Author: Alexander Tawiah

How Digital Media Has Changed Music and Gaming Digital media has shaped both the music and gaming industries and ushered in new ways of consumption, creation, and interaction. In his contemporary music review titled “Internet Music: An Introduction,” Andrew Hugill discusses how digital media has transformed the music industry. According to Hugill, the internet has extended the level of music beyond just a medium for distribution to become an integral part of the music creation and consumption process. “The internet is not just a distribution channel…it is a musical instrument in its own right” (Hugill, 2005). This perspective from Hugill…

The Future of VR and Extended Realities The future of Virtual Reality (VR) and other extended realities like Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) continues to be a subject of significant debate among tech innovators, business leaders, and everyday users. On one side of the argument, companies like Meta, formerly known as Facebook, envision VR and other extended realities as components of the web’s future which will transform how we interact, work, and play online. On the other side, critics argue that these technologies remain expensive, exclusive, and, to some extent, mere toys for a niche audience. The article…

Introduction In today’s digital media environment, the relationship between copyright, creativity, and net neutrality has become a topic of concern and crucial debate among scholars, lawmakers, creators, government agencies, and digital media experts. The widespread dissemination of digital content, combined with the ease of sharing and modifying such content, raises questions about whether current copyright laws meet the needs of today’s digital media environment. In this article, I discuss how copyright impacts creativity, assess whether current legal frameworks adequately address the challenges of the digital environment, and examine the various perspectives surrounding net neutrality. Copyright and Creativity In his article…

Introduction Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining the next phase of technology and has gained widespread attention among scholars, the tech industry, government agencies, and the general public. At the center of this year’s South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) was AI. “Generative AI is everywhere at this point. There’s scarcely a significant part of the company (Amazon) that’s untouched by it,” The Vice President of Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence Vishal Sharma said. Michael Dell, Founder and CEO of Dell Technologies also said, “I think AI is going to empower creators just like it’s going to empower everyone else in our industry,…

Programming and Product Management in the Media Industry The need for media industries to embrace programming and product management skills to help with news distribution and marketing strategies has gained scholarly attention, more increasingly in recent times. Cindy Royal of Texas State University, among other journalism and communication scholars have conducted various research which highlights the potential benefits of these computer skills for the media industry and journalism schools. In her 2016 NiemanLab Prediction, Royal discussed the evolving role of product management within media organizations and emphasized its future significance. She suggested that media companies and journalism schools would begin…

Introduction An examination of the current state of journalism has become a crucial topic of discussion among scholars in communication, journalism, and media studies, considering the ever-growing digital media, trends and emerging technologies, which poses a threat to the traditional concepts, skills, and practices of journalism. Traditionally, journalism has been primarily focused on information gathering through activities such as interviewing, writing, and reporting. However, the rapid growth of digital media, changing trends and the emergence of new technologies have sparked scholarly discussions regarding the necessity for journalists to adapt and develop computer skills. These computer skills include but not limited…

The term ‘social media’ has no single definition. Since its emergence, media experts and scholars in communication and media studies have offered various interpretations of the term. In their 2018 paper “A Decade of Research on Social Media and Journalism: Assumptions, Blind Spots, and a Way Forward” published in Media and Communication, Lewis & Molyneux observed that, in its broadest sense, social media could encompass any medium that facilitates interpersonal communication, ranging from CB radios to Google Hangouts. However, they colloquially classified social media as social networking sites, apps, and platforms. Obar & Wildman (2015) also define social media as…

Cyberculture and digital divide are significant topics in the field of digital media and technology. Interestingly, with the rise of social media platforms and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), these subjects have become crucial for scholars in media and communication, technology experts, corporate institutions, and even enthusiasts in the media and technology field. The point is that, as our society becomes increasingly reliant on digital technologies for communication, commerce, and information access, questions surrounding identity online and the manifestation of diversity have become important. Scholars, research institutes and media firms have extensively explored these issues to understand the implications…

Propounded by Everett M. Rogers in 1962, Diffusion is the process through which an innovation (an idea, product, technology, process, or service) spreads (more or less rapidly, in more or less the same form) through mass and digital media, interpersonal and network communication, over time, through a social system, with a wide variety of consequences (Nabi et al., 2003). The theory holds that an individual in a social system may become aware of an innovation through mass or digital media and individually choose to adopt it, or may be persuaded through interpersonal communication by influential peers. According to the theory,…

The idea of “digital media” in communication has been defined differently by various scholars. Das (2020) defines digital media as content that can be created, viewed, modified, communicated, and preserved on digital devices. This includes software, digital videos, images, web pages, databases, digital audio, and E-books. Unlike analog media, digital media is stored digitally and transmitted over networks (Elias, 2014). Some scholars thus define digital media by platforms like Google, Facebook, or Amazon, while others define it by the supporting technology. Considering various scholarly definitions, I view digital media as content encoded in machine-readable formats which allows for the representation,…