Mediation and Contemporary Digital Media

Conclusion

In this final Archive/Information Architecture project, I've organised my works and thoughts throughout this module (IML 501, Fall) around the theme "mediation". I first linked the hyper(mediation) and rationale of hypertext together so as to address the socio-technological processes and experiences in contemporary society. Then the ideological constructions in mediations and the rhetorical modes of mediations were discussed and examined, which demonstrates the democratising potentials of digital remixes and the call for multi-media scholarly literature. Lastly, it illustrated how meanings can be transformed through mediations (scholarly work, remix and images).

With the rise of convergence culture in recent years, it is becoming more difficult to understand a specific medium nowadays, as different contents, platforms and user's experiences tend to blend together. Also, the object (media) is now more fluid, for instance, the contents can be changed continuously, such as an online news article on SNS, which is available for the journalists to edit/add something, users can leave their comments, and produce some value-added contents. This is not so static as a printed book/newspaper. To capture this dynamic of convergence culture, studying the processes may be more meaningful than studying only a specific object.

e.g.
Technological: all in one device, playing games on TV/ using PSP to watch films/smartphones/tablets as a laptop (listen to music, playing games, receiving email)
Social/organic: we do multiple things at the same time
Cultural: audience becomes user. User-generated content as out-sourcing.
Global: international circulation

As this work has discussed, this change may reaffirm the established ideological apparatuses, but it may also bring in democratising potentials. In order to maximise the latter, the academic world should give attention to the non-text-based but equally (if not better) professional practices (e.g. forming publishers that support multimedia works).

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