New media technologies and the transformation of the journalist into an informatician

In his 2001 book “The Language of New Media,” Lev Manovich points to two revolutionary effects in the historical process when defining new media. The first of these is the invention of the printing press in the fourteenth century, and the second is the invention of photography in the nineteenth century. By mentioning that these two events caused a revolutionary impact on the development of modern societies and cultures, he states that what he now describes as the new media revolution is the transformation of culture's production, distribution, and communication into a computer-mediated form. 

The features that a medium must possess to be considered new media can be listed as follows: Numerical representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability, Transcoding. These concepts and definitions regarding new media are handled and examined within the scope of informatics. Naturally, they can also find application areas in other fields of communication. For example, Digital PR, Internet Advertising, IP TV, 3D Cinema, Internet Journalism, and Robot Journalism can be counted among these application areas. Defining these media technologies, which are created with a digital technology different from mass media, as “new” in order to emphasize that they are specific to the present day reflects a limited perspective.

Because categorizing technologies chronologically as old and new prevents the understanding of the essence of those technologies. For example, the telegraph was also seen in its time as a new communication tool that shortened time and brought space closer. In the play “The Telegraph, or, a New Way of Knowing Things: A Comic Piece,” written by J.D. Dent in 1795 and staged at the Theatre Royal in London, it was mentioned that Sir Peter Curious received information via telegraph about his wife, whom he suspected of cheating on him while he was away from home. The telegraph allowed news to spread at a speed many times higher than the average speed of 35 kilometers per hour of the train, which was the fastest communication tool of the period. However, just as Internet networks do not yet fully cover every part of the world now, telegraph lines were not sufficiently widespread across the world. Although the telegraph has not completely disappeared today, its use has decreased significantly. It has undergone a transformation and taken the form of SMS or WhatsApp messages. 

A similar situation applies to the landline-mobile phone analogy. Today, the mobile phone has completely different technologies than the landline. Almost the only thing they have in common is the word phone in their names. As in the example of the telegraph-Internet network analogy, many communication channels and technologies that could be defined as new media in the past continue to exist today in a transformed state. This is also a necessity of adapting to change, which is one of humanity's greatest abilities. 

Therefore, instead of evaluating the concept of “new” in its chronological sense, seeing that it symbolizes transformation will also make it easier to understand new media. Transformation will exist in every era. 

Fundamentally, the concept of new media, which is a technology or informatics-oriented definition, has created significant effects on communication in general and journalism in particular. This effect is not limited only to the production, printing, and distribution of newspapers and the reduction of their costs. Beyond these, we see the main impact in the multiplication and diversification of news sources and channels for newspapers on a global scale, which we can explain with the concept of an information network. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the difficulty of accessing reliable information, which we can explain as the reader/viewer being exposed to an excessive bombardment of information caused by this situation.

In our courses in the department of informatics, we define informatics as follows: “Informatics is a branch of science that examines the collection, processing, transmission, publishing, and storage of data for specific purposes, the functions that turn data into information, the methods, devices, and systems that will perform these, and the effects of these systems on society and the individual. An informatician is the brainpower working for the development and production of informatics products and systems and for their efficient and effective application to the life of society and the individual.”

We can define this process in terms of journalism as follows: When an event occurs, the journalist goes to the scene, collects the accurate data about the event completely and in a timely manner, and processes it in a way that their readers/viewers can understand. In other words, they write the news and thus turn data into information. Later, they ensure that the news is transmitted to the recipients, published, and stored through the channel (newspaper/TV). They do this through the production, printing, and distribution of news within organizations we call the media sector. The news (information) that reaches its recipient may also trigger other thoughts in the recipient. In terms of informatics, the meaning of this is that the recipient relates the newly acquired information with previously acquired information and reaches a conclusion, in other words, reveals knowledge.

Thus, in the context of this process, the sequence of actions of finding the news, which is the duty and responsibility of the journalist, and delivering an event mentioned above to their reader/viewer, actually means following in the footsteps of the steps an informatician follows to reach information from data, and then to knowledge. 

In summary, the use of an informatics approach based on new media technologies in the field of journalism first brings convenience in accessing news sources, albeit relatively. Secondly, in the data-information-knowledge flow process, it can provide speed and prevalence, again relatively, and enable the news to be delivered to a wider reader/viewer audience more quickly. Thirdly, it allows for many more gatekeepers and opinion leaders, who are limited in number, in the two-stage flow of news. This can contribute to polyphony and democracy.