with the establishment of the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS). Some of the materials that came from Intermedia, authored by Meyrowitz, Nancy Garrett, and Karen Catlin were used in the development of HTML.

<i>Computer Lib/Dream Machines</i> 1974 book by Ted Nelson

Computer Lib/Dream Machines is a 1974 book by Ted Nelson, printed as a two-front-cover paperback to indicate its "intertwingled" nature. Originally self-published by Nelson, it was republished with a foreword by Stewart Brand in 1987 by Microsoft Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interactive design</span>

Interactive design is a user-oriented field of study that focuses on meaningful communication using media to create products through cyclical and collaborative processes between people and technology. Successful interactive designs have simple, clearly defined goals, a strong purpose and intuitive screen interface.

The term metamedia, coined by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, refers to new relationships between form and content in the development of new technologies and new media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Hall</span> British computer scientist (born 1952)

Dame Wendy Hall is a British computer scientist. She is Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

Software studies is an emerging interdisciplinary research field, which studies software systems and their social and cultural effects. The implementation and use of software has been studied in recent fields such as cyberculture, Internet studies, new media studies, and digital culture, yet prior to software studies, software was rarely ever addressed as a distinct object of study. To study software as an artifact, software studies draws upon methods and theory from the digital humanities and from computational perspectives on software. Methodologically, software studies usually differs from the approaches of computer science and software engineering, which concern themselves primarily with software in information theory and in practical application; however, these fields all share an emphasis on computer literacy, particularly in the areas of programming and source code. This emphasis on analysing software sources and processes often distinguishes software studies from new media studies, which is usually restricted to discussions of interfaces and observable effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of hypertext</span>

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Early conceptions of hypertext defined it as text that could be connected by a linking system to a range of other documents that were stored outside that text. In 1934 Belgian bibliographer, Paul Otlet, developed a blueprint for links that telescoped out from hypertext electrically to allow readers to access documents, books, photographs, and so on, stored anywhere in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New media art</span> Artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies

New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D printing, immersive installation and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts such as architecture, painting or sculpture.

New media studies is an academic discipline that explores the intersections of computing, science, the humanities, and the visual and performing arts. Janet Murray, a prominent researcher in the discipline, describes this intersection as "a single new medium of representation, the digital medium, formed by the braided interplay of technical invention and cultural expression at the end of the 20th century". The main factor in defining new media is the role the Internet plays; new media is effortlessly spread instantly. The category of new media is occupied by devices connected to the Internet, an example being a smartphone or tablet. Television and cinemas are commonly thought of as new media but are ruled out since the invention was before the time of the internet.

Creative computing covers the interdisciplinary area at the cross-over of the creative arts and computing. Issues of creativity include knowledge discovery, for example.

Richard Holeton is an American writer and higher-education administrator. His creative works are foundational in the hypertext and electronic literature genres. As a writer, his most notable work is the hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, which has been recognized as an important early work of electronic literature and is included in the hypertext canon.

Norman K. Meyrowitz is a computer scientist and software executive who has led the design and development of multiple hypertext and multimedia software systems. He is an adjunct professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Brown University.

References

  1. ↑ Nielsen, J. (1990). Hypertext and Hypermedia. Saunders College Publishing/Harcourt Brace. ISBN   0125184107
  2. ↑ Schifman, R.S. (1999). The Ultimate Authorware Tutorial. Springer-Verlag. ISBN   3540641238
  3. ↑ Nielsen, J. & Tahir, M. (2001). Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed. ISBN   073571102X
  4. ↑ Herring, S.C., Scheidt, L.A. ; Bonus, S. ; Wright, E. (2004). Bridging the gap: a genre analysis of Weblogs. In: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2004.
  5. ↑ Robinson, K.M. (2001). Unsolicited Narratives from the Internet: A Rich Source of Qualitative Data. Qual Health Res 11 (5), 706-714
  6. ↑ Manovich, Lev (2003). "New Media from Borges to HTML" (PDF). In Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort (ed.). The New Media Reader. MIT Press. pp. 13–25. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 December 2006. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  7. ↑ Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of a New Media. MIT Press. ISBN   978-0-262-63255-3.
  8. ↑ Forest, Fred. "Pour un art actuel, l'art à l'heure d'Internet".
  9. ↑ Norman, D.A. (2005). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books.
  10. ↑ Picard, R. (2000). Affective Computing. MIT Press. ISBN   0262661152
  11. ↑ British Film Institute, Media Studies Conference 2007 Archived 2007-11-07 at the Wayback Machine , 4–6 July 2007
  12. ↑ Transforming Audiences International Conference, 6–7 September 2007
  13. ↑ Andy Ruddock (2008), 'Media Studies 2.0? Binge Drinking and Why Audiences Still Matter', Sociology Compass, Volume 2 Issue 1 Page 1-15, January 2008.
  14. ↑ 'Towards a Brave New World? The Media Studies 2.0 Debate' Archived 2011-10-03 at the Wayback Machine , presentation by Geoff Lealand, University of Waikato, at AMES conference, May 2007
  15. ↑ Blog/forum about Media Studies 2.0 by William Merrin
  16. ↑ Bachelor or Arts in Multimedia Studies
  17. ↑ "Bachelor's Degrees in the Top Multimedia Arts School | CIIT Philippines".
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