COMS 203 - New Media by Hanna Taing

Week 1 - Intro to New Media

hanna_taing — 2025-07-05 05:45:52 UTC

One key difference to current new media and the media preceding it is how it has changed the definition of new media. In the past, new media was defined by three categories: computing, communications and content. However, current new media combines these characteristics creating a new category, convergence (Flew & Smith, 2021). An example of this is smartphones which combine all three of the categories, it can handle complex computations, be used to communicate to others and provide content. In comparison to its predecessor the home phone which was solely used as a communication device. As time goes by, I notice more people around me are getting rid of their home phones because their smartphones can do the same and more.

Interactivity is another key difference between current new media and the media before it. Media before used to be limited by one way interactions where it would be one-to-one conversations or simply a one-way message to a large audience. New media now is more interactive as people can easily communicate with multiple people at once and create content for others to see (Flew & Smith, 2021). An example in my life is the switch from using cable television to Youtube as a source of entertainment. With cable its sole purpose is to provide content, it does not allow people to interact with it outside of switching channels. In comparison to Youtube which allows people to create content and communicate to others through comments. I like being able to interact with the platform and be able to see what other people enjoy through Youtube's many features like comments, the likes/dislikes, trending videos, and most replayed areas. All of these features allow me to easily find content that I will enjoy. Youtube also creates a space for people to easily share their own content, without needing it to look professional. I enjoy watching content that feels less polished because it creates a sense of authenticity and rawness that traditional media cannot do. This creates a community where people can easily interact and make content, which older media could not do.

Citations

Flew, T., & Smith, R. (2021). New Media: An Introduction (4th Canadian ed.). Oxford University Press.

Week 2 - No Free Lunch

hanna_taing — 2025-07-12 05:54:10 UTC

The idea of immaterial labour isn't a new concept with advertisements and commercials being a common practice to gain consumer interest. Whether it is an advertisement in a newspaper, commercials breaks in radios, or whole TV channels used to advertise and sell products, all of these are a way to capture consumer interest. In the textbook it highlights the immaterial labour of users through various search engines like Yahoo! and Google. Using clicks and common searches to catalogue information in a way to make it more user-friendly. Mentioning the issue of free labour and how consumers are able to indirectly benefit these companies (Flew & Smith, 2021). Something that I noticed is how this issue has become even bigger with social media and the rise of influencers. An example of this is the issue with TikTok and how influencers begin to advertise products without having to explicitly mention that it is an ad. I notice this is a big issue in the makeup and skincare atmosphere, since the basis of these videos are influencers showing off products that they like to use. This becomes an issue when they show different routines and make it seem like these are products that they use everyday, when in reality the description of the video says it is a sponsorship. By putting the disclaimer in a spot where most users don't look at, it fools consumers into believing that these are unbiased reviews. I often notice that the products influencers advertise are often gimmicky and are poor in quality. However, because influencers hype up the product it makes consumers want to buy it and share it with friends. Creating traction for these companies and often causing these items to sell out because they seem trendy. Using trends to advertise overconsumption with users as new products come out and become must-have items. Leading to lots of controversy where viewers feel lied to and betrayed by influencers not explicitly stating sponsorships.

Citations

Flew, T., & Smith, R. (2021). New Media: An Introduction (4th Canadian ed.). Oxford University Press.

Week 3 - Online Communities

hanna_taing — 2025-07-19 05:42:13 UTC

The internet helped to create new spaces for people to interact in, creating virtual communities where people can connect. In the textbook it mentions two differing views from Rheingold and Turkle about virtual communities. Rheingold believed that virtual communities allowed people to connect and build new relationships with others without barriers. By creating groups where people can easily share knowledge. He highlights how through these connections it can give ordinary people more power politically (Flew & Smith, 2021). Even though he determined this a very long time ago, I find it interesting how this idea is still very relevant in the current internet age. Where it has become increasingly easier for people to connect with others online and create communities of shared interest. This becomes more apparent with political movements like Black Lives Matter where people were able to easily create communities to organize events like protests. I think this is even more interesting considering that these protests were happening during the pandemic where everybody was physically isolated. Meaning people could only really connect with each other online. The internet allowed people to connect and raise awareness to the systemic racism that was happening in America. Even people who didn't live in America were able to help with the movement through fundraising, boycotting, and spreading the message. I think this highlights Rheingold's message about how the internet can connect people and as a result make them more powerful.

Turkle believed it created a space where people can choose who they wanted to be, making separate identities from how they were in real life. Creating a safe space where people could comfortably express themselves online, since people were anonymous and no one would know who they were (Flew & Smith, 2021). However, I believe the anonymity of online can be a bad thing, since it creates a space where people can be hateful and spread negative opinions without consequence. Letting people separate their online presence from real life. Justifying their actions behind the screen because people won't know who they are. This creates online communities where people spread hate to others. The anonymity of the internet can lead people to make even more drastic decisions like sending death threats or threatening to dox others over small disagreements. Breeding a space of toxicity where these hate-trains often negatively impact the victims, and can lead to devastating results. While the anonymity of the internet can create a safe space for others to express themselves, it can also foster toxic behaviour and allow people to be hateful.

Citations

Flew, T., & Smith, R. (2021). New Media: An Introduction (4th Canadian ed.). Oxford University Press.

Week 4 - Art Online

hanna_taing — 2025-07-26 05:44:16 UTC

Social media has changed the way people live their lives. It has helped to make sharing peoples interest and various topics easier. However, it has also created limits in what people post and the type of content people make. Bishop uses artists as an example of these limitations, where people create art that is optimized for the platform in order to gain more exposure. Whether it is changing the type of art they make to be more simplistic to catch people attention, changing forms completely by leaning into videography or creating more influencer inspired content to gain the viewers attention. All of these are examples of the lengths artists go through to fit into the platform and share their art (Bishop, 2022). I have noticed this change in the music industry as well as more artists utilize TikTok to advertise their music, the type of music people make has changed as well. I noticed this specifically in the K-pop industry where it is a very fast paced and competitive environment. Artists release music very quickly and often directly compete with other creators, to try and gain listeners. I have seen more artists leaning to TikTok to spread their music by creating dance challenges for their songs and collaborating with other artists' challenges to gain more exposure. It is also a very number reliant industry where fans of these artist stream their music to gain more views or listens on the platform the album is on. All of these factors creates limitations to the artists and has changed the way music is created. I notice with the use of TikTok as a way to advertise the artists music, songs have become shorter, where it is normal to see songs that are 2 minutes long when in the past it used to be very common to see songs over 3 minutes long. This change is to fit the attention span of listeners as more people begin to have shorter attention spans from the rise of short form content and how TikTok as a platform works. Having shorter songs also makes it easier for fans to stream their music as it makes the process quicker and therefore the music will gain more views/listeners on platform like Youtube and Spotify. There is also an emphasis on making more trendy music, for example there was an era where afro-beats was a very popular genre in the industry and many artists' began making songs in the afro-beats genre. Overall social media has made sharing art easier but has also created limitations for artists as they try to gain more exposure to share their art.

Citations

Bishop, S. (2022, June 9). Influencer creep. Real Life. https://reallifemag.com/influencer-creep/

Week 5 - The Issues of AI

hanna_taing — 2025-08-02 05:30:29 UTC

Artificial intelligence is built off of training data, this data can be auditory, visual, or textual. Often the developers of AI use lots of data for it training data, this can be seen in models like the Large Language Model, which uses a vast amount of text to allow AI to produce responses to questions. However, since it uses such a large amount of data a lot of it isn't checked over for misinformation, this creates flawed training data. Flawed training data can have bias or misinformation, this creates issues for the results AI produces (Hao, 2022). Since, the people that use AI view it as a reliable source for information, this can cause misinformation to spread. Another issue with flawed training data is that it can create biases in the results that the AI produces. This can create many issues since AI is viewed as neutral, having bias can drastically affect the results it produces. These issues can be seen in the film Coded Bias, where police officers use AI as a way to detect criminals in public. This tactic created many issues where the results would misidentify people, leading to many innocent civilians being falsely accused for serious crimes. This is because the training data that is used for visual AI mostly uses images of white men to train it, the lack of diversity in the photos creates bias in the results. This issue arises in the people who compile this training data, because people naturally have bias even when it is unintentional (Kentayya, 2021). Even though both the film and article were created a few years ago this issue is still very prevalent today. As more people begin to adopt AI and use it as a easy source for information. However, as AI has become more complex not only can it spew misinformation but people that use it can intentionally create disinformation and malinformation. An example is when people use Deepfakes to put a persons face onto another persons body, to make it seem like they are in a compromising situation. This is called revenge porn where peoples faces are put on to sex workers, often times this happens to women. These videos are created to intentionally harm women and humiliate them. Not only does it create issues for these women but those that try to combat these issues end up being blamed rather than the people that create it. Creating a conversation where rather than helping victims, the people that report on these topics end up silencing them instead. This plays into the larger issue of violence against women because now instead of it only being physical interactions, AI has allowed people to harass women online and make it easier to inflict psychological harm instead. And since people can be anonymous online it makes it even harder to properly hold them accountable. Overall, even though AI can be a useful tool to make things easier, when unregulated it can create a lot of issues and perpetuate discriminatory behaviour.

Citations

Kantayya, S., Hoffman, S., Aceveda, S., Gilwit, A., Ludescher, Z., Mikhaĭlova, K., & 7th Empire Media, production company. (2021). Coded bias [Video recording]. 7th Empire Media.

Hao, K. (2022, January 10). We read the paper that forced

Timnit Gebru out of google. here’s what it says. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/