New Media Challenges and Opportunities

Catherine Middleton (leader), Diane Gromala (co-leader)

The underlying concept in nMedia is the development of new ways to create and integrate content directed towards one or more modalities of human perception. New media not only affect lifestyles and entertainment, but also impact the ways people interact with business, governments, healthcare providers, and with each other as an integral part of everyday life. To improve Canadians' capacities to engage with, and to benefit from new media, the theme's researchers will identify, develop, and evaluate the tools, skills, and methodologies needed to advance the next generation of new media applications and distribution channels.

The full range of new media has yet to be defined. Traditional media such as music, film, photography, sculpture, theater, the written and spoken word, performance and installation art are all morphing as digital technology presents new opportunities. emerging hybrids blur distinctions and pose new challenges. Delivery and distribution options, including mobile platforms, continue to emerge.

The promise of ubiquitous access brings with it questions surrounding the provenance, trustworthiness, and archival nature of new media that will necessitate social and political dialogues based on deep understandings of the many conflicting and often tangled interdependencies inherent in the technology. Innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of cultural industries, media production, humanmedia interaction, and media management are required, in a research context that can facilitate extended, ongoing information exchange among communities looking at new media problems from different disciplinary perspectives.

Development of new media technologies over the past ten years has changed the way that people have entertained, informed, and educated themselves. In many cases, the adoption and use of these new technologies has dramatically altered the way that content is created, shared, experienced, stored, managed, and repurposed. We have seen wide reaching impact, not only in the quantity of content available, but also in the diversity of distribution channels, interfaces, and work processes. These in turn have exerted immense influence on cultural, legal, and business aspects of multimedia creation and use, as new media experiences evolve beyond TV and computer screens to allow fully interactive physical, emotional, and sensory engagement.

In spite of the enormous effect that new media technologies have on users, human behaviour and human-media interaction are often not considered in the technologies' design. Moreover, research in human-media interaction (or, more often, its enabler: human-computer interaction) has not taken place within an environment that tracks the entire life cycle of media content, from production to archiving. This has resulted in media research that focuses on technology R&D alone, and in human interaction studies that focus on content only as a product for consumption after its creation, or only as an artifact for retrieval.

The Grand Challenges in new media research are complex and can only be addressed within an environment that provides opportunities for multidisciplinary exploration across the entire life cycle of media content. An innovative approach to media research that explores human interaction with media from its genesis, and that tracks the changing interactions among users is essential, as content is created, distributed, experienced, understood, shared, archived, and then repurposed and reshaped over time. This requires research incorporating diverse community perspectives from the arts, social sciences, computer science, engineering, and humanities. It requires a flexible research environment that mimics everyday life yet is simultaneously production studio, screening room, interaction laboratory, and digital library -- a crucible where the requirements and capabilities of each discipline can inform, and be informed by, the others. This research will have direct application to the design and accessibility of innovative digital media environments, interfaces, and systems, as well as to the processes for the management of media assets and of media production, benefiting the growing Canadian media economy.

Research activities in the nMedia theme are clustered around two broad sub-themes: New Media Creation and New Media Analysis.

New Media Creation

nMedia focuses on new media creative processes in the context of a distributed workflow that is mediated by social practices in global, highspeed networks. At one level, the research will address the creative process itself, analyzing activities (HDVID), workflows, and requirements for successful collaboration in pre-production design and planning, in production and post-production, and in distribution. At another level, the research will address the infrastructure (DINS), knowledge, processes, and protocols (PERUI) necessary to support such activities effectively in a distributed, high-speed, socially networked environment.

These research initiatives focus on the need to develop a global cyber-infrastructure suitable for the professional production, distribution, display of, and interaction with digital media. Of particular interest is developing an understanding of the relationship between technological innovation and production: How will new media change formal production and post-production work flows (MEOW)? How is aesthetic output influenced by these changes (AESTHVIS)? What creative endeavors are hindered or enhanced by new media technologies? How are the roles of traditional media and cultural institutions such as journalism (NEWS), museums, libraries, archives, and art galleries, changing or being changed by new media technologies, and how are citizens becoming more engaged in production?

New Media Analysis

Research in nMedia focuses on how users consume, represent, select, and retrieve new media and its derivatives and how this should inform creation, delivery, archiving, retrieval, and repurposing (DIGILAB). At one level, it addresses viewers/consumers/users and their reactions and consumer behaviour. At another level, the research addresses the infrastructure, processes, and protocols needed to optimize consumption and to enable engagement and interaction with new media (NAVEL). Research initiatives in this theme are focused on how humans acquire, experience, and interact with media in various situations and environments, how they conceptualize their needs for media, and how they internally represent media. Research in this area will draw upon research in audience studies, information-seeking behaviour, and human-computer interaction. It will distinguish itself by its broader coverage of the consumption of media for entertainment, and to enhance physical well-being (GAMFIT, CPRM) as well as for information (NGAIA). As such, interactions under investigation will extend beyond humancomputer interaction to include: the study of human engagement and reactions to new media in theatres, galleries, museums, libraries, homes, and on the street (PLAYPR) as well as the study of human engagement across diverse delivery and consumption environments, such as personal mobile devices.

The unifying vision of the nMedia theme is to foster emerging new media research across diverse research communities with diverse methodologies. GRAND's multiply webbed network will enable the flexibility necessary in conceptualizing research goals and approaches, leveraging new disciplinary perspectives, and exploring emergent, unanticipated areas of media interaction research.