My Experience of ‘New Media’.

In the broad sense I would consider New Media to include all media, because at some point it must’ve been new. However, more recently I would consider New Media to mainly be a term I would associate with the Internet and the new ways in which people can interact through it, and access it in more convenient ways, for example on your mobile or wirelessly thanks to Wi-Fi.

The main two purposes I use the Internet and New Media for are keeping in touch with friends and family and learning. Social networking, such as Facebook and Myspace mean that I am able to keep in touch with old school friends who now live too far away to be able to catch up with face-to-face. However, it is not limited to just far away friends, Facebook particularly means that I am able to share content with friends who live much closer and I see almost daily, by sharing pictures and moods etc. As the majority of people I know use it, I would consider it to be the simplest and most effective way of communicating with these people. Similarly, instant messaging and e-mails I also use to keep in contact with friends and family, simply because they are so quick and easy.

In terms of learning I use a number of blogs to find out about specific topics, for example, ones about new bands, existing bands (new songs, performances etc.) and for seeking what I would consider more “expert” information on a topic I do not know much about. Similarly, I use forums to find out up to date information as they are updated so frequently, regularly and by a large amount of people with a common interest.

Ways in which I prefer not to use New Media are for interacting with people I do not know in real life. Whilst I know this is possible through chat rooms and within forums and social networking, I prefer to distance myself from this. I would say that the main reason for doing so is because when speaking to someone face to face you are able to, to a certain degree, gauge who they are and what they are about, via online mediums it’s much easier to lie, and much harder to detect that you’re being lied to, which I feel has created a sense of distrust when meeting new people online.