New Media: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive introduction to the culture, history, technologies and theories of new media. Written especially for students, the book considers the ways in which 'new media' really are new, assesses the claims that a media and technological revolution has taken place and formulates new ways for media studies to respond to new technologies. The authors introduce a wide variety of topics including: how to define the characteristics of new media; social and political uses of new media and new communications; new media technologies, politics and globalization; everyday life and new media; theories of interactivity, simulation, the new media economy; cybernetics, cyberculture, the history of automata and artificial life. Substantially updated from the first edition to cover recent theoretical developments, approaches and significant technological developments, this is the best and by far the most comprehensive textbook available on this exciting and expanding subject. At www.newmediaintro.com you will find: additional international case studies with online references specially created You Tube videos on machines and digital photography a new 'Virtual Camera' case study, with links to short film examples useful links to related websites, resources and research sites further online reading links to specific arguments or discussion topics in the book links to key scholars in the field of new media.

Since Diana's car crash in August 1997, media interest in the crash as an event needing explanation has proliferated. A glut of documentaries on television have investigated the social and scientific history of our responses to the car crash, as well as showing the personal impact of the crash on individual lives. In trying to+J16 give meaning to one celebrity crash, the more general significance of the car crash, its challenge to rational control or explanation, its disregard for the subject and its will, became the focus for attention. Coincidentally, the two most newsworthy films of 1997 were David Cronenberg's Crash and James Cameron's Titanic, both of which generated intense popular interest. The principal purpose of this collection of essays is to subject texts, within which crashes figure, to well-defined cultural study. The themes that emerge from this collection, which is truly experimental in attempting to draw together the resources for a cultural study of events, are many and varied. Moreover, they vary in format, in order to bring as many modes of address as possible to bear on the crashes that catastrophically and fantastically punctuate the fabric of everyday life.

New Media: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive introduction to the culture, history, technologies and theories of new media. Written especially for students, the book considers the ways in which 'new media' really are new, assesses the claims that a media and technological revolution has taken place and formulates new ways for media studies to respond to new technologies.

The authors introduce a wide variety of topics including: how to define the characteristics of new media; social and political uses of new media and new communications; new media technologies, politics and globalization; everyday life and new media; theories of interactivity, simulation, the new media economy; cybernetics, cyberculture, the history of automata and artificial life.

Substantially updated from the first edition to cover recent theoretical developments, approaches and significant technological developments, this is the best and by far the most comprehensive textbook available on this exciting and expanding subject.

At www.newmediaintro.com you will find:

additional international case studies with online references

specially created You Tube videos on machines and digital photography

a new ‘Virtual Camera’ case study, with links to short film examples

useful links to related websites, resources and research sites

further online reading links to specific arguments or discussion topics in the book

links to key scholars in the field of new media.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations. List of Case Studies. Authors’ Biographies. Preface to the Second Edition Introduction The Book’s Purpose. Our Approach to the Subject. The Book’s Historical Dimension. The Book’s Emphasis on Wider Questions of Culture and Technology. The Book’s Organisation. How to Use the Book. The Book’s Parts Part 1: New Media and New Technologies 1.1 New Media: Do we Know What They Are? 1.2 The Characteristics of New Media: Some Defining Concepts 1.3 Change and Continuity 1.4 What Kind of History? 1.5 Who was Dissatisfied with Old Media? 1.6 New Media: Determining Or Determined? Bibliography Part 2: New Media and Visual Culture 2.1 What Happened to Virtual Reality? 2.2 The Virtual and Visual Culture 2.3 The Digital Virtual 2.4 Immersion: A History 2.5 Perspective, Camera, Software 2.6 Virtual Images/Images of the Virtual 2.7 Digital Cinema. Bibliography Part 3: Networks Users and Economics 3.1 Introduction 3.2 What Is the Internet? 3.3 Historicising Net Studies 3.4 Economics and Networked Media Culture 3.5 Political Economy 3.6 The Social Form of New Media 3.7 Limits on Commercial Influence 3.8 Globalisation, Neo-Liberalism and the Internet 3.9 The Digital Divide 3.10 Boom and Bust in the Digital Economy 3.11 Intellectual Property Rights, Determined and Determining 3.12 Music as New Media 3.13 The Long Tail 3.14 Going Viral 3.15 Fragmentation and Convergence 3.16 Wiki Worlds and Web 2.0 3.17 Identities and Communities Online 3.18 Being Anonymous 3.19 Belonging 3.20 Living in the Interface 3.21 The Internet and the Public Sphere 3.22 User-Generated Content: We are all Fans Now 3.23 YouTube and Post Television 3.24 Conclusion. Bibliography Part 4: New Media In Everyday Life 4.1 Everyday Life In Cyberspace 4.2 Everyday Life In a Media Home 4.3 The Technological Shaping of Everyday Life 4.4 The Everyday Posthuman: New Media and Identity 4.5 Gameplay 4.6 Conclusion: Everyday Cyberculture. Bibliography Part 5: Cyberculture: Technology, Nature and Culture 5.1 Cyberculture and Cybernetics 5.2 Revisiting Determinism: Physicalism, Humanism and Technology 5.3 Biological Technologies: The History of Automata 5.4 Theories of Cyberculture. Bibliography Glossary Index