Critical issues in writing for new media

The advent of new media writing tools has drastically changed our ways of reading and writing. From traditional books and newspapers, we now turn to computers and smartphones to read; we seldom use pen and paper for writing, but instead we relied on the computers/smartphones for content creation. Although these changes are seemingly beneficial in a way that it brings us the convenience of being able to read and write wherever we are, and compressed the sense of time and space between us, it raised a concern of the decline of literacy level, especially of the younger generations, who spend most of their time reading and writing on the internet.


Source: Swansea Photographer


In an article written by Motoko Rich in New York Times about the future of reading, he quoted some critics of new media saying that the multimodality of the internet is a distraction for students. For me, it’s true to a certain extent, especially when I read the newspaper online, sometimes there will always be a video embedded in the article, and I will tend to view the video rather than reading the whole article to save time. I will also click on the links in the news article and so I ended up not finishing the whole article.

In the same article, Nicholas Carr, the author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid” in Atlantic Magazine is quoted as saying that he thinks the internet has decreased his concentration span that he finds it difficult to read long books. Personally I only agree to his view to a limited extent because I think it varies from person to person. For me, it doesn’t affect me much. I still enjoy reading books more than reading on the screen. I find it difficult to read long texts on screen on the contrary.

However, there’re always two sides of the same coin. In an article of Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, in the Guardian newspaper, argues that the studies about declining of reading and writing skills due to the popularity of Internet did not cover the whole picture as they omitted the reading and writing activities done on the computer. He also noted that instead of a decline in reading and writer, it is just a change in form nowadays. We are now practicing a new form of reading which involves shorter texts featuring multimodality and hypertexts, which doesn’t necessarily led to a decline in reading skills of students. As for writing skills, Johnson pointed out that we are writing more on blogs for a wider audience in the age of new media.

So, the debate boils down to what it means to be a 21st century learner...

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw&feature=related

My verdict...

Personally, I think new media has not affected my ability to read and write. On the contrary, I think it actually enhances my reading and writing skills. Before the popularity of Internet, I wouldn’t have the chance to read newspapers from all over the world as they are always so expensive. I wouldn’t have chance to talk to or chat with people from other cultures so easily. The new media enables me to reach out to a different world. Although in some cases where the Internet was being criticized for leading to the decline of students’ literacy level, I think to be fair, the tool should not be blamed; the responsibility lies on each individual on how to use the tool in a way that benefits you rather than the opposite.