Yesterday morning, during a radio discussion on the role played by the Web and the Internet in the present evolution of communication and information, I heard some “experts”, coming from various fields (but no engineers nor scientists), talking about these tools as “new media”. Now, if one is to consider Internet and the Web as media, then, one can also say that the telephon or the fax are media as well, simply because they also make it possible to connect distant people or exchange ideas.  However, popular wisdom, like scientific and minimally nuanced discourses, would place them in the cateogry of transmission, if not of  person-to-person interaction tools.  Indeed, it is not because one can find contents from media productions (newspaper articles, video of TV programs, recording of radio shows, films or TV series, etc.) on the Web, that it becomes a media, while its association with the Web doesn’t make the Internet a media either.  This mix stems, in my opinion, from a frequent confusion between such notions as “media”, “communication” and those that can be regrouped under the label “traffic”: broadcasting, transmission and distribution.

The media: a bridge between two worlds

Let’s start with “media“, a totally banal world used daily. What is a media? The plethora of meanings that are assigned to this word and its multiple uses in daily conversations most often favor an understanding that is more based on a connivance between the people speaking than on a clear definition of the realities it can refer to. This widespread fair vagueness maintains a sort of mix-up about what one precisely means by “media”,  which is often politically heavily loaded.  It is thus very amusing to hear journalists talk about the role of media in the fueling of a public controversy, as if they or their employers had nothing to do with it. In this cas, the word “media” points to  journalistic information, such as TV or radio news, as well as the written press, and mostly, the others, the competitors of the speaker.  This trick allows them to make up for their own mistakes, by clumsily trying to erase the fact that they too belong to this professional field.  Or when voices are rising to condemn the so-called spreading of violence in society by the media, one must understand, the TV series, films or video games, as well as sometimes certain literary genres, which feature “action”, “thrillers”, “pornography” or “horror” narratives.  We are also often told that “new media” will bring democracy throughout the world, or, on the contrary, will facilitate domination and alienation of the weaks. In both cases, the reference is based on the assumed omnipotency of satellite, cabled or digital TV, Internet, the Web or mobile telephony.

The most obvious starting point for the exploration of this wealth of meanings lies in the dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English first defines media as an intermediary layer in anatomy. It is only in the second definition that it looks at the meaning related to the means of communication, indicating that media is the plural of medium and describing it as main means of mass communication (especially television, radio, newspapers) regarded collectively.  The Encyclopaedia Britannica, one of the main anglo-saxon encyclopaedic references, gives a similar definition: Each medium of communication, collectively known as the media, represents a means through which messages are encoded or transported between people. There are only five possible ways that messages may enter human consciousness: through sound, sight, touch, smell, and taste. This description emphasizes the encoding of the message and restricts the media possibilities to its capacities to stimulate one of the five human senses. Closely considered, these definitions don’t help us that much to make sense of the concept of media, as they offer a view that more or less matches the widespread confusion between the medium, communication, encoding and trafic.

Thus, to get a more specific understanding of the notion of “media”, a detour through social science and humanities might be useful. I’d like to introduce here some of my main references in this matter, starting with Régis Debray , who, in his Introduction à la médiologie (2000), bases his approach to this issue on the latin root of the word, that is “medium”.  Stemming from the verb “mediare”, which means to stand in the middle, to interpose oneself , and the adjective “medius”, which describes the state of what lies at the heart of or between two extremes,  the word refers to the idea of intervention, bridging or even of an itnerface building up the link between distinct worlds (R. Debray, 200: 117-118).  The media can then be conceived of as a sort of  material or spiritual platform between two different entities. Frederic Barbier and Catherine Bertho Lavenir, in the introduction of their book entitled Histoire des Médias: de Diderot à Internet (2003: 7), define this platform as a social system of communication, based on tools used for preservation and for bringing up to date cultural and political practices, through the spreading of messages or the transmission of knowledge. In a contemporary work, which has been regularly upgraded for the last 15 years, Philippe Breton and Serges Proulx (2006) offer a similar but more restrictive approach, speaking of message conveyance (transport de message). This process results from the combination of a mean of communication (moyen de communication) (gesture, sound, image, writing) and a material support. Communication is then defined as a formatting (mise en forme) which determines its typology, that is the intention of the producer (why? What is one trying to communicate?) and the imagined audience (to whom? For whom?).  Henry Jenkins (2006) makes an even sharper distinction between the technological and human elements. Considering media as cultural systems, he distinguishes between the medium, described as  the result of an encryption process, e.g., the recorded sound, which serves mediation,  and the delivery technology, that is the objects that makes it possible to convey and preserve contents, such as audio tapes, VHS, CD’s or even MP3 files (H. Jenkins, 2006: 14). Moreover, R. Debray breaks down the notion of medium into different layers of realities, which can intersect, but don’t necessarily overlap:

1. the code (writing, image, sound, audiovisual), which he refers to by the experssion means of communication as used by Serges Proulx and Philippe Breton (2006);
2. language, i.e., the social code of communication;
3. The material support (stone, parchment, paper, optical disc)
4. the spreading devices < (dispositif de diffusion)(handwriting, printing, byte) and the associated mode of conveyance(mode de circulation) (book, newspaper, magazine, flyer, audio tape, VHS, DVD, various networks, etc.) (R. Debray, 2000: 35).

The combination of these definitions result in the description of a “media” as a sociocultural system of communication (F. Barbier & Bertho Lavenir, 2003: 6; S. Proulx & P. Breton, 2006: 7) that makes it possible to convey contents, through the use of delivery technologies (H. Jenkins, 2006: 13), broadcasting infrastructures or distribution networks, working thanks to network devices and material supports (R. Debray, 2000: 35), towards a public which has been imagined by the producers of these contents. Communication is defined as a process by which a text is formatted, articulating codes of communication (gesture, sound, image, writing, video and audiovisual) (S. Proulx & P. Breton, 2006: 17; R. Debray, 2000: 35) and a medium, that is, the recording of content (H. Jenkins, 2006: 14), shaped by the specific physical and mecanical/electronic constraints of the supports and the devices of conveyance. This definition fits quite well the technical, economic and sociocultural realities of a TV channel,  a studio major, a newspaper or a publishing house, that is, public or private institutions, which we usually consider to be “traditional media”. Their main aim is to bridge between “producers”, that is people who want to spread their intellectual creations, and the “receivers”,  an aggregate of more or less anonymous persons, who accept to be momentarily an audience or a public of this mediation. It can also be applied to large “media” companies, like Time-Warner-Aol, which bring together under one umbrella the whole spectrum of activities, which were previously the prerogatives of distinct enterprises.  And last, this approach makes an important and clear distinction between the notions of communication and traffic, which are also regularly confused in conversations about the “new medias”.

Mass communication: sharing over a distance

The word media and communication are tightly linked, since the latter determines the mode of circulation of  contents, at the heart of media systems. The classical model of communication accounts for this link between these two notions, which is so strong that the two of them are often used as synonyms in daily speeches. Although enriched since its coining in the 1940’s by Harold Laswell, the linear basic model of communication continues to shape most reflexions on this issue:

Who says what, through which channel, [why?], to whom, with what effects?

Historically speaking, it appears that the word “communication” has been first coined in the 14th century, by Nicole Oresme, a philosopher and councellor to Charles V, himself the founder of the first royal library. This term served to express the distance that is established between the message and the receiver through writing and the storing of the book in a reference collection, as opposed to the idea of near fusion between the speaker and the receiver, which is supposed to take place during the communion of the catholic mass (R. Debray, 1991: 31). In present day lay language, this term is associated to a certain number of practices, such as conversation, dialogues or public information. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964) defines communication as the act of imparting (esp. news); information given; intercourse; common door or passage or road or rail or telegraph or other connexion between places. The Encyclopaedia Britannica proposes the following definition in the sense of a social behavior:  Exchange of meanings between individuals through a common system of symbols.  In both cases, the reality described is that of a form of a distant sharing of signals, information or messages, between two entities, through the intervention of a connecting system or through mediation. Communication appears therefore as a set of practices which couldn’t happen without the existence of a media.

Long and short distance traffic

The traffic of content within a media system can take place several ways, depending on the existing means of communication. One therefore can (and in my opinion, should) differentiate between the process of “broadcasting”, “transmission” and “distribution”.  If all three are based on the idea of moving an element from point A to point B, they diverge by the type of circulation they allow. These nuances are actually implied in the ethymological origin of these terms, which reflect, by the way, significant sociotechnical and economic differences.

The term “broadcasting” originally comes from agriculture and designates the action of scatter[ing] seeds over a large area (J. Jacobs, 2006: 121). Resulting from the combination of the prefix broad-, large, indefinite,  and the basis -casting, that is, to throw around, to spray, it designates the emission of waves in concentric circles, spreading from a center towards many indistinct antenna picking up the signal. It caracterizes the way television and radio functionned until the arrival of the Internet. Mobile phone networks and wireless systems are more recent illustrations of this type of circulation.

The word “transmission”, resulting from  the association between the latin prefix trans-, which means going over the other side of something, and the latin verb -mittere (-miso), to send, it means sending something or someone over an obstacle thanks to a platform, thus emphasizing the circulation from one point to another with the help of an intermediary. This process takes place in many telecommunication systems, such as the wired telegraph, radio transmission (mostly a military or professional tool), the wired telephon and the Internet, which all necessitate a network of cables. Contrary to broadcasting, which sends signals indistinctly in all directions, with only the hope to be picked up by receivers spread randomly over a defined territory, the transmitted signal follows a specific path, marked out by tubes, and isn’t supposed to scatter (eventhough a bit of it might get lost).

Finally, the term “distribution”, involves several more identifiable agents.  It is built on the addition of  the latin prefix -dis, which means separation or sharing, to the latin verb -tributere, pointing to the action of spreading among specific individuals or groups. It therefore refers to an idea of supply and demand, based on a relationships that is established, as the need arises, between a supplier and a large number of identifiable consummers solicitating him. It is thus a process by which a signal is produced as a result of a request or in the hope to generate one. The first example that comes to mind of course is the Web. Contents are stored on servers and copies are sent out through the network of computers that make up the Internet to the person who made the request. Distribution over the web can take place as a centralized process, whereas a server answers many requests, or as a decentralized process, as in the case of P2P (peer-to-peer), when contents or parts of contents are collectively shared. But the teletext, the French Minitel, as well as cabled television (and pay-per-view TV) all constitute older examples of such signal distribution.

Internet and the Web: on transmission and protocoles of distribution

The upshot of all these explanations is that the traffic of content is an integral part of a media system, but can’t be considered as a media itself. As shown by the examples provided earlier, the Web and the Internet aren’t media at all, no more than emails are, but systems of data transmission and content distribution. In fact, Internet, which literally means “inter-networks”, is more precisely defined as  a connexion of internal computer networks, within a building or a complex of buildings, linked together through phone lines, to make a network of networks, which is itself also based on a web of phone lines, and more recently, of high-capacity fibre-optic cables. Access to distant documents, as well as to email, were its main advantages. However, between the 1960’s and the 1990’s, one had to know the exact address of a document to obtain it through the Internet. It therefore resembled a sort of gigantic academic international library, in which, in order to find a bok, one had to know the numbers indicating its location on the shelves. And one also had to know precisely what one was looking for, because it was impossible to walk through it. With the arrival of the Web, this changed completely, because it is made up of an interwining of hypertext links, making it possible to order references to content stored on servers and computers connected to the network. Thanks to “search engines”, one can ask the system to gather all the references to documents matching the request made up of keywords or even full questions. The Web is therefore only one application of the Internet, among others like email, Usenet, instant messaging or VoIP (telephone over the Internet). It is therefore possible for a media (a TV channel, a newspaper, or a media group) to use the Internet and the Web as a communication infrastructure, in the same way they use teledistribution or radiotelevision broadcasting, etc.

New electronic medias

Does this mean that “new medias” only constitute one more intellectual fraud and an empty slogan? I don’t believe it. As we have just seen, a media needs an infrastructure of broadcasting, distribution or transmission (or all three together), as well as delivery technologies, to circulate its contents. A new media could then be defined as an institution developing its activities through emerging technologies or new practices, exploiting the potential of these tools. In oder words, it would be functioning differently from a “traditional” media, that is an institution pre-existing the arrival of these new technologies and platforms. However, in my opinion, the novelty of a media lies less in the adoption of these new tools or networks than in the development of innovative practices, resulting in different uses. A newspaper, which only publishes on a commercial website the content of its printed version, couldn’t be called a “new media”, just an old media using new tools to extend old practices. Even the inclusion of forums, making it possible for readers to post their reactions under each article, would constitute, in the end, only an extension on the Web of the old readers’ mail habit, with the sole consequence of increasing the amount of message, and possibly, the stress of the journalists who then get generously insulted or denigrated by infuriated readers. On the other hand, a blog or a Wiki site of education can be considered as new media, since not only do tools and content change in nature, but also the organization of the authors-producers, as well as the relationships established with their publics.