[Air-l] Internet as medium with different sub-media or channels?

[Anders Fagerjord]

Hi, Michaël!

'Medium' is a confusing word, as it is used in (at least) four 
different ways:
(1) as material used in a work of art, like "oil on canvas". This is 
the sense of the word Lev Manovich is using in _The Language of New 
Media_.

(2) As file types, such as (ASCII) text, video, image, etc. You find 
this use in Computer Science.

(3) as any kind of technology linking people together (or as McLuhan 
put it: an extension of the human senses). "Internet" will be a medium 
in this sense.

(4) As a complex institution consisting of (at least) a technology 
(like broadcast TV), an economic pattern (like commercials or licence 
fee), a set of law regulations (for TV, you typically need a charter, 
and there are special regulations in terms of ownership, content, 
etc.), a typical use in a society (for TV, prime time is in the 
evening, when people want to be entertained), and some dominant genres 
(for TV: sit-coms, news, sports, reality...).

This last sense is the one normally implied, if not explicitly 
accounted for, in media studies. As I do media studies, that is my 
favorite too. I would say that the Internet is a technology (as ink and 
paper is), enabling several other technologies such as Web, e-mail, 
chat, ftp, RSS, online gaming, etc. These technologies will in turn be 
made into media.

Even the Web is not one medium in my view. Before the net, no one would 
say that a book and a bookshop was the same. It make no more sense to 
me to claim that New York Times on the web, an online novel like 
Sunshine '69, a Java game, Ebay, and Amazon.com are the same medium.

For practical research, i think 'genre' is a much more useful concept 
than 'medium'. It is more flexible, and more theorised in a useful way. 
Check out Genette's _Architext_ for a great discussion on genre.

I've written about this in a chapter of my thesis: Fagerjord, Anders. 
_Rhetorical Convergence: Earlier Media Influence on Web Media Form._ 
Oslo: Unipub,  2003.

--anders
........................
Anders Fagerjord, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo

P.O. Box 1093 Blindern, N-0317 OSLO, Norway
Tel. +47 22 85 04 11 Fax +47 22 85 04 01

http://fagerjord.no