MDSB61H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Political Economy
Document Summary
The material realities of new media vs the audience commodity in new media. The binaries of new media include the new vs the old, digital vs analog, change vs continuity (one more: immateriality vs materiality). I(cid:374)ter(cid:374)et is just a (cid:271)u(cid:374)(cid:272)h of thi(cid:374)gs (cid:271)ei(cid:374)g plugged together. New media are about ephemeral things such as data and content. Emphasis on software/services inattentive to questions of infrastructure. The immateriality of new media means nothing without materiality. Software and data means nothing without the hardware to interpret it. Concept put forward by political economist dallas smythe in 1977. Audiences are sold to advertisers, who pay media companies for access to their viewers, listeners, readers. By watching/reading/listening to ads, audience members work for the broadcasters.
