Some notes on that slide I skipped over today

Today in lecture I quickly skipped over a slide discussing the eight characteristics of new media as analyzed by MIT professor Henry Jenkins:

Here are some notes from that lecture to describe these eight new media characteristics:

1. Innovative.  “the introduction of new media technologies sparks social and aesthetic experimentation.”

2. Convergent.  “convergence is being shaped top-down by the decisions being made by massive media conglomerates who have controlling interest across all possible media systems and who enjoy the power to insure that their content circulates globally.”  And “convergence is being shaped bottom-up by the participatory impulses of consumers, who want the ability to control and shape the flow of media in their lives; they want the media they want when they want it and where they want it.”

3. Everyday.  “Media technologies are fully integrated into our everyday social interactions.”  And “we can now take our media with us wherever we go.”

4. Appropriative.  “We can now quote and recontextualize recorded sounds and images (both still and moving) almost as easily as we can quote and recontextualize words.”

5. Networked.  “Young people become adept at calculating the advantages and disadvantages of deploying different communications systems for different purposes -- trying to decide how to communicate their ideas only to those people they want to see them while maintaining privacy from unwanted observation.”

6. Global.  “Some have argued that this expanded communication will bring about greater understanding; others see the return to fundamentalism as a reaction against the threat posed by these global exchanges.”

7. Generational.  “young people adopted cultural styles and values radically different and often fundamentally at odds with their parent's generation. Recent research suggests that young people and adults live in fundamentally different media environments, using communications technologies in different ways and forming contradictory interpretations of their experiences.”

8. Unequal.  “In so far as participation within them represents a new source of power, wealth, and knowledge, it also represents a new site of privilege and inequality. Participating may be elective for those who have the resources needed to belong in the first place but no such option can be exercised by those who are being left behind.”

[All quotes from Jenkins H 2006 » Eight traits of the new media landscape]

What do you think?  Do you agree with this characterization of new media?