Teaching New New Media

We are reading Paul Levinson's book, "New New Media," in my New Media and Public Communication Class. Levinson differentiates "new new media" from "new media," arguing that "new media" refers to the Internet, e-mail and search engines, whereas "new new media" refers to free user-generated content, including those that take place through social media (a sub-set of "new new media"). It is really fun to consider all these new media forms, in particular to think about the similarities and differences among them. I was struck last week by the level of deception that takes place on YouTube (people posting videos for money), Wikipedia (people changing content for money), Digg (people digging stories for money), and Blogs (people blogging for money). In fact, I keep getting a notice from Amazon that I can get paid for linking to its page, like I did above, through the Amazon Associates program! It is also interesting to see how "old media" theories relate to these new forms. For example, the theory of a two-step flow applies very well to social bookmarking, and so does agenda setting.