New Media

With the advancement of technology and the internet, we're able to obtain information with just a click away. The birth of online media and social networking platforms have build a strong base of support for fast sharing information among the technology savvy and younger generations today.

Source: Hosting.ber-art.nl

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more are free platforms that enables sharing of information instantly to the whole world. Instead of traditional media such as newspapers that will print out today's news the next day, the internet enables these media go go online such as BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) to update their latest news almost instantly after the event. For example, the British royal wedding that happened recently was streamed live online and millions of people across the world are able to watch the event on the same day.

Source: The New York Times

According to Walsh (2006), a reader's reading path can be multi-linear and multi-directional. For example, The New York Times website layout as seen on the image above attracts the readers with header and photographs which will direct them to another page for more information on the article when they click on them. These user interface gives the readers an easy way to get information instantly. Layout, attractive images and interesting headlines is the key to attracting readers via new media as the readers attention is focused to their topic of interest immediately.

On the other hand, cultural boundaries (Schriver, 1997) must also be taken into consideration as layouts and symbols used must be understood by the readers. Reading sequence is important for the people's interpretation and understanding of the text whereby the most common reading pattern is from the left to right.

The existence of new media has made information readily available instantly to the mass audience compared to the traditional media. Nowadays, new media has enabled us to obtain information for free and we are easily connected to the whole world (Ketsdever, 2008). 

References

1. Ketsdever, N 2008, Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media and Web 2.0, viewed 6 May 2011, <http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-social-media/>

2. Shriver, K 1997, 'Chapter 6: The interplay of words and pictures', Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York, p. 361-441. 

3. Walsh, M 2006, 'The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,  Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Australia, vol. 29, p. 24-37.