OLD vs. NEW

To distinguish between old and new media we can look at the properties of the media to see if it has one or all of the following characteristics, communication, collaboration, community, creativity and convergence. When we look at new media we hear about social networking sites like blogs, wikis, facebook and twitter. These forms of new media include one or more of the properties of new media. They all can fall under communication, collaboration community and creativity.

Another way to distinguish between old and new media is that new media is sometimes considered bi-directional communication. When someone writes their opinion about a topic and posts it on a blog they can get feedback from others. The responses are called comments and it allows to communicate their though and ideas easily, form communities and to be creative.

Yet another way to distinguish between old and new media is to compare the old and new forms of media. Usually the new forms of media are digital in nature and in many instances connected to the Internet. Some examples would be getting television shows from the Internet, reading a book or magazine using Kindle or getting news from blogs.

Therefore you can distinguish between old and new media by looking a the properties of the media, determining if it allows for two communications or comparing it to old media to see if it’s digital in nature.