Lessig talked about the copyrights law in the age of digital technologies. Despite the law’s intended purpose of protecting the economic sustainability of the creators, the law has been recently applied too broadly, failing to distinguish professional works and amateur byproducts. Consequently, the law discourages amateurs to participate actively in content creations, although copyright law should protect both amateurs and professionals.

As we already passed the era of passive media consumption and entered active participation with co-creation era, the conflict between copyright and digital technology is worsening. Lessig pointed out that the copyright law is completely out of sync with the technology and heavily outdate. It cannot accommodate modern digital environment for creative content productions.  Hence, the author suggested that we should adjust the mind set into hybrid economy, which is based on the culture of participation.

Dramatic Stalking Cat (attracting 1.8 million viewers)

Lohmann’s article shared a similar view. The copyright laws are becoming more of obstacles to prevent creative productions because it imposes myriad regulations and the presence of lawyers and insurance adjuster. Unlike the era before digital technologies and commercially available media software, anyone can demonstrate their creativity and talents with available tools. Nevertheless, the current copyright laws cannot accommodate such creations, except in online. The “culture of participation” will not only dominate the future of content creations, but also facilitate the explosions of creativities because it even allows one with talent, but with a shallow pocket to hang around at the playground. The game is changed.

Marshall elaborated his perspectives on media in the context of the movie industry. Although he did not use the term, “interactivity” from the viewpoint of users’ ability to engage with contents via various communication technologies, I have doubt about the movie industry’s strategy of saturating every media channels with promotions backed by massive promotional budget. It is still based on passive consumption of audience. The industry wants to force-feed audience with the contents, rather than engage with the audience to build interest and fandoms. Besides, viral-marketing based promotions often do not cost enormous amounts of resources because fans do the promotion for their favorable contents. Just like, ‘Blair Witch Project’ was a tremendous financial success, the movie industry seriously need to consider interactive promotion strategies.

As Aufderheife pointed out, social media facilitates user content sharing easier than before. Just as we have shared experiences and contents with close friends in the day of offline, we are now doing nearly identical activities of sharing experiences and contents in online by enforcing the existing relationships with the people whom we maintain relationships. Nevertheless, such an explosion of creative contents and easy sharing certainly intimated media industry, and of course, legal retaliations against social media channels, such as YouTube, are well anticipated because the entire industry is frantically clinging onto the system, which cannot accommodate the explosion of user-generated contents. Nevertheless, passive media consumption is no longer a solution. I want to watch old commercial and funny animal videos when I want and have free time, rather than seating in front of TV. I got a hunch that I am not alone in this.

Andrejevic’s article talked about social network exploitation. Given immensely popular social networks and many anecdotal success stories from using social network as career makers or investor recruiting tools, social media presence is becoming a new norm for current digital age. While communications and information exchanges become more intuitive and human oriented, the boundaries between exploitation of information and sharing of contents is becoming blurry. Even worse, business worlds’ active usages on employees and customers recruitments nearly reached the point to jeopardize individual privacy. On the one hand, employers’ oversight on internal communications was never a new thing. Old wisdom prevail on employment common senses that you would better not send out your resume electronically and spend time on phone interviews at your office during the office hour because THEY can hear you and your priority of receiving pink slip would likely bump up (way up). Hence, it may not be surprising to see companies’ use of the same logic on employees’ social media usage. However, use of social media still relies on individual socialiability within privately operated infrastructure like Facebook. Hence, the separation between digital personal lives and employment should be honored with the only exception of employments that companies generate revenues from social media presence and network reach. On the other hand, such use of collected personal data by the infrastructure offering firms like Facebook cannot be qualified as exploitation because they use the voluntarily provided information that users agreed upon account creations. Although some may argue that many social media companies abuse such voluntarily provided customer information, we still need to acknowledge that any service is associated with cost, and in the case of social media companies, user-created contents are their source of incomes.

Such clashes are also extended into media sphere. Come to think of it, I was also one of content producers, although nobody actually saw my contents. When I was a kid, I used to take supposedly artistic pictures, and scribbled some weird stories. I surely lived mixed cassette tape era with my productions of romantic-mood enhancing song lists. Unlike myself, as Justin Bieber got his break from YouTube videos, social media opened up new paths where ones with talents can make their way into professional realms while established industries started to see that some wannabes are invading their turfs. In this sense, social media is disruptive and innovative.

Thus, as Jenkins elaborated, in the era of social media and higher accessibility of consumer-oriented technologies, consumer-generated contents will not disappear. Although Banks and Humphreys (2008) mentioned clashes between professionals and common users over content creations, I highly doubt that user-creations will entirely take over the realm of professionals because only few actually has talents and passions while common users often have more of passions than talents. Regardless how visible and how many user generated contents appear to dominate media sphere, in the end, only good stuffs will survive.

Marshall elaborated the idea of interactivity as the characteristic of new media. Although the term has been abused, the term often implies  group dynamics, collaboration, and influence toward each other. In the context of new media, interactivity relies on the replication of interpersonal dynamics and provides greater connection to others along with a greater sense of control, consequently greater ownership of ideas.

Anderson pointed out an exceptionally intriguing point. Since conventional media contents are often influenced by editors and/or business interests, so-called professional journalism reflecting public opinion may not be relevant anymore. As we can frequently witness, certain media channels’ contents are heavily influenced by political atmosphere and business agenda. So called, “journalistic truth”, might have been the echoes of shouts by media channels with the loudest voice and deeper pocket.

In the midst of such environment, 1) changing audience dynamics refusing to absorb broadcasted contents passively, and 2) new media and internet technologies offering broader access of information, it may not be a coincident to see the rise of public journalism, such as blogs. As Rosen argued, the premise of passive audience is just obsolete, especially when audiences now consume, produce, and share media contents. People no longer absorb and interpret mass-broadcasted contents. The emergence of user-centric media, such as public journalism, Indymedia, and demand media might have been pre-destined.

Shirky also brought up a very intriguing perspective. Formerly, occupied by TV media, we now are experiencing cognitive surplus. Due to widen availabilities of media access, we voluntarily consume, produce, and share contents based on our choices of media channels. Users may create contents motivated by fame, fortune, fun, and fulfillment (Blank & Reisforf 2012), or they simply want to connect with other likeminded people, enact the self, or express their struggling(Correa & Jeong, 2011). On the other hand, users just want to have fun by sharing their thoughts.

Nevertheless, I still have a doubt that we have already witnessed the full potential of new media. Many people are using it for different purposes, and even different races have dissimilar perspectives and usages of new media (Correa & Jeong, 2011). Still, new media appear to be for young people currently, and some level of technical knowledge was surely a factor to encourage active usage of new media, despite the presence of privacy concerns (Blank & Reisdorf, 2012). The role of technology is one of critical factors to define new media. Our urge to communicate with others was never a new concept. We now can actualize our impulse in a bigger scale because of Internet and new media technology. Even the concept of interactivity is transforming because interactivity embedded user interfaces are facilitating our urge to communicate. We no longer need to sit straight in front of Desktop PC. Couch-potato is no longer exclusively implying a lazy TV addict. Thanks to Tablet and voice-oriented software (Siri and Dragon), any brilliant mind can exert their creativity wherever they want. Still, it is not clear how new media would evolve or even where it would lead us. Nevertheless, I seriously doubt that new media is a fad because, regardless what applications and platforms dominates today, as long as whatever new platforms can mimic the dynamics of our natural communication, the idea of web 2.0 will stand strong!!

Empowered by communication technology in the age of digital contents, the communication media reach has been expanded ever before. The emergence of new communication methods concurrently influence the culture and technology of the network society, creating what the author called, “mass-self-communication”.  Consequently, the birth of “active audience” was inevitable (Castells, 2007).

The intriguing aspect is that the author posits a noncompeting relationship between mass-self communication and conventional media because new media can facilitate content distribution of conventional media and generate additional traffic for the contents. Nevertheless, it is rather a narrow-scoped idea because it assumes user-generated contents are inherently inferior.

Wilson (2011) introduced an intriguing concept, a fragmented heterogeneity. While network society increases information dispersion and user-content creations, we cannot assume that the audience base for certain information expands because each audience only accommodates their highly personalized preferences with customized media channels. Although the size of pie got bigger, media channels may only be able to grasp smaller piece of the pie of audience for their media content consumption. Previously, mass media news was the primary source of information. Whatever contents came out of TV news and reputable newspapers were considered to the truth. However, due to more active and fragmented audience, they no longer accept mass media contents blindly.

While new media can disburse information in a global scope, reach a bigger audience base, and accommodate highly personalized preferences, it may not function as it is speculated, or it is simply, “not there yet”. Loveland and Popescu (2011) investigated the occurrences of political deliberation in the online environment. Although similar political deliberation could occur in the online setting, they found that the deliberation qualities of online interactions were debatable. Given the lack of interactive communication and reciprocal norms of discussion, the authors speculated that anonymity of online communication and immediacy of communication might be in blame for hindering face-to-face like deliberation process. Nevertheless, while I succinctly agree with the authors’ attempt to quantify research question, the study did not account for indirect effect of online forum. As much as people define their political views from deliberation, they can also shape their views progressively via passive evaluation of others’ views. While active participation is not necessarily a critical indicator of deliberation, the whole premise of the study assumes that active, interactive, and reciprocal participations in organized manners are antecedents for optimal deliberations.

On the other hand, Gerodimos (2012) investigated youth civic attitudes and found that young people are still willing to engage with civic websites in an exchange for meaningful engagement. The benefit of civic action should be tangiblized, the purpose of action must be clear and relevant, the action should not exhaust their resources, and the clear-cut directions should be given. Hence, their preferences on interactive communication on website and visual media usages are not coincident.

Communication is no longer one directional. Content creations are no longer the God-given privilege for established media industry (Castells, 2007; Wilson 2011). For example of Egypt’s example, social media functioned as an information source that even oppressed government could not control (Tufekci & Wilson 2012). Interactive element is slowly becoming a norm, and mass-self communication can virtually counterbalance geographical limitations. Abundant contents are created by users and shared contents are no longer limited to certain digital mediums or formats. Anything can be shared in a global scale.

  Johnson et al article investigated online social network sites (SNS), especially YouTube, and civic engagement. The top-down style of political campaigning, which was mass-media oriented, was shifting toward online social networks style campaign where users quickly share information or links, promote political events, and create supplementary contents that would eventually energize public. Social network site not only function as new gathering spaces where users exchange information and disseminate contents, but also serve as a new conduit for energizing political atmosphere (Kaye).

Political conversations likely facilitate an increased desire to participate in political affairs because the interactions with others given political interests help to solidify opinions. Elaborated political conversation contributes to the development of higher-quality opinions due to the refined opinions throughout such conversational processes (Johnson et al). Formerly, such processes occur in interpersonal manners. One shares his or her political opinions with friends, families, and co-workers to refine their political aspects that eventually influence one’s intention to participate civic duty to vote.

However, in the era of social network, such processes can occur in a bigger scale. Political conversations can spread widely, reach more audience, and help to formulate political opinions based on varieties of sources. Besides, social network’s wider ranges of functionalities—email, multimedia sharing, and connectivity management (Kaye)—also play a vital role because SNS can accommodate multifaceted nature of political conversations. It simply facilitates information exchange among users in vastly expanded capacities (Rojas & Puig-i-Abril, 2009).

Surprisingly, Johnson and colleagues’ study showed that reliance on YouTube did not boost intention to vote. Rather, it appears that more use of YouTube negatively influences the intention to vote. The authors speculate that YouTube users’ dynamics are different from other social network sites because content creations are more labor-intensive than other social networks. Nevertheless, social network site reliance appears to be a more powerful predictor of offline political participations, which can strongly influence the intention to vote. Also, some studies found no support for a direct spillover effect between online expressive behavior and offline participatory behavior. However, uses of SNS appear to influence ones’ offline actions (Rojas & Puig-i-Abril, 2009).  Hence, it is premature to generalize social network sites’ weak influence on the intention to vote because SNS likely exerts significant, but indirect influence on the intention to vote.

In addition, mobile phone was mentioned as an emerging medium influencing political participation (Rojas & Puig-i-Abril, 2009). It was not surprising to learn the presence of a positive relationship between mobile phone use for information exchange and political involvement (Campbell & Kwak 2010). Given improving smartphone technologies and its integration with SNS, we will likely witness increasing migration from PC usage to portable mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—because portable devices practically became our third arm!!

Nevertheless, information dissemination by SNS and mobile technologies are not always beneficial because no one can control information flows. Still, in terms of politics, SNS facilitated information flow is  emancipation of the political arena because politics is no longer for movers and shakers. Regular Joes can make a dent now!! Formerly, regular Joes were not allowed to follow up political candidates’ irresponsible promises and actions. Now, they are subject to every action and word, and the advent of SNL may change the job descriptions of politicians.

In recent years, the mode of consumer communication has taken dramatic turns over last decades. Especially, how consumer collect, exchange, and use information has changed significantly (Hennig-Thurau et. all 2010; MacIaran and Catterall, 2002). Among many technological innovations, the Internet completely disrupted the conventional communication medium of marketer, and the digital innovations empowered customers to talk back and talk to each other (Deighton and Kornfeld 2009). Such trend gave the birth of new media—eBay, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia (Hennig-Thurau et. all 2010). In the context of new media, users assumed various roles. Consumers are retailers and customers in eBay, authors in Wikipedia, producers and directors of visual media in YouTube, and communicators in Facebook. They no longer passively receive information. Rather, they became the creator of user-generated contents and the consumer of vast information generated from networks of users. They are the prosumer of new media, who is a produce and consumer of a prosumption (Ritzer et al. 2012). New media allow participants to interact, communicate, share ideas, and build relationships (Chan and Guillet 2011; Chu and Kim 2011; Kaplan and Haenlein 2010).  The Participants often have intimate knowledge of other participants by reviewing their virtual profiles, and they often have a personal knowledge of the other within the network. The bond among members of social media network can be varying by tie strength (Mittal et al 2008; Chu and Kim 2011). Participants access vast information from the others with weak tie, and highly relevant advises from the one with strong ties function as influential advices (Vital and Ellison, 2012).

Nevertheless, the plethora of new media research and attention is somewhat confounding. Despite rising interests of social media from business world and prospective forecasting of social media’s financial benefits (Hof 2011), such optimism can be anything but speculation, given the unclear nature of social media, especially in terms of return on investment that is irrelevant to the conventional measure (Fisher 2009) and the absence of theoretical consensus in new media research.

This study aims to provide an insight of current new media research. Using content analysis of prior to 2012 literature in academic fields, the analyses in the current study will be classified into 1) the focus of study, which refers to identifying whether new media is a primary theme of the publication, 2) research method analysis, which refers to analyzing whether empirical or conceptual approach was applied, 3) academic discipline, and 4) new media usability, which refers to analyzing the extent of new media usage.

References

Deighton, J., & kornfeld, L. 2009. Interactivity’s unanticipated consequences for marketers and marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23(1): 4-10.

Chan, N. L., & Guillet, B. D. 2011. Investigation of social media marketing: how does the hotel industry in Hong Kong perform in marketing on social media websites? Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 28: 345-368.

Chu, S.-C., & Kim, Y. 2011. Determinants of consumer engagement in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in social networking sites. International Journal of Advertising, 30(1): 47-75.

Fisher, T. 2009. ROI in social media: a look at the arguments. Database Marketing and Customer Strategy Management, 16(3): 189-195.

Hof, R. 2011. Online Ad Spend to Overtake TV by 2016, Forbes.                                                       [http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/08/26/online-ad-spend-to-overtake-tv/]

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53(1): 59-68.

Ritzer, G., Dean, P., & Jurgenson, N. 2012. The coming age of the prosumer. The American Behavioral Scientist, 56, 379-398.

Hennig-Thurau, T., Malthouse, E. C., Friege, C., Gensler, S., Lobschat, L., Rangaswamy, A., & Skiera, B. 2010. The impact of new media on customer relationships. Journal of Service Research, 13(3): 311-330.

Maclaran, P., & Catterall, M. 2002. Researching the social web: marketing information from virtual communities. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 20(6): 19-326.

Mittal, V., Huppertz, J. W., & Khare, A. 2008. Customer complaining: the role of tie strength and information control. Journal of Retailing, 84(2): 195-204.

Vital, J., & Ellison, N.B. 2012. There’s a network out there you might as well tap: exploring the benefits of and barriers to exchanging informational and support-based resources on Facebook. New Media & Society, 0(0), 1-17.

 Ellison and colleagues pointed out particularly intriguing remarks. Users often connect with people whom they already knew or met using SNS regardless tie strength. Despite its abilities to connect with strangers, people use SNS as an additional communication tool to reinforce existing relationships. It can maintain weak tie that otherwise perish over time and even convert such weak tie to stronger one. Internet and SNS technologies supplement users to accumulate social capital by 1) removing physical and temporal barriers, 2) expanding one’s reach, 3) restricting information flow with access control, 4) managing dependencies, 5) maintaining a history of interactions, and 6) reifying roles or creating a group identity through naming. Vitak and Ellison (2012) also share such similar remark. They suggested that participants of social media, such as Facebook, use the ability to connect with others to maintain and reinforce currently existing relationships rather than acquainting with complete strangers. In that sense, social media are an extension of human communication and network building using a series of applicable technologies.

The advantages of tapping into a diverse network with various individuals were also noted (Vital and Ellison, 2012). Despite weak ties, participants still access vast information even with the inherent risk of privacy compromise and possible contact collapse. Although one may voluntarily refuse to share information and interact with others, the benefits of acquiring vast information from weak ties and highly relevant advises from strong ties are hard to refuse and the potential advantages will likely grow exponentially as technologies advance.

Burke and colleagues (2011) also suggest that SNS have strong potential to influence users’ social capital and the psychological wellbeing. Among three types of social activities—1) directed communications, 2) passive consumption of contents, and 3) broadcasting—only directed interpersonal exchanges were appear to be associated with increases in bridging social capital. Nevertheless, we need to note that broadcasting of messages can be also effective on bridging social capital in a cost effective manner. Given the media multiplexity, it may be effective enough to reinforce message contents in an additional channel.

Unlike traditional computer-mediated communication platforms, social network sites foster many kinds of relationships in varying degrees. Even from passive consumptions of contents, social capital can be gained, and messages can be delivered and reinforced. Since features lowering the barrier for conversation initiation will have positive effects on social capital, various interactions feature of social media can generate positive social capital. Even considering varying degree of interactions intensity, users can be prompted to engage interactions with the display of contents. Also, highly time-sensitive nature of social media content can stimulate communication by connecting prior contents to concurrent communication. Therefore, the potential implications of social media call for more attention. Although SNS can be a flavor for the current decade, it will surely alter our lives, just like the advent of radio, TV, or VHS tape did.

 The article by Ritzer et al (2012) introduced the concept of prosumption, involving a combination of product and consumption, and prosumer, one who is both producer and consumer. Although the concept was practically evolved along with human history, it is receiving new attention from academia and business communities, especially in the age of Internet and social media. As the authors elaborated, value of any brand is no longer solely constructed by company newsletter and press releases. Brand enthusiasts voluntarily become brand ambassadors and talk about their beloved brands. Especially, I might be focused on narrow scope, but a grandeur shift toward experience economy powered by technologies is certainly fueling the role of prosumers. Material specifications of product are no longer the single source of consumer satisfaction. Rather, the source of their satisfaction is their experiences with products of services.

In that sense, the significance of peer products and services reviews cannot be emphasized enough because every piece of information is not functions as part of brand super-structure. Also, as Chia (2012) suggested, bloggers’ motivation to become prosumers is shifting from the expectation of financial gains to the acquisition of street creed. Hence, it may not be an accident that consumers are increasingly relied upon peer reviews of products rather than so-called expert reviews or corporate sponsored ads (Willemsen et al. 2011). My reasoning is that expert reviews are often technical specifications and features oriented rather than usability and experience. Hence, I can posit that peer-reviews supposedly offer the sense of down-to-earth feel, suggesting to viewers that some regular Joes like them wrote this review.

Besides, peer productions are not just about their passionate conversations of certain brands or playing a role of brand ambassadors. Prosumers stake their reputation and trust relationship and play a significant role of formulating norms and expectations of their virtual community (Kozinet et al. 2010). Nevertheless, we cannot shake the feeling that the system is rigged. Any bloggers could have written only positive message about certain products and brands in an exchange of any monetary compensation. As Jensen (2011) described, the issue of blogola, paid blog, can be serious ethical challenges in the era of social network. In my opinion, self-regulations and ethical guidelines of corporate sponsorship must be adopted as blogsphere norms.

In fact, we may be given more power than ever before. We can voice ourselves loud and clear, and we may be surprised to find a lot more people do share similar minds. We already surpassed the point where we are happy about a material product alone. Now, prosumers are one of the most significant pieces of the puzzle for successful business because we are part of companies’ ultimate business goal, successful branding.

Not so long ago, mobile phone was a strictly luxury or business item. However, not long after, the portable nature of mobile phone practically freed us from wall-mounted phone and it quickly became a necessity.

Given rapidly growing mobile device user basis, the idea of mobile marketing was born. Delivering advertisement to the device that people practically sleep with was a radical idea. Nevertheless, a massive user base has not been transformed into potentially profitable market segment because frequently exercised push-base strategy is nearly analogous to spam for consumers. The optimum balance between companies’ right to advertise and consumers’ right to privacy is a delicate thing to gain for any successful mobile advertising, and such balance has not achieved yet, according to Wilken and Sinclair (2009).

Nevertheless, we at least need to note that the introduction of smartphone is surely expanding the role of mobile devices. Mobile phone functions as a coordination device for personal and professional lives. It is a management tool for personal and emotional lives by playing a storage space for visual contents and highly personal information. In addition, it offers a bridge between oneself and the modern world where countless apps and conversations are virtually introduced. Lastly, it is a symbol of personalization. Users customize various aspects of their device setting, and as time goes by, the device is often full of the byproducts of our interests, preferences, and entertainments. Given such expanding role of mobile devices, the article by Kolsaker and Drakatos (2009) suggested mobile devices’ implication on advertisements.

In fact, the study supported that mobile users valued the ability to stay in touch with family and friends and the way that mobile devices users organize and function in their daily life. However, their responses toward mobile advertisement were relatively warmer at the best because users may perceive incoming mobile advertisement as invasions of their personal space. The article also suggested that push strategies of mobile advertising less likely succeeds over the long term even with the option of permission-based current practices. We can imply the significance of relevant content and more effective, but undisruptive way to deliver focused, catchy, pointed, and consumer-centric messages.

In addition, the idea of using social media for advertisement is emerging because of its nature of peer generated contents and its potential ability to deliver highly relevant information to individual users. The article by Taylor et al (2011) suggested that in social media setting, entertainment or information and social value oriented contents will likely generate consumers’ positive attitude toward the advertisements.

The article by Paek et al (2011) discussed the persuasive impact of peer or expert contents, which are core contents of social media. The article suggested that the productions by perceivably similar peers were more effective in the attitude enhancement and the effect of a perceivably similar peer production was appear to be more pronounced under low-involvement condition. Such findings have significant implication in terms of social media advertisement. While advertisement is inherently associated with low-involvement, recipients of the social media advertisement will likely be more susceptible to the ad because it is often recommended by other users who are similar with them.

The article by Muntinga et al (2011) also suggested the impact of social media in terms of brand management. Varying by degree of participations, consumers are actively engaging in conversation about products, services, and brands in social media setting. One may easily disregard the value of consumer conversations in social media venues, but we must not forget that brand image, which is the most valuable and intangible asset that any firm can wishfully want to own, is built upon consumers’ perceived images and knowledge. While brand image used to be built upon mass advertisement and conversations with family and peers, given the trend of rising consumer use of social media and the amount of conversations exchanges within the venues, the social media is determined to play a vital role for the formulation of successful brand image.