INTERACTIVITY AND MULTIMEDIA: IN SEARCH FOR MEANING AND CONTINUITY

When speaking about new digital media technologies and especially about their potentials in education, political participation, arts and mass communications, we often refer to interactivity and multimedia. Proliferation of these terms in contemporary discourse makes their semantic field elusive. Thus, it is the intention of this paper to provide an overview of different meanings of interactivity and multimedia, and, by discussing some definitions, to examine their applicability not only to the new media, but also to other media and their specific forms of communication. At the same time, it is an attempt to identify which dimensions of interactivity and multimedia are essentially new, and which establish the continuity with previous media and communication practices.

INFLUENCE OF VIRAL MARKETING ON THE MEDIA PRODUCTION: AMERICAN EXPERIENCES

Viral marketing is a set of marketing techniques that use existing social networks (both real and virtual) to achieve specific marketing objectives, through viral processes that resemble the spread of computer viruses. The central part of this process are the users, or potential audiences, which in certain way become marketing managers, constantly recruiting new marketing managers. It was necessary to fulfill one important prerequisite in order to reach the moment when the boundaries between different media formats are no longer of that much importance – erasing the boundaries between the real and the virtual space, creating a hybrid space, the so-called “real virtuality”. This article tries to cover recent US media practices related to viral campaigns in the film and television production, and other forms of media expression through media channels that are intertwined, denying borders between them, making members of the audience interactive and integral participants in this collaborative process.

IUGO ERGO SUM: RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONTINUUM

Personal computers, mobile phones, iPod, iPhone, e-book, the Internet, Skype, online shopping and learning – these are just some of the unavoidable elements of modern life. However, the breakthroughs in technology that have changed the world have somehow left the educational system unchanged, creating a huge gap between learning and teaching in schools and ways of acquiring knowledge in everyday life. Regardless of the global technology and information infrastructure, information society will not be transformed into a knowledge society until each individual is qualified to select, organize, transfer and use information in a creative and socially responsible manner. Ideas of Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière are analyzed in the context of philosophy of education.

DIGITAL WORLD AND THE PHENOMENON OF INFORMATION SURPLUS

This paper examines the causes and consequences of the phenomenon of information surplus in the world of digital media technologies, with particular emphasis on the functions of libraries in the selection and evaluation of information content. As Baudrillard showed, we lived in a world with more and more information and less and less sense. The excess of information undermines the very communication, and thus the essence of sociability. Obviously, information networks and digital technologies are fundamentally changing our habits and experience, producing a new culture and new institutional models and social paradigm. However, we must keep a measure of caution and healthy skepticism before we start believing that new technologies automatically solve the puzzle of human history. In the digital world, we must ask: Where is the knowledge we lost with information? Where is the wisdom we have lost with the knowledge? The authors remind us of the Jose Ortega y Gaset’s opening lecture at the Paris International Congress of Librarians and Bibliographers (1934) entitled Mission of the Librarian, and his statement that librarians have to leave the neutral position in the procurement, processing and organization of the records of human knowledge and take responsibility for producing and using knowledge. One could have rightly expected that the concept of redundant books and the necessity to control the flow of ideas and knowledge would trigger unanimous disapproval of expert circles. However, although Ortega’s speech sparked numerous debates and controversies, it has had a significant impact on defining the structure, function and mission of contemporary libraries and other information institutions. The fundamental issue in these controversies is: how to ensure a high quality selection of information and publications and, at the same time, avoid the dangers of censorship?

TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF THE DIGITALIZATION OF MEDIA

This paper begins with general introduction and analysis of the definition of the media. Strong correlation exists between the manner of communication among people and the level of society development. Five civilization levels are presented, covering 6000 years of human history. The fourth and fifth civilizations are covering the period since the beginning of the 20th century. The fourth civilization is known as the civilization of electronic media. The term of the signal as a message equivalent is the most important term in the analysis of the communication process. Transition towards the fifth civilization lasts for more than thirty years. One of the most important steps in this process is the signal digitalization. This process consists of three main steps and it is explained here in very simple terms, with no mathematics. Several popular digital components are explained, primarily their memory size and capacity. Digital data transmission stands at the end of the digitalization process. Bit rate has been a limiting term for further wireless communication development. Some hints explaining the way of circumventing the bit rate problem are presented.

HOW MUCH KNOWLEDGE ABOUT DIGITALIZATION OF TV BROADCASTING HAVE THOSE WHO SHOULD PROMOTE IT TO THE PUBLIC

This paper presents the results of a field research about the level of knowledge and familiarity of journalists of Vojvodina’s newspapers and radio stations regarding the digitalization of TV production and broadcasting. According to the “Regulations on the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting of television programs and access to the multiplex in terrestrial digital broadcasting” (2011) the promotion of this process in public is an important element for its success. A key aspect of this is that not only reporters from state controlled television stations should have basic knowledge of, and interest in, this topic, but that other journalists (from local and regional newspapers and radio stations) do as well. Their public advocacy and preparation of citizens in local communities for the day when the television signal will fully switch to digital terrestrial broadcasting is very important. Initial digital broadcasting in Serbia began in March, 2012. The study shows that journalists of those media outlets are not empowered to take on the task set ahead of them.

THE DEFEAT OF EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

It can be argued that the system of higher education in Serbia is currently at one of its lowest points since its establishment in the nineteenth century, if measured by comparative European and even regional standards. Among the most important reasons that brought higher education in Serbia to this situation are the lack of interest on behalf of the State to get seriously engaged into the problem of education and its quality, as well as a very high corruption which established a unique model of (pseudo) “market education” which in many cases does not fulfill the very elementary academic, scientific and ethical standards. This can have very serious consequences toward the entire society, resulting in the lack of well-educated professionals (which is directly related to the faster and more successful social/economic development) and leading, potentially, to very serious problems in functioning of the democratic procedures, values and institutions, together with the erosion of the civil society. At the same time, one also witnesses to the unfortunate attempt to diminish those aspects of higher education that affirm critical thinking, not only in the developing but in the developed industrial countries (in Europe and USA) as well. In such a situation, the role of new technologies becomes critical on a global scale, since the way we use technological innovations (e.g. internet) defines to a significant extent the possibility of real education today (i.e. affirmation of critical thinking, our ability to access relevant information etc.) and the outcomes of the entire educational process.

HOW MUCH DO WE USE DIGITAL LIBRARIES

This paper seeks to highlight the spectrum of electronic services offered by modern libraries, and the need for the creation of “digital offers” guided by the standards of library efficiency and effectiveness. When we talk about digital libraries, evaluation studies are very rare due to a number of reasons. Usage is just one of the criteria to evaluate digital libraries, and it includes usage patterns, usage statistics, and user studies. The ultimate goal of the evaluation of digital libraries is to determine to what extent and in what manner they affect the processes of learning, education, cultural development, research, preservation of national heritage, collective and personal identity. As the world is still expecting reliable criteria for evaluating the digital library, the positions from which we are waiting make all the difference. In Serbia, an environment that didn’t manage to introduce all the possibilities provided by the Internet, either in terms of e-government, e-commerce, or of e-education, libraries have launched major digitization projects and stepped in front of the needs of our society which is not ready/educated/trained/used to digital resources. The way out of this situation must be sought in strengthening of the information society, of its technical and technological, legal and regulatory assumptions, and also those assumptions related to information literacy of citizens, their awareness of how human knowledge is organized, how to find the right information and how to use it effectively to improve the quality of one’s own life.

NEW HYPERTEXTUALITY IN LITERATURE: READING, EVALUATION, EDUCATION

Tense but fruitful relationship between literature and technology springs from the impression of writers and literary scholars that their activities are irreconcilably different. However, literature and science are not the worlds apart, since many critics nowadays resort to explaining narrative experiments and revolutionary representational practices in literature as attempts to come to terms with the theories of Einstein or Heisenberg. The paper examines revolutionary changes brought by digital technologies into the realm of reading, writing and textual interpretation, with the introduction of hypertext. The application of informational technology in reading, writing and teaching literature is impossible without understanding the theory and practice of hypertext. The Internet as a research tool in teaching literature and literary studies in general changes the book, since it ceases to exist only as a printed text and part of the literary canon, and turns into a hypertext which offers new strategies of research, elaborated in the paper.