Examining new media through the lens of technical communication is beneficial to technical writers who create content to inform an audience. Certain aspects of Janet Murray, Lev Manovich, and Eugenia Siapera perspective on new media contains points that relate to new media’s impact on technical communication.
What is technical communication
“Communicating about technical or specialized topics, such as computer applications, medical procedures, or environmental regulations. Communicating by using technology, such as web pages, help files, or social media sites. Providing instructions about how to do something, regardless of how technical the task is or even if technology is used to create or distribute that communication.”
– Society for Technical Communication
The Views of Manovich
Manovich does not agree with defining new media in terms of cyberculture. He defines cyberculture as “the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication” (Manovich, 2003, p. 16).Yet, he defines new media as the “study of these objects [cultural objects]” (Manovich, 2003, p. 16) because it focuses on “the cultural and the computing” (Manovich, 2003, p. 16). Although they may be two distinct field, technical writers use the cyberculture to do their work. Since their pieces are tailored to their audience, they need to have a good understanding of who their audience is, what they know, and what they need to do. Today, online communities such as social media inform technical writers about their audiences and helps them craft messages that push them to act. To do this, they use various types of new media.
Manovich’s eighth proposition revolves new media as a distribution platform. Technical writers use new media such as the “Internet, Websites, [and] computer multimedia” (Manovich, 2003, p. 17) to distribute information. Since audiences are no longer interested in bland and static information, technical writers have to make their messages dynamic. Also, they have to find more than one way to present information and inform their audiences. For example, this can involve creating videos to explain a process, creating a brief manual in the form of a downloadable e-book, or even infographics. Over the years, technical communication has faced a shift to digital projections. A lot of the writing they now do is used through new media to facilitate access, distribution, and collaboration.
THE VIEWS OF Murray
Similar to how artists can choose from many mediums to craft art, technical writers choose digital mediums as their weapon of choice to craft written pieces to distribute to the masses. This relates to Murray’s claim that the digital medium draws us to it. Murray says it’s because “we are pattern makers who are thinking beyond our old tools” (Murray, 2003, p.11) and “the digital medium is as much a pattern of thinking and perceiving as it is a pattern of making things” (Murray, 2003, p.11). People still use pen and paper to communicate today, but as we can see by the declining membership of local newspapers, people are turning to new media to learn and spread information. Digital medium is where the audiences of technical writers are lurking. If technical writers want to reach the masses, digital media is where they have to go. I think this influences even their education. I think it’s important that they learn how to use various new media to communicate so they can later do it when they’re employed. If not, they’re going to be at a disadvantage and won’t know how to use new media to build an audience, attract an audience, or inform an audience.
Another important point is about Tim Berners-Lee, who revolutionized communication all because he was trying to “solve a technical problem” (Murray, 2003, p.10). Before he created the World Wide Web, communication could be modeled as “passing around containers of information… to passing around viewable documents” (Murray, 2003, p.10) and that opened up a new marketplace and a global library. Although the World Wide Web has come a long way, his invention paved the way for a “faster connection, a bigger data pipeline, a more elegantly designed indexing, retrieval, and display system, a more tactical interface, and a more complete convergence of entertainment media” (Murray, 2003, p.10). He gave communication a structure and writer powers over information. Writers in technical communication can “express many views of the same data, the same object [and] the same event” (Murray, 2003, p.11). Additionally, writers can “say more complicated things to more people with greater understanding” (Murray, 2003, p.11). This ties in with what technical writers do every day, they explain complex subjects in way for everyday people to understand.
Most importantly, he untied all the world’s information, giving them free access to it. Technical writers have access to a lot of information which they can use to educate, inform, market, and etc. Often, this information can be accessed for free. Other times, it has been commodified, so they have to pay for it. Similar, sometimes the pieces technical writers create are commodified and so consumers have to pay to access it and use it.
THE VIEWS OF Siapera
Siapera examines the relationship between new media, economy, and society. Siapera sees new media as agents of change. Under informational capitalism, there have been shifts of employment and labor. For example, there is a “decline of manual labour… the rise of producers…increase of services… and the expansion of both upper and lower levels on the occupational structure” (Siapera, 2018, p.22). Additionally, labor became flexible. New media allows us employers to do freelance work and or work remotely at home or in a different country. Specifically, “instant and reliable communication and data transfer” allows employees to adapting to change working conditions, market conditions. However, for employees to take advantage of this they have to become what Siapera calls “technologically literate” (2018, p.22).
Employers benefit because they can cut costs, reduce management, and delegate work accordingly. A downside is that new media and technological advances (like automated systems, drones) have taken jobs off the market since robots have replaced administrative jobs.
Additionally, new media has revolutionized the marketing aspect of the economy. Now that consumers have a say, in-depth research goes into seeing how the public feels and views a product to effectively market that product to them.
To be successful, technical communication needs to be two-way. Technical writers have to know what consumers what and then find diverse ways to present products and services to them. Additionally, technical writers can enjoy the perk of working as freelancers or tele-workers which allows them focus on their home and families.
References
Manovich, Lev. “New Media from Borges to HTML.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wadrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003. 13–25. Print.
Murray, J. H (2012). Inventing the medium. In N. Wardrip-Fruin., & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp.3-11). Retrieved from http://www.newmediareader.com/book_contents.html
Siapera, E. (2018). Understanding new media (2nd ed.). London: SAGE Publications.
Society for Technical Communication. (n.d.). Defining Technical Communication. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://www.stc.org/about-stc/defining-technical-communication/
New Media: Understanding the Past and Present Views 