New Media, New Audiences?

What's new about the new media?This apparently simple question is often answered by listing new technological developments.For example, if we consider domestic screen media, the oldest screen medium is television which, as terrestrial, national broadcasting, has been thoroughly incorporated into domestic routines for several generations and is only now at the point of substantial change with the advent of digital poly-channel television.Screen media now current are the video recorder, satellite television, computer games, teletext, being familiar items in British households for at least a decade. 1 More recent are cable television, the camcorder and, most important, the personal computer -all currently being adopted by a growing minority of households, and thus moving from early adopter status towards mass adoption. 2Last, and most obviously recognisable as new, are prospective technologies such as interactive teletext, multimedia computing, home shopping, and, attracting by far the most interest, the Internet, all of them likely to become widely adopted in the coming decade, subject to a host of economic, technical, regulatory and sociocultural factors.In this paper I argue that if social science is to understand 'what's new for society about the new media?' it must locate technological developments within the cultural processes and associated timescale of domestic diffusion and appropriation.While 'what's new for society' represents the scope of this journal, in this paper I shall begin to map some of the issues relating specifically to media audiences.