engleski

The influence of new methods of media message analysis on broader social and cultural understanding of the status of digital media

The development of information and communication technologies reveals their transformative effects on all areas and in all aspects of human practices. Transformative processes that accompany the development of artificial intelligence have been especially impactful in the past decade and a half. The social circumstances of the Coronavirus pandemic added a new dimension to such processes, as the world has become more aware of the need to introduce new technologies into the areas of the economy, education, culture, and art. Digital technology has also a strong impact on media development and functioning and enables the emergence of new genres while causing the old ones to transform. Thanks to all this, it affects the formation of media messages, also affecting the processes of perception and interpretation of messages. This paper assumes a critical approach to the notion of media, i.e., media messages while assuming two perspectives considered crucial for the understanding of the working of media in general. On one side, the fact that their steadiness is software-dependent impacts the understanding and interpretation of media messages. Therefore, this paper will observe recent theoretical framings relevant to the understanding of new media, while emphasizing the possibilities of new methodological approaches to media message analysis, and on the understanding of messages in general. These processes are mutually dependent, and possibilities of understanding and interpreting media messages can be said to have a direct influence on the interpretation of new media trends, and vice versa. We are proposing a research protocol to test the so-called method of media visualization that was gradually introduced by Lev Manovich via a series of articles published during 2008, to be rounded and presented integrally in his book Cultural Analytics, published in 2020. Grounding our approach in the fact that the new media are computer-based, and the message dissemination is software-based, we will approach the message analysis in much the same way, by using media visualization software (primarily ImagePlot). This method will, hence, embrace the fundamental characteristics of the new media, such as omnipresence, large data sets, recipient orientation, and visuality, and use all these principles to process our research data. The material which we are using will be the advertisements issued by a Swedish furniture company between 2012 and 2021 and published on social platform YouTube. The results of our research will, of course, point to strategic orientations in advertising practices by this firm. However, and more importantly: following the main goal of our research, they will point to the possibilities of application of new, technologically based methods and their relevance to the understanding of new media. The results show that the use of big data sets and their digital processing open new perspectives applicable not only to the understanding of new media and media messages but also to the understanding of the broader social and cultural context within which they are created and interpreted.

new media ; media message ; media visualization ; information and communication technologies ; IKEA

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