About (not)new consequences of new media

Abstract

Text is the reconstruction of basic characteristics ascribed to so called new media and social and cultural consequences related to the emerging and popularizing of new media in mass communication and media theory. As basic characteristics and consequences of new media author recognizes: digitalization, new media language, online journalism, problems of ethics and low in new media, economics of new media, interactivity and its consequences, virtual communities, fi nally: problems of – hypothetical – new cultural formations related to new media. New media and their unquestioned infl uence on many spheres of social and cultural life is not a new phenomenon: both in the history of mediated communication and the history of mass media studies (for example radio, cinema or TV caused very similar, emotional and critical reactions). Author concludes that it is difficult to reason the thesis of qualitative diff erence of so called new media according to so called old media, because every new medium in the history of mass (or mediated) communication caused similar in fact discussion and reaction and, which is more important, similar – in the matter of fact – type of social or cultural effects (on the condition of society and community, ethics, new forms of culture etc.).