New Media As An Agent Of Change

The interaction between technology and society, are always targeted as an issue during the development of technology. The emergence and application of new media alongside the articulation with the structural changes of social culture, is the starting point of this dissertation. Based media ecology and cultural research theoretical framework, by using the logical deduction and macro speculation as the research approach, the dissertation treats new media as the incentive of society cultural reform to discuss the symbiosis relationship between the new medium and its culture under the complex social, economical and political backgrounds. By elaborating the changes occurred between the communication subject and communication ecology under new media environment, analyze the features and issues in China’s society culture addressed under the new media era.The life style was greatly different because of new media. The language and literature transfer from’single-dimension’to’multi-dimension’. Meanwhile, the feature of the new media,’hyper-text’also been convert, the reading habits as well as thinking modes dividing overwhelmingly, the’online-offline’polarized life style finally established. Take the point of view from economic dimension, new media promote the transition from semiotic value to cultural capital. The development and popularity of digital technology, in a way decline the entry threshold of cultural industry, stimulate the development of low cost’’intensity’mode of production, and completely break the channel monopoly from traditional culture to the selling of cultural products, and accelerates the overall development in cultural industry. On political dimension, by empowering the grass-root class, new media alter the compose of the opinion leader, reform the means citizens taking part in politics, remold the public political awareness and presentation. From the cultural dimension perspective, new medium also impact inevitably on the establishment of the social mainstream culture, and promotes the cultural diversity. The position of elite culture, mass culture, foreign culture and subculture had changed, inside the area of cultural convergence created by new media, the relationship between all these cultures are not simply competitive, but constantly curb, interact and cohere, then creating a new culture model altogether. At the same time, one thing we cannot deny is that many problems brought by new media to the society culture, especially in the concussion of cultural order, like network violence, false information, lack protect of privacy and intellectual property. The reform function of every kinds of technology are under the control of its system, society and cultural environment. In this dissertation, the’technology determinant’angle was abandoned for its limit of being narrow, comparatively the media ecology perspective was brought into it to discuss the incentive of society culture transform. The new media technology, based on the interaction between society and technology, explore the possibilities and diversity of media ecology.