Week 6- Response to Lecture

In this week's lecture we had a guest lecturer called Adam speaking to us about Media, New Media and Social Media.

New Media

New media is a broad term covering a wide range of "new media content". We spoke about Virtual Community which is "a way to explain a group of people who communicate via the internet", for example, chat rooms, facebook, myspace, msn messenger. Individual Identity also comes under New Media which explains how people express themselves on the internet whether it's through their chat name, customised myspace/facebook page or even the images they display. However, this notion is dangerous as people may pretend to be someone else either to impress someone, make fun of someone or even to scam people.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 emerged after the .com crash in 2000 as Tim O'Reilly and friends came up with the notion that there was a new era in web's history. It came with the idea of user-generated content which is that people create photos, videos, texts and put them on the internet, i.e. facebook, youtube. This also included sharing data openly between services on the internet and organising knowledge, which can be known as "folksonomy".

Social Media

Social media also evolved in this time including weblogs/blogs, social networking services such as facebook, myspace and twitter, chat rooms and content sharing communities. Social media is one of the most common uses for the internet and has sadly become apart of majority of people's every day lives. Although it is a great way to stay in touch with friends or meet new ones, it can also be used dangerously for things such as stalking and abuse.