Forum: New Media & Society

This exploratory article builds upon industrial organization theory to discuss, clarify and tentatively predict how electronic publishing affects the performance of professional information markets in the Netherlands. First, it explains how the availability of low-cost electronic reproduction and distribution technologies initiates new entry and vertical disintegration in the professional information value chain. It then argues that traditional publishers use electronic publishing strategies to counter these threats and to regain control over professional information markets. It subsequently theorizes how these changes are likely to affect market performance. Finally, it predicts that electronic publishing is likely to improve performance of professional information markets, by reinforcing competition between traditional publishers that operate on information markets, and new entrants that operate on attention markets.

Videogames represent what may be the current apotheosis, and certainly most widely available implementation, of high-level human-computer interaction. As such, they must be viewed as a paradigmatic emblem of the new media. This article presents findings from two longitudinal studies that highlight the analytical and methodological weaknesses of the (sparse) extant scholarly studies of the medium, and calls for a more sensitive approach to investigating and interpreting the composition of the interactive experience of videogame play. The article offers an integrative model describing the complex of dialectical relationships and interactions between previously discrete concepts and constructs of player, system and gameworld.

A shift in the horse racing industry toward the satellite simulcasting of races for wagering at off-track betting facilities has driven horse racing toward the use of interactive communication technologies. The result is a structure of economic, social, and policy relations that is intended to organize the public and private spaces of members of the industry’s target markets.

The use of interactivity as a variable in empirical investigations has dramatically increased with the emergence of new communication channels such as the world wide web. Though many scholars have employed the concept in analyses, theoretical and operational definitions are exceedingly scattered and incoherent. Accordingly, the purpose of this project is to engender a detailed explication of interactivity that could bring some consensus to how the concept should be theoretically and operationally defined. Following Chaffee’s (1991) framework for concept explication, we generate new theoretical and operational definitions that may be central to future work in this area. In particular, we suggest that interactivity is both a media and psychological factor that varies across communication technologies, communication contexts, and people’s perceptions.

In this article we describe research that overcomes some of the flaws of Uses and Gratifications research by combining information need concepts with concepts from Media Choice models, and by making use of the Policy Capturing method. Using this method, we obtained in-depth knowledge about the basic characteristics of information needs that can be used to explain a choice for specific media, i.e. traditional mass media and Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based media. In two studies regarding users’ information needs in an academic context, and employees within an organizational setting, we found that the same characteristics of information need, such as topicality and context, are important predictors of media choice. The results show that more refined analyses with regard to dimensions underlying information need can contribute to insight into when and how media, including new technologies, can be successful in the emerging information society, for example, by taking context issues into account.