Digital
Media

A message becomes something we can store, reshape, connect and circulate.

A student downloads an audio explanation before travelling to college. She pauses it, returns to a difficult passage and opens a linked reading. Later, she sends a question and receives a response that changes her understanding.

This encounter joins several features of digital media: encoded information, software control, connected resources and communication across time. Its educational value also depends on the explanation, the student’s circumstances and the response she receives.

The field includes text, images, audio, video, games, websites, software-based experiences and digitally organised communication. A saved photograph, an offline recording and a networked discussion each provide an entry into its study.

From representation to social practice

Digital encoding makes information available to computational procedures. Software can copy, organise, search, combine or transform it. Devices and networks make these operations available within particular settings.

People then give the encounter a purpose: learning, reporting, entertainment, work, friendship or public action. Studying digital media means connecting these technical possibilities with the practices and institutions through which they take shape.

Why it matters to communication studies

Digital media redistribute opportunities to produce and circulate messages. They also introduce important questions about visibility, ownership, access, interpretation and the organisation of participation.

A small publication can reach a distant audience. A shared archive can connect generations. A recommendation system can influence which material becomes easy to encounter. Each possibility operates through choices about design, resources and responsibility.

A question to carry through the chapter

How do the properties of a digital system become meaningful possibilities for particular people in a particular setting? Follow that connection from the encoded object to the communication encounter.

Discrete values let different kinds of information enter computational processes.

Digital systems represent information through discrete values. A bit has two possible values, conventionally written as 0 and 1. Arrangements of bits can encode letters, numbers, colours, sound samples and other kinds of information.

A file format specifies how data are organised. Software interprets that arrangement to display a page, play a recording or carry out an operation.

Analogue and digital representation

An analogue recording represents variation through a continuously varying physical property. A digital recording represents information through discrete values.

For sound, sampling measures a signal at intervals and quantisation assigns values at a defined precision. A digital image similarly represents visual information through a structured set of values, such as the colour values of pixels.

These choices influence what can be preserved, altered and presented. The resulting experience also depends on the software, display, speakers and conditions of use.

Digitisation, digitalisation and datafication

These terms direct attention towards different kinds of change. Keeping the object of each process clear helps an analysis move from the file to the practice.

Copying, editing and compression

A digital copy can preserve the encoded data exactly. Editing and conversion can produce a different representation, while compression changes how much storage or transmission capacity a file needs.

Lossless compression preserves the encoded information through a reversible procedure. Lossy compression reduces size by discarding selected information. Examine the format and operation when discussing quality.

A network, a service and a historical label answer different questions.

The Internet is an interconnected network of networks through which digital data travel. The World Wide Web is a system of linked resources accessed through web technologies. Email, messaging and other services also use Internet connectivity.

This distinction helps explain an ordinary experience: a person may use several services through the same connection, and a digital file may remain usable after it has been downloaded.

The growth of the Web

At CERN, Tim Berners-Lee proposed the Web in 1989 and developed its first server and browser by the end of 1990. Links supplied a practical way to connect and navigate resources across computers. Read CERN’s history ↓

The U.S. National Science Foundation’s history describes the expansion of commercial services and the 1995 transition from NSFNET. The development of networked media involved research institutions, technical communities, public funding and commercial organisations. Read the NSF account ↓

What the label “new media” foregrounded

“New media” became prominent in discussions of emerging computer-based and networked forms. It named a changing field of practices and technologies in relation to established media institutions.

“Digital media” directs attention towards representation and processing. The historical label and the technical description help illuminate different aspects of the same development.

Continuity through change

Digital news can draw on reporting practices developed in newspapers and broadcasting. An online video can use familiar framing, narration and editing. New arrangements often recombine inherited forms with different capacities for production and circulation.

Study a change by specifying the practice involved: what has been reorganised, which resources make it possible and what continues through the new arrangement?

Software makes media objects available for selection, combination and transformation.

A digital object can become an input to a procedure. A photograph can be resized, a recording can be searched through a transcript and a collection can be arranged through a database.

Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media (2001) offers five influential principles for examining such computer-based media. They help connect the cultural object with the operations through which it is organised. Read the book record ↓

Interfaces and databases

An interface presents selected actions and information to a user. A database organises items and relationships so that a system can retrieve and work with them.

Suppose an oral-history archive holds recordings, photographs and descriptions. A search interface turns that organised collection into routes a visitor can follow. Its categories influence which connections become easy to discover.

Automation and human judgement

Automated transcription, sorting or formatting can reduce repetitive work. The choice of task, categories and review procedures remains consequential.

For an archive, examine how names, accents and local expressions are represented in a transcript. A review process can connect the convenience of automation with the purpose of preserving an account.

Variability in a familiar setting

A news page may adapt its presentation to a screen, a selected language or an accessibility preference. A cultural collection may offer several routes through the same material.

Trace which elements change and which decisions govern the change. This gives variability a concrete object for analysis.

Participation becomes meaningful through what people can do and how the exchange responds.

Interactivity concerns the relationship between a person’s action and the response available through a system or another participant. Pausing a recording, choosing a route and discussing a question involve different kinds of control and exchange.

Edward J. Downes and Sally J. McMillan (2000) identify six dimensions of interactivity. Their framework helps examine the experience in detail. Read the article record ↓

Several forms of interaction

A reader interacts with content by searching, selecting or rearranging it. A learner interacts with a system when a response changes what the interface presents. People interact with one another through messages, calls and collaborative work.

Describe the relation being examined. This makes it easier to compare the experience of controlling a presentation with the experience of discussing its meaning.

From an available feature to a useful exchange

Suppose a course page includes a comment box. Its educational use depends on who reads the questions, when responses arrive and how the discussion connects with the learning task.

The feature creates an opening. Participation gives the exchange its particular form through time, attention and response.

Assessing the experience

Observe which choices people use, ask how they understand the interaction and examine the responses they receive. A useful assessment connects interface design with the practice it is meant to support.

For example, compare a page that lets a learner choose a topic with a discussion that helps clarify a difficulty. Each can serve a purpose, and each needs evidence appropriate to that purpose.

Links and shared infrastructures bring media forms and participants into new relationships.

A digital report can combine writing, photographs, sound, video and links. Readers may follow different routes through it, while the organisation can publish related material through several channels.

Hypertext and non-linear navigation

Hypertext connects resources through links. A reader can move from an explanation to a definition, a source document or another account.

This creates choices about sequence. The author still makes consequential decisions through labels, headings, link placement and the organisation of the destination.

For example, a local history page may connect a map, an interview and an archival photograph. Explain what each route helps a visitor discover and how a return path preserves orientation.

Multimedia and convergence

Multimedia brings several expressive forms into an encounter. Convergence concerns the connections among technologies, industries, content and audience practices.

A smartphone can support recording, editing, reading and conversation. A newsroom can organise a story through writing, audio and video. Audiences can carry that story into discussions and further production.

Henry Jenkins’s Convergence Culture (2006) examines the meeting of established and emerging media, corporate production and grassroots participation. His account gives convergence a cultural and institutional dimension. Read the publisher record ↓

Several patterns of communication coexist

A lecture can begin as one-to-many communication and become part of a discussion involving several participants. Follow how the relationship changes through the activity.

Poster and the “second media age”

Mark Poster’s The Second Media Age (1995) investigates the implications of emerging electronic and networked communication. It helps locate early debates about participation and the reorganisation of media relationships. Read the book record ↓

Use these debates to ask what a particular arrangement enables: simultaneous participation, alteration of a cultural object, redistribution or contact across distance. Then investigate how people use those possibilities.

Explain how a technical possibility becomes part of a social arrangement.

A digital feature enters relationships, purposes and institutions. Theories of technology and society place different aspects of that connection in focus.

Technological capabilities as an explanatory starting point

The ability to record and replay can change the organisation of a learning encounter. Students can revisit a passage and teachers can prepare resources for use at different times.

An explanation can investigate how that capability enters a change, alongside the teaching practices, access conditions and purposes involved.

Social construction: groups and interpretations

Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker’s work develops the role of relevant social groups, interpretative flexibility and the processes through which a technological arrangement becomes established. Read the article record ↓

Consider a college choosing a communication service. Students may prioritise low data use, teachers may want organised discussion and administrators may seek reliable records. These purposes can influence the selected arrangement.

Co-production: connected formation

Sheila Jasanoff’s edited volume States of Knowledge develops co-production through the relationship between ways of knowing and ways of organising social order. It offers resources for examining how knowledge, categories and institutions become linked. Read the publisher record ↓

For digital education, examine how a system’s categories and an institution’s practices develop together. A definition of participation can enter a dashboard, shape follow-up work and be revised through experience.

Affordances: possibilities in a relationship

An affordance is a possibility for action considered in relation to an actor and an environment. Ian Hutchby’s work connects the analysis of technology with the possibilities and constraints that matter in practice. Read the article record ↓

A recording button is a feature. Sending a usable voice question involves a person, that feature and the surrounding conditions. Follow this relation to explain what the arrangement makes possible.

Software organises encounters through rules, records and economic arrangements.

An algorithm is a specified procedure for working towards an output. Digital services use procedures to sort, search, match, recommend, compress or transform information.

Some systems follow explicit rules; others use models whose parameters are learned from data. Their outputs enter an arrangement shaped by objectives, interfaces and decisions about use.

From an activity to a data record

A service may record a search, a viewing duration, a timestamp or a selected response. It can combine those records with information supplied by a user and use them to estimate what may be relevant next.

Ask which actions are captured, how they become categories and which purpose the processing serves. A record of a completed video can enter an estimate of engagement; an educational judgement can also draw on discussion, work and explanation.

Selection and personalisation

A ranked list arranges what a person is likely to encounter first. Personalisation can adapt that arrangement through a profile, a selected preference or a situation.

Suppose a news service repeatedly recommends sports reports after several clicks. Investigate the information the service uses, the choices it presents and how readers respond. This connects selection with an observable experience.

Platforms as cultural and economic arrangements

José van Dijck’s The Culture of Connectivity (2013) combines attention to the technical and cultural organisation of social media with ownership, governance and business models. This helps examine platforms through connected dimensions. Read the book record ↓

A platform can help people find one another and circulate work while setting conditions for visibility, data access and payment. The interface is one part of the arrangement.

Network distribution and service control operate at different levels. Data travel across interconnected networks, while particular organisations can control the interfaces, selection rules and records of the services people use.

Where value and authority enter

Advertising, commissions, subscriptions and infrastructure services provide different routes to revenue. Creators, workers, users and organisations can occupy different positions within those exchanges.

Map who pays, who contributes the work or attention, who receives income and who controls the relevant information. This gives a concrete account of opportunity and dependence.

Public responsibilities

Ranking, moderation and access decisions can matter to the circulation of knowledge and the continuity of participation. Examine the stated rules, the available explanations and the route through which a person can seek review.

A useful analysis follows a decision into its consequences: which information entered it, which actor was responsible and what changed for those involved.

People use connected media to share knowledge, build relationships and organise attention.

Digital media can support contribution as well as reception. People publish, annotate, remix, discuss and organise resources for others.

The possibilities include creative collaboration, civic discussion and learning communities. Their development depends on participation, shared practices and the conditions through which a group sustains its work.

Virtual communities

Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community (1993) explores relationships formed through computer-mediated communication. Shared interests and recurring interaction can become the basis of social support and collective activity. Read the author’s online text ↓

Suppose a group discusses Bengali documentary films over several months. Members exchange sources, develop familiar ways of responding and collaborate on a public screening. The community takes shape through that continuing practice.

Networked publics

danah boyd’s work on networked publics examines the relationship among people, technology and practice. It identifies persistence, replicability, scalability and searchability as important affordances of these environments. Read the chapter ↓

• Persistence: an expression can remain available beyond its original moment.
• Replicability: copies can circulate through several settings.
• Scalability: material can acquire visibility beyond its initial audience.
• Searchability: indexed material can become retrievable through a query.

A contribution intended for a familiar group may reach readers with different expectations. Examine the path of circulation and the contexts through which the expression is interpreted.

Specialised and large audiences

A local history podcast can serve a small, committed audience, while a major event attracts attention across many services. Different scales of communication can coexist.

Demassification names a movement towards more specialised audience arrangements. Personalised selection and topic-based communities can contribute to this process.

Participation as organised work

Someone maintains the archive, moderates the discussion, verifies a contribution or welcomes a new member. These practices help make a space usable and meaningful.

Study who contributes, whose work becomes visible and how the group handles disagreement. This connects the promise of participation with the arrangements sustaining it.

Digital communication travels through places, records, devices and human work.

Portable devices and connected services let communication enter many daily settings. A person may read during a journey, record a field observation or coordinate work across locations.

Place and time become part of the encounter

A map can relate information to a location; a message can carry a timestamp; a service can adapt its presentation to a particular moment. These capabilities connect communication with the circumstances of use.

Availability depends on connectivity, device capacity, permissions and the resources people can bring to the encounter. Examine where the service fits into a person’s day.

Traces and memory

A digital communication can leave copies and associated records. A photograph may carry descriptive information, while a discussion may remain available through an archive or another person’s saved copy.

The relationship between an original expression, a stored version and a recirculated copy matters to context. A later reader may encounter a statement through a different sequence or audience.

Privacy and information practices

Ask what information a service needs, how it handles that information and which choices participants can make. Location, activity and profile records can contribute to a detailed account of a person’s routines.

Responsible communication also considers other people represented in a recording or shared account. Explain the purpose of collecting material, agree on appropriate use and preserve context when presenting it.

The physical foundations of digital media

Files and services depend on devices, networks, servers, electricity and human labour. Making, maintaining and disposing of equipment connects digital communication with material resources and working conditions.

UN Trade and Development’s Digital Economy Report 2024 examines the environmental footprint of digitalisation and the distribution of its benefits and burdens. It supplies a wider setting for studying the material life of digital systems. Read the report ↓

Follow the life of a device or service through production, use, repair and disposal. An institutional decision about replacement, storage or maintenance can become a practical question about sustainability.

The value of access depends on what people can actually do with it.

Digital media can widen access to education, information, creative work and social support. These opportunities become useful through resources, skills and arrangements that let people take part.

Material access

Consider the device, connection, electricity, cost and available time. A shared phone, an unstable connection and a quiet personal workspace offer different conditions for the same activity.

Ask how those conditions fit the task. A short text may travel easily through a weak connection; a long live video session requires another level of support.

Skills and confidence

Eszter Hargittai’s research on the second-level digital divide draws attention to differences in online skills. It opens the analysis beyond the question of whether someone has a connection. Read the open-access article ↓

Searching, evaluating a source, managing a file and seeking assistance can each affect participation. Study these practices through the tasks people are trying to accomplish.

Accessibility and language

Captions, readable layouts, keyboard access, text alternatives and clear navigation help people encounter and use digital material. Language and examples also influence whether an explanation becomes intelligible.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provide an established resource for examining accessible design. Use them alongside the needs and experiences of the people who will use the material. Read WCAG 2.2 ↓

From participation to outcomes

A meaningful evaluation asks what people gain: understanding a topic, obtaining a service, completing work or sustaining a relationship.

Suppose a student watches a recording on a shared device and submits a thoughtful written response later. Examine the learning through the work and explanation, alongside the service’s activity records.

Media and information literacy

Useful practices include identifying authorship, checking the context of a claim, comparing relevant sources and distinguishing a record from an interpretation.

Digitally produced and AI-generated content makes attention to provenance especially useful. Ask what the material claims to show, which evidence supports it and how it entered circulation.

Design for different circumstances

Provide manageable formats, clear instructions, routes for feedback and assistance, and alternatives that serve the same learning or public purpose. Evaluate whether the arrangement reaches people in the circumstances they actually face.

This connects inclusion with the design of the encounter: an accessible resource, a responsive institution and a person able to use both.

Follow a digital possibility into its actual use.

These cases connect technical properties with practices and institutions. Begin with the activity, identify the arrangement and examine what people are able to do through it.

A common route through the cases

1. Describe the activity: who is trying to learn, publish, communicate or preserve something?
2. Identify the representation: which files, formats, records and expressive forms are involved?
3. Map the arrangement: examine interfaces, networks, services and institutional procedures.
4. Hear the participants: investigate resources, interpretations and working practices.
5. Explain the outcome: connect the evidence with what the arrangement enabled or made difficult.

Evaluate possibilities and consequences together

A feature can make an activity easier while creating new work or dependence. For example, searchable archives require description and maintenance, while interactive learning requires time for relevant response.

Identify the opportunity, the resources needed to sustain it and the evidence through which its value can be assessed.

Connect the properties of digital media with the relationships they organise.

In my lecture, Digital Media Explained, I introduce digital representation, interactivity, convergence, algorithms and perspectives on technology and society. Watch with an everyday example in mind and note how each concept changes the question you ask.

Watch my lecture on YouTube ↗

After viewing

Choose one activity and explain it at three levels: the digital representation, the available operations and the social practice. Identify the evidence you would need to connect the levels.

Connect a concept with the particular relationship it explains.

Choose one answer for each question. Give the reason for your choice before opening the explanation.

Build an account of a digital encounter through its material, operations and use.

Choose a bounded activity and preserve the material needed to examine it. A focused question makes the relationship between a technical property and a social practice easier to investigate.

Activity 1 · Map an everyday digital encounter

Select an activity such as finding a report, using a learning resource, sharing a recording or retrieving an item from an archive.

1. Describe the purpose: identify the person, task and intended result.
2. Follow the representation: note the expressive forms, formats and relevant records.
3. Examine the operations: identify linking, searching, copying, selection or transformation.
4. Map the conditions: consider devices, connection, skills, accessibility and institutional support.
5. Hear the experience: ask what participants found useful, difficult or meaningful.
6. Develop the explanation: connect the evidence with one concept and consider another plausible account.

Activity 2 · Compare two arrangements

Compare two routes to the same goal: a live session and a downloadable resource, a printed catalogue and a searchable collection, or two forms of online discussion.

Record which actions each makes available, which resources each requires and how people use it. Explain the circumstances in which each arrangement helps achieve the goal.

Research extension · Match the evidence to the question

Document the setting

Record the date, device, account conditions, task and relevant settings. Preserve versions when material changes and make your selection of evidence clear.

Use public material appropriately and obtain informed participation for interviews or observations involving people. Explain how their accounts will enter the analysis.

Assess a proposal for improvement

Specify the change, the person or institution responsible and the result you would observe. A proposal for a downloadable transcript, for example, can be evaluated through retrieval, comprehension and use under different study conditions.

Connect the proposal with its resources and continuing maintenance. This makes the improvement concrete enough to test and revise.

Examination and seminar prompts

• Define digital media and distinguish digitisation, digitalisation and datafication.
• Explain the relationship between the Internet and the World Wide Web.
• Discuss interactivity through its dimensions and a worked example.
• Explain hypertext, convergence and several communication patterns.
• Compare technological determinism, social construction and co-production.
• Apply affordances to a digital learning or communication activity.
• Examine algorithms, platform ownership and the organisation of visibility.
• Discuss digital inequalities, material infrastructures and meaningful participation.

Return to the concepts, then follow them into their sources.

Use the glossary to revise the chapter and the readings to develop a focused question about a digital practice.

Digital media

Media using discrete numerical representation and digital systems for processing, storage, presentation or transmission.

Digitisation

Giving information a digital representation.

Digitalisation

Reorganising an activity or process through digital systems.

Datafication

Rendering actions or relationships into records available for calculation.

Bit

A binary digit with two possible values, conventionally 0 and 1.

Sampling

Measuring a signal at selected intervals for representation or analysis.

Quantisation

Assigning values at a defined precision to represent measured information.

Compression

A procedure for reducing the size of a representation; it may preserve or discard information.

Interface

The arrangement through which a person encounters information and acts within a system.

Database

An organised collection of data and relationships that supports retrieval and processing.

Hypertext

An arrangement connecting resources through links.

Interactivity

The relationship between an action and the response available through a system or another participant.

Convergence

The connected development of media technologies, industries, forms and audience practices.

Modularity

The organisation of an object through components that retain separate identities.

Variability

The capacity of a media object to appear in different versions or presentations.

Transcoding

In Manovich’s account, the relationship through which cultural forms and computer organisation shape one another.

Internet

An interconnected network of networks supporting the transfer of digital data.

World Wide Web

A system of linked resources accessed through web technologies using Internet connectivity.

Platform

A programmable arrangement organising interactions among participants or services.

Algorithm

A specified procedure for working towards an output.

Affordance

A possibility for action considered in relation to an actor and an environment.

Personalisation

The adaptation of a service or presentation through a profile, preference or situation.

Metadata

Information describing an item, its context, structure or management.

Virtual community

A community developing through recurring computer-mediated interaction and shared practices.

Networked publics

Publics and spaces reorganised through networked technologies and their use.

Persistence

The continued availability of an expression beyond its original moment under particular storage and access conditions.

Demassification

A movement towards more specialised audience arrangements.

Digital divide

Unequal conditions of digital access, skills, use and benefit.

Accessibility

The design and organisation of material so that people with different capabilities can perceive, operate and use it.

Digital materiality

The physical resources, infrastructures and work through which digital media operate.

Core readings and primary resources

1. Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. MIT Press. Source record ↗

   An influential account of the principles and cultural organisation of computer-based media.

2. Downes, E. J., & McMillan, S. J. (2000). Defining interactivity: A qualitative identification of key dimensions. New Media & Society, 2(2), 157–179. Source record ↗

   The study identifying six dimensions of interactivity.

3. Hutchby, I. (2001). Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology, 35(2), 441–456. Source record ↗

   Connects the analysis of technology with the possibilities and constraints of action.

4. Pinch, T. J., & Bijker, W. E. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14(3), 399–441. Source record ↗

   A foundational statement of the social construction of technology.

5. Jasanoff, S. (Ed.). (2004). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and the social order. Routledge. Source record ↗

   Examines the connected formation of knowledge and social arrangements.

6. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press. Source record ↗

   Connects converging media with industries, audiences and participatory practices.

7. Poster, M. (1995). The second media age. Polity. Source record ↗

   An early theoretical account of emerging electronic and networked communication.

8. van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press. Source record ↗

   Combines cultural, technical and economic questions in the study of social media.

9. Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. Addison-Wesley. Source record ↗

   A major early account of relationships and communities formed through computer-mediated communication.

10. boyd, d. (2010). Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 39–58). Routledge. Source record ↗

    The author’s chapter on networked publics and their affordances.

11. Hargittai, E. (2002). Second-level digital divide: Differences in people’s online skills. First Monday, 7(4). Source record ↗

    An empirical contribution to understanding inequalities in digital skills.

12. CERN. (n.d.). A short history of the Web. Source record ↗

    The institutional account of the Web’s proposal, early development and expansion.

13. U.S. National Science Foundation. (n.d.). Birth of the commercial Internet. Source record ↗

    An institutional history of research networking and the transition towards commercial Internet provision.

14. World Wide Web Consortium. (2024). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. W3C Recommendation, 12 December 2024. Source record ↗

    A reference for examining accessible web design.

15. UN Trade and Development. (2024). Digital economy report 2024: Shaping an environmentally sustainable and inclusive digital future. United Nations. Source record ↗

    Examines the material and environmental dimensions of digitalisation.

My lecture: Digital Media Explained ↗

The chapter in six statements

1. Digital media connect numerical representation with software-based operations and human interpretation.
2. Interactivity, convergence and hypertext create different possibilities for participation and navigation.
3. The Internet, the Web and particular digital services occupy connected roles within the encounter.
4. Technical capabilities, social groups and institutional arrangements help shape one another through practice.
5. Algorithms, ownership, resources and skills influence which opportunities become available.
6. A grounded analysis connects the digital object, its infrastructure and the experience of the people using it.