Old media is generally used to describe traditional media: television and radio broadcasts, print (newspapers, magazines, books), film, etc. New media includes but is not limited to the Internet and World Wide Web, streaming audio and video, chat rooms, online communities, e-mail, video games, virtual realities, interactive media, DVD’s and CD-ROM’s, mobile or wireless computing, highly interactive user interfaces, telephone and digital data integration, other forms of multimedia popular from the 1990’s on.
Old media is perceived as being static, easily dated, sluggish, passive, less accessible, one-way communication while new media is perceived as being highly interactive and participatory, customizable, dynamic, multi-sensory, and often available in real time.
Old media and media technologies have generally been thought of as being separate and distinct. For example, television companies broadcast television programs and phone companies dealt with telephone communication. But the boundaries among old media providers have blurred over time as new media and old media integrate. This process is called convergence which John Hartley defines as “the integration of telephony, computing and media (broadcasting) technologies and thence the integration of the businesses, markets and the social interactions associated with them”. (M/Cyclopedia of New Media) . It may be this convergence rather than new media itself that has the most social, cultural, and geo-political implications.
Sources:
M/Cyclopedia of New Media
