New Forms of Media Publishing

New media technologies today are radically challenging media forms. Popular forms of media publishing may be called by different names, and they may be used in different ways. As the idea of new media has often been debated, there are a few new forms of media publishing:

a. Device/media types of blogs:
• Moblog – mobile blogging, e.g. Seth Lakeman’s moblog
• Vlog – video blogging, e.g. Lonelygirl15
• Splog – spam blog, e.g. Casino Online
• Linklog – URLs (hyperlinks) blogging, e.g. Jennifer’s Link Log
• Sketchlog – sketch blogging, e.g. Karin Rindevall’s sketch log
• Tumblelog, e.g. A Shot of JD
b. YouTube
c. Online newspaper, e.g. News.com.au
d. Online magazine, e.g. Iconique
e. Online books, e.g. Read Print

In understanding the newest trends and issues relating to new forms of media publishing, we also need to study the demographic makeup of online media:

Web traffic to the blog pages of the top 10 online newspapers grew 210 percent year over year in December. The overall unique audience growth to these online newspapers was 9 percent year over year. Unique visitors to blog pages accounted for 13 percent of their December 2006 Web traffic, up 9 percentage points from 4 percent in December 2005 (Nielsen/NetRatings cited in New Media Institute 2007).

YouTube may become the most popular form of new media. During the US Election 2008, the number of videos online which are connected with US politics has increased followed by the increase of visits. One of the examples has been well documented (US Election 2008 Web Monitor 2007).



A similar situation also happened to the US Midterm Election in 2006. The below chart by Hitwise Intelligence (2006) shows YouTube's share of US internet visits on the left axis in orange compared with the percentage of downstream visits from YouTube to Politics websites on the right axis in grey.




References

Hitwise Intelligence 2006, YouTube the US midterm elections and UK politics, 6 November, viewed 2 May 2008, <http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/2006/11/youtube_the_us_midterm_electio.html>.

New Media Institute 2007, Online newspaper blog traffic grows 210 percent year over year, 17 January, viewed 2 May 2008, <http://www.newmedia.org/articles/54/1/Online-Newspaper-Blog-Traffic-Grows-210-Percent-Year-Over-Year/Page1.html>.

US Election 2008 Web Monitor 2007, video, YouTube.