New Media Product: Instagram

Pick a specific new media product, such as a website, a blog post, a digital film, a digitally streamed television show, a YouTube clip, a web comic, a videogame, an online world, a virtual reality environment, a new type of phone or computer app, or any other product that fits the characteristics of new media.  After you have done so, apply the questions provided below to your chosen product. 

Note: be sure to pick a specific product, and to not use an extremely broad category like “the internet” or “digital movies,” as the object of your study.

Also note: to adequately address this project’s questions, you HAVE to complete the Lister reading.  If you do not do this reading, you won’t understand what this question is about, and your answers will suffer as a result. 

Basic Instructions

• Double spaced, 12 Point Font.
• Include a visual image of your product at the end of your paper.
• Cite the Lister reading, including page numbers, whenever you refer to any of the ideas contained in it.
• Include a Works Cited.

The Questions

Note: before answering these questions, provide a short paragraph that gives the basic facts about your chosen product and explains which of the six characteristics you will be applying in your analysis of it.

1)     How does the product exhibit four (4) out of the (6) characteristics of new media that are discussed by Lister?  Provide detailed answers that:

• Use a separate section heading for each of the four (4) characteristics.
• Explain the nature of this characteristic, including multiple meanings if Lister provides them, before showing how it applies to the product, and then:
• Show how it applies to the product. 

For your convenience, the six (6) characteristics, of which you must choose four (4) to discuss, are:

• Digital
• Interactive
• Hypertextual
• Virtual
• Networked
• Simulated

2)     In light of your answers to Question 1, what is your personal reaction to:

a) The way the four (4) characteristics affected you at a sensory, emotional, and intellectual level?

b) The larger implications of the “newness” implied by your chosen product.  (This newness is closely related to the characteristics discussed in your previous answers.)

NOTE: Your personal reaction does not have a “right” or a “wrong” set of answers.  Your answers to this pair of questions will be evaluated on a) the clarity and organization with which you express yourself, and b) your ability to describe personal reactions in an unemotional, dispassionate manner.