The Adoption of Form Characteristics of the Internet by the Older Media Master Thesis
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The Adoption of Form Characteristics of the Internet by the Older Media Master Thesis Supervisor: G.M. Welling Communication and Information Sciences, University of Groningen June 24, 2009 D.M. Wiegers S1541749 [email protected] Abstract The underlying thought of this research is that media have a communicative influence on each other. From that perspective the kickback process, the older media adopting visual characteristics from the Internet and as a result looking more Internet-like, is analysed. Some authors call this process the internetisation of the older media. Both a quantitative analysis comparing pre-Internet and post- Internet media and a qualitative analysis interviewing professionals and users were carried out. It turns out the kickback effect takes place and already manifests itself in different ways, though the reverse process of the Internet taking over the characteristics of the older media is likely to be even stronger. Keywords: remediation; kickback; internetisation; Internet; influence; media; television; newspapers; books. ii Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 2. Theory .................................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 The Introduction of a New Medium ................................................................................. 4 2.2 The Introduction of the Internet ....................................................................................... 5 2.3 Form Characteristics Possibly Adopted by Older Media ................................................. 7 2.4 Examples ........................................................................................................................ 18 2.5 Why the Kickback Effect? ............................................................................................. 23 3. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 25 3.1 Quantitative Analysis ..................................................................................................... 25 3.2 Qualitative Analysis ....................................................................................................... 30 4. Results .................................................................................................................................. 33 4.1 Quantitative Analysis ..................................................................................................... 33 4.2 Qualitative Analysis ....................................................................................................... 34 5. Conclusion and Discussion .................................................................................................. 38 5.1 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 38 5.2 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 40 5.3 Final Remarks and Suggestions for Future Research ..................................................... 41 References ................................................................................................................................ 42 Appendix I: Quantitative Results ............................................................................................. 45 I.I. Sans Serifs ...................................................................................................................... 45 I.II Bullet Type ..................................................................................................................... 63 I.III Emoticons ..................................................................................................................... 72 Appendix II: Qualitative Interviews ......................................................................................... 73 II.I Editors and Designers of Traditional Media .................................................................. 73 II.II People Using Emoticons in Handwritten Messages ..................................................... 79 iii 1. Introduction We live in a time of the Internet being almost the most important communicative medium, not only because of its capabilities to include in itself almost all other media. The present paper describes the taking over of Internet characteristics by the older media: the kickback effect. The research focus is based on the view of new media theorists like the Americans Bolter & Grusin (1999) and Manovich (2001), that media constantly influence each other. Media are means for the handing over and the dissemination of knowledge and information. Media include assets universally identified as media like the television or the radio, but also simple things like verbal face-to-face communication or entities now considered art forms like paintings. Media continually follow each other up, co-exist and interplay with each other. McLuhan‟s media theory confirmed that a medium cannot easily be purified to a transparent identity, because media redefine each other. Visual similarities are therefore not random happenstance, instead, they emerge from a dynamic media environment that is shaped by technological, social, and cultural forces (Cooke, 2005: 23). In other words, there exists a relationship between print, television, the internet, paintings, photography and so forth. A degree of mutual influence between media technologies is inevitable because people make use of various means of communication in everyday life. Like the other media, the Internet will have an influence on its predecessors and successors. Italian feminist and theorist Fortunati (2005) in her contribution speaks of the mediatisation of the net and the internetisation of the mass media. According to the Dutch media theorist Van Driel (2001: 30) the introduction of a new medium always passes of according to what he named the ARIA model. He based the model on other theorists‟ views, like McLuhan‟s, and named it the ARIA model. Van Driel‟s model consists of four phases: - Amazement: to a vanguard group of people the new medium is amazing and they admire it. - Resistance: the majority of the people resists the new medium, they do not think it necessary. - Imitation: the new medium copies the characteristics of the old medium. - Authenticity: the new medium develops unique characteristics. The present research focuses on the Internet. In the case of Internet, first there was imitation of the old media: physical written texts (Gómez Camacho, 2007: 158). The web pages were filled with large amounts of text written in Times New Roman. The tradition to which web designers looked for inspiration was graphic design for print and consequently the principles of web page design became similar to those for laying out magazine articles, advertisements, and title pages (Bolter, 1999: 198). After that web pages and e-mail developed their own form characteristics: authenticity. It could be that as a next step the old media (written texts, television programs…) adopt the form characteristics of the new medium (Internet) (Verschraegen, 2002b: 309; Verschraegen, 2002a:128). In other words: traditional media may take on some Internet features. An example is the adoption of Internet- like layouts for television news programs (Van der Wurff, 2005: 109, 118; Fortunati, 2005: 28). Like CNN Headlines News: the modular layout of CNN Headlines News gives television the look and feel of the web (Cooke, 2005: 41). Or young people reporting that they actually use Internet acronyms like LOL in real life instead of laughing (Lønsmann, 2009). This next step could be called kickback (Loviscach & Oswald, 2009: 7). Kickback is the older medium adopting characteristics of the new medium. This kickback phase happened many times before in history, as will be explained in the next chapter. The kickback, the visual internetisation of the older media, is the scope of the present research. The research question reads: Do the old media adopt the form characteristics of the 1 Internet? As regards the taking over of the characteristics from the web, this research is limited to visual characteristics passing from the new medium to the old. There would be many other interesting topics related to remediation, like the embedding of one medium in the other (a television show broadcasted online) but this is a different field of interest. The older media is a vague concept and therefore will be defined. The older media include, but are not limited to: - Verbal face-to-face communication: the act of speaking, the capacity to inform others of one‟s thoughts and perceptions by audible sings, with the communicators being physically close enough to each other to be able to perceive each other. - Handwriting: the transmitting of written messages on paper or another material written in pen, pencil or by another writing tool. - Book: entity of a number of printed or written pages of paper, or another material, containing a text about some subject, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. - Newspaper: publication containing news, information and advertising, most often published on a daily or weekly basis. - Radio: the transmission of audible signals. Be it by modulation of electromagnetic waves or digitally. Radio does not contain visible