Thanks to today's communication technologies, even traditional texts, works perhaps written by 18th century authors, can be published online. Yet to be classified as "new media writing," a text needs to break free from the boundaries of text-based prose.
It needs to be more, for example, than the Declaration of Independence uploaded to Wikipedia. Images, video, sound, hyperlinks, social media features (such as discussions forums or social bookmarks)--these are some of the features that distinguish new media genres from traditional print texts that have been published online. In addition, as writers work over time with specific technologies, patterns of organization, length, citation, linking, embedding emerge. For example, college students are fairly accustomed to the course blog, where they are expected to summarize responses to required readings, link to related articles, and comment on other students' course blogs. That said, because we are in the naescent, muddled, chaotic stages of early exploration, the distinguishing features of genres of new media tend to be less static, well defined.
Literacy practices are undergoing major transformations. Thanks to new writing spaces, today's college students are redefining what it means to read, research, write, and share texts. These new writing spaces, new technologies, are empowering writers in ways that until now have been unimaginable. Moreover, as writers experiment with these new technologies, addressing audiences and purposes that stretch the boundaries of academic writing, they are creating new genres, new conventions for structuring texts, from video mashups, twitter poems, to cell phone novels. Everyone has an opportunity to be a Gutenberg or Thomas Paine, to espouse an individualized common sense through a blog or website. Aphorists pen new witticisms on Facebook for their “friends” to see, and e-mail is seen by first-year students as an “old” way to write.
The explosion of communication choices challenges colleges and universities to develop new courses and revise older courses and assignments to ensure students are prepared for the literacy demands of the 21st Century. Of course, as with any revolution, the seismic changes in literacy practices challenge the status quo--and all of the money and power associated with traditional educational practices. Subsequently, as students have put down their books for YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and so on, educators worry that students have lost the ability to read the long book, to write the long research paper.
In addition to having more choices than ever when it comes to available writing spaces, today's college students have the potential to reach broad public audiences. Using ubiguitous, often free, open source tools, college students can broadcast their views to the world, potentially reaching millions of readers.
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