New Media Futures

Reviewed by Young Lim, Associate Professor, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on 12/4/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This book covers comprehensive but a bit too broad topic in new media programs that covers critical/cultural studies, media management, diffusion of and synthetic or hybrid media production. Even though the book title "New Media Futures" simply appears to explain what the future of media will look like, especially social media, the title can fool all readers. This book is way more different from any other traditional media or communication books that can be written by media scholars who cover media effects, communication principles and social media practices. This book is a closer to a science book that analyzes the media and its relevant elements by using coding systems. I am impressed with the author's deep understanding of interdisciplinary integrations of psychology, science (data analysis and machine learning), and media effects. One more thing to point out is that this book has no chapters, but sections.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

This book will need ongoing updates as the media environment and the world change and evolve rapidly after COVID. This book focuses on exploring media production based on social media editing and explaining psychological procedures of sending and receiving messages, including several communication models. Many traditional media concepts are introduced from a digital-driven perspective in a fresh manner, but some of them are shallowly explained in less than two paragraphs. Again, as this book focuses on broadly covering as many digital phenomena as possible in five sections by including maybe too many topics and elements of new media, it is hard to gain deeper knowledge. In other words, this book too simplifies the complex topics of data analysis and digital components of the media.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

Publishing very up-to-date media books is almost impossible with the drastically evolving media industry. Departing from the aspect, this book offers a great deal of knowledge in how we could predict the future of media production and media effect in terms of using new media technology. However, this book did not predict the game-changing players in the field of the media such as COVID, Zoom, TikTok, and new apps with editing techs on smartphones. This needs new updated examples.

Clarity rating: 4

Although there are some new concepts and theoretical models with technical terminology, this book explains them in very simple and clear way as it includes a wealth of figures and photos. However, some sub-sections end up being too brief in terms of explaining some complex concepts with no examples. I think there are gaps between sections when it comes to clarity. In particular, Section 5 titled Provocations mentions a lot about future but it vaguely explains A.I., machine learning, and deep leaning without a strong connection with no current media trend. However, Section 2 and Section 3 are quite clearly explain and conceptualize the topics and principles.

Consistency rating: 5

The book is consistent throughout, exploring all possible ways of future changes in media, media effect, and media production from a technological perspective, which helps readers understand the framework clear. The author's viewpoints in addition to the overall layout and design of each section is consistent as well.

Modularity rating: 4

This book is displayed in a decent modularity with its easy divisible and editable structure. This is a good read, particularly with those who are interested in social media editing and data analysis. Since this book has only five sections, it can be used as a supplementary text for any course modularity.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

It is convenient to read this book with its Chicago style format which places source citations at the bottom of each page. This book is not thick at all, but it include more than enough of figures and photos to explain concepts and theoretical models. It could have been better if all sections include a sub-section of conclusive and comprehensive paragraphs for a better flow of its organization.

Interface rating: 5

This book doesn't have any interface issues. No reader will have any challenges navigating this book. The figures and photos are clearly displayed. This book is a great example to use online interface for the textbook. Some Sections also incorporate links of original websites in which all new textbooks should consider following the trend.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There were no significant errors or no consistent grammatical errors apparent.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

Since this book clarifies that it covers a wide range of topics of new media and technology, it seems that this book can be culturally used worldwide as the world is connected via the internet. When it comes to academic culture, this book can be used in interdisciplinary areas, including engineering, social science, and information technology.

Comments

I would have highly recommended this book for my students if I had used it before the pandemic. But if this book comes out updated or second edition around 2023, I would like to read and use it for my classes.