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Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero

Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero
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Social media and new media are not the same

Started by Christopher S. Penn · 10 months ago

In the new media space, we use a lot of terms fairly confusingly:
Old media
Broadcast media
Mainstream media
New media
Social media
Personal media
Citizen journalism
Citizen media
Here’s a summary of how I think some of this stuff breaks down. Not authoritative, b ... Continue reading »

17 comments

  • kosso

    10 months ago

    Good points.

    But I call the whole box on the right 'Social Multimedia'

    as seen at http://podcamp.phreadz.com ;)
    reply
  • Jason Jarrett

    10 months ago

    Great article, going to digg it. I agree I don't think that social media and new media are the same thing and I think that articles like yours will help people navigate this new environment and make better informed choices about how to use it.
    reply
  • AnnKingman

    10 months ago

    Like the breakdown. Where do you put email marketing in the mix? Or is that not "media" at all?
    reply
  • Christopher S. Penn

    10 months ago

    It's not, no more so than the postal service is a form of media. Direct mail is a form of communication, but not media to me - after all, whether postal or digital, there's an awful lot of mail I get that I do *not* want others reading!
    reply
  • Susan Murphy

    10 months ago

    I agree, Chris, but there is an important distinction to make, in my opinion.

    I see "new media" as the whole, encompassing all forms of content delivery via the Web. I actually see social media as more a subset of new media, a form of content delivery not unlike audio or video. It's true that social media is inherently two-way, but then again video and audio have that capacity as well. So does that make video and audio social media, or new media (In the case of your blog, perhaps, yes, because I can leave a video comment!)?

    In the end, it's a real grey area, I think. We are all in this space, inventing it as we go along. I guess it's up to us to some how define it too.

    Posts like yours are great because they get people thinking. I'm going off to ponder now. Thanks!
    reply
  • Christopher S. Penn

    10 months ago

    @Susan: audio and video have that capacity to a degree, but enabled by other mechanisms, like comments. It gets grey and fuzzy to be sure!
    reply
  • robblatt

    10 months ago

    I don't think that you can classify a conference as social media. It's a conference. Everything that people do there fits into one of the three categories, so if you're really looking to include PodCamp for some reason, it would stretch across all three or at least straddle the line between new and social media. I would also list is as "PodCamp content" and not PodCamp.
    reply
  • Francis Wooby

    10 months ago

    I'm not sure I can think of any new media that works without a social component of some sort. Blogs are not blogs without comments. Video sharing includes comments and/or easy linking/embedding features. Podcasts that don't involve audience feedback are just broadcasts. Thus I think of "new media" and "social media" interchangeably. The fundamental element to this new way of communicating is the two-way conversation. As long as that's in place in some form, I don't know if it matters so much what we call the medium.
    reply
  • Daniel Johnson, Jr.

    10 months ago

    Where would you put the newspaper site that is online and has comments enabled? I think that over time that line in the middle is going to go away, and eventually the "new media" will just be media.
    reply
  • Christopher S. Penn

    10 months ago

    Bingo, Dan. That's exactly it - after a while, it will all be media, period.
    reply
  • billdeys

    10 months ago

    awesome stuff but I think Blogs, Podcasts and YouTube can very much be part of "social media" it all depends on how it is used and what the content calls for. When used by "us" it's social, by "old media" it's them using new media and not social.
    reply
  • Andy Sternberg

    10 months ago

    I think the social aspect of the box on the right is still morphing. All of these things can have various degrees of interaction depending on the user / audience. For example, YouTube can be quite social with the multimedia calls and responses and conversations, and Twitter, for some, is still a one-way street. Nice shout-out to the Wasilla Frontiersman, btw - I've gotta check out their web presence (btw, what was Cheney's hometown newspaper?)
    reply
  • KeithChilds

    10 months ago

    I've tried various ways to map out new/social media and for me the key is the level of personal engagement- for example a company on Facebook is not really social as I define it- only individuals from the company can be social, with opinions and ideas. Throwing a video on to YouTube and seeing comments build up has a social element- but if the only thing you have done is to stimulate a conversation- and you ignore the comments then I think that's pseudo-social. If you have a blog with comments enabled, but nobody comments- maybe because you haven't said anything interesting- is it social?
    reply
  • Arie

    10 months ago

    Chris - love the distinction between requiring interaction and those forms that can be (but don't have to be) passive. Really helps to think about how the different forms of new media would be useful in very different ways depending on the level of interactivity, too...
    reply
  • Ari Herzog

    10 months ago

    As Guy Kawasaki tweeted to me in response to a question about differentiating Web 2.0 from Enterprise 2.0, "Either you have something good or you don't...The rest is just spin."

    http://twitter.com/guykawasaki/statuses/860211620

    Similarly, I'll offer that on behalf of the general populace who need boxes and diagrams to be explained differences of then and now, I'd use one term, not two. While *I know* what you mean, Chris, comparing new media to social media, Joe Public doesn't without a diagram, so why make the diagram? Just use one term.

    And we're not even discussing digital media.
    reply
  • WRSELL

    9 months ago

    Chris - this is one of the best (possibly THE best) description of these terms I've seen or read. This "space" is full a jargon, but also full of 'real stuff'. Sometimes a simple diagram and 300 words can explain the meaning of the 'new media' life.

    Well put, and I look forward to your commentary and insight at our upcoming conference New Marketing Summit in October! There you can help carry this same message to an eager-to-learn crowd!

    Best regards,
    Bill Sell
    CrossTech Media
    reply
  • kcarruthers

    9 months ago

    Chris - really good explanation of the difference between old, new, and social media. Especially that social media requires social participation. Very insightful.
    reply

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