New media as relations

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New media as relationsXianhong Chen a & Guilan Ding ba Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Chinab Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, ChinaPublished online: 08 Oct 2009.

To cite this article: Xianhong Chen & Guilan Ding (2009) New media as relations, Chinese Journal ofCommunication, 2:3, 367-379, DOI: 10.1080/17544750903209242

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SPECIAL COMMENTARY

New media as relations

Xianhong Chena* and Guilan Dingb

aHuazhong University of Science and Technology, China; bZhongnan University of Economicsand Law, China

With the coming of a Web 2.0 era based on new services, such as blogcommunication, new media communication has changed from a technique-oriented, monologue, linear communication model to one that is relation-oriented,dialogic, and holographic. Comparing this to Marshall McLuhan’s saying “themedium is the message”, the authors propose “new media as relations” and putforward five observations: (1) New media communication belongs to the domainof relations communication; (2) the communication character of the new media istelelog; (3) Metcalfe’s Law offers a good description for the communicationeffectiveness of new media; (4) the study of new media communication should beshifted from message communication (which focuses on websites) to relationscommunication (which regards people as the center of the study); and (5) theessence of new media communication is not technical message communication butdialogic relations communication.

Keywords: new media; relations communication; message communication;Internet media; Web 2.0; telelog

“New media” is a widely used term referring mainly to new forms of media that arebased on communication and network technologies, such as the Internet, mobilephones, and blogs. In the recent decade, “new media” has become a major focus ofacademic research in communication and it is now a worldwide phenomenon. AmongWestern scholars, there are two basic approaches. The first is to take new media as awhole entity and study its history, social influence, evolutionary patterns, governmentregulations, and so on (Castells, 2001; McChesney, 2004; Negroponte, 1996; Poster,2001; Shapiro, 1999;Winston, 1998). The other trend is to study various areas that arerelated to the newmedia, including the properties of newmedia itself, characteristics ofutilizing new media, multimedia effects, new media technology, research on mediaimprovement and fusion, etc. (Baldwin, McVoy, & Steinfield, 2000; Fidler, 2000;Gauntlett, 2000; Straubhaar&LaRose, 2002; Levinson, 2002;McLuhan, 2000; Pavlik,2008; Spinello, 2002; Turner, 2002). This is, of course, only a crude categorization, andthere are other important perspectives among Western scholars, including thediffusion of innovation and social shaping of technology (Hawkins, 2003).

In mainland China, research on the new media basically follows the Westerndirection (Zhang, 2006). A considerable amount of work has been completed since the1990s, including the publication of hundreds of books in Chinese and translatedworks. In addition, more than 10 projects have been funded by National Social

ISSN 1754-4750 print/ISSN 1754-4769 online

q 2009 The Communication Research Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

DOI: 10.1080/17544750903209242

http://www.informaworld.com

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Chinese Journal of Communication

Vol. 2, No. 3, November 2009, 367–379

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Science Foundations, projects such as multimedia technology and journalisticcommunication (www.npopss-cn.gov.cn), e-publishing industry development andmacro-management research (1996), digitalizing of journalistic communicationmethod (1998), new development and strategy of Internet communication (1999),research on theory and practice of Internet publishing (2000), research on thechallenges from Internet publishing and strategies of traditional media (2001),research on strategies and challenges from Internet communication to theory andpractice of traditional media (2001), research on history of communicationtechnology development (2002), a study on the latest development and influence ofcommunication technology (2002), research on mobile phone media and management(2005), balance and coordination on Internet management (2006), and publicrelations strategies on government regulation of the new media (2008). More than 500papers have been published. In the past two years, new media research has focusedmost prominently on such subjects as blog, podcast, mobile phone, digital TV, mediaintegration, and crisis communication on the Internet. Some new constructs havebeen proposed, for example, information society 4.0 (Xiong, 2002), new mediademands, digital gap index (Zhu & He, 2001), and so on.

The rise of new media: an overview

Throughout history, every debut of new media has always stimulated people’spositive imaginations on media research. From radio and television to videorecorder and now to the Internet and mobile communication, challenges and upsetsbrought by the new media have always been central to new media research. Indeed,humankind has already been inside the world of “media society”. Fromunderstanding to perception of the world, people rely on the media. In otherwords, connections between people as well as between people and society havealready changed. Using networks, people build online communities, obtainknowledge, and form perceptions about the world, others, and themselves.The media is now internal to people’s cognitive and perceptual self and havebecome the extension of their lifestyles. People join and maintain the communityand take in knowledge from the network. They form perceptions of the world,others, and themselves. Therefore, we propose that the new media not only raiseschallenges but also leads to subversions at the ontological level. The new mediaaffects today’s human functions from the “basic” level, such as cognition,perception, recognition, and relations, and also moves onto the ontological matterof human existence.

The new media has changed how human beings perceive and understand theworld. Virtual reality created by newmedia is not only a simulation of truth but also areproduction. Virtualization does not just oppose the authenticity of reality. On thecontrary, virtualization is a process of reality and it realizes a characteristic of“ubiquity”, which is also a “quasi presence”– an appearance through new media andacross physical, geographical, and social barriers. When Levy (1998) talked about theparadox of digital technology, he said that just as medical transplant operationswould allow us to transplant organs between each other, new media technologiescould also enable human beings to join in a virtual global body because new mediahas implanted the organs around the world. Hence individuals begin joining in agreat, hybridized, social, and high technologic “super-body”. Thus new media skill

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is not only to turn upside down the concept of materials but also to create aparadoxical super-reality, even if it upsets the basic concept of “reality”.

On the other hand, new media has altered the relationship between people andmachine. The relationship between people and technology has changed humanlifestyle. As early as in the 1960s and 1970s, which may be called the age of flourishingmachinery civilization, science and technology philosopher Bruce Mazlish (1967)stood on the Fourth Discontinuity to start rethinking the interaction of “human” and“machine”. He considered it inappropriate to only conceptualize human–machineinteractions as the relationship between subject and object. This is because, on the onehand, human beings have already slowly merged the process of their society’sevolution with the development of machine tools. On the other hand, human beings inmodern society use scientific concepts to explain their work. Since humans havestrong links with machinery work and material evolution, we are not able to imaginewhat human civilization would resemble without help from the machine.

Another science and technology philosopher Don Idle (1991), from theperspective of phenomenology, took science and technology as an extension ofhuman existence. He advocated that the relationship between people and technologyhas become a relationship of “reflection”, which has extended and shiftedintentionality of the human body and perception. Technology makes the invisiblevisible (such as the B-network video chat) and externalizes the internal. It means thatscience and technology let us both appear and disappear.

While the philosophical debate continues with regard to human–technologyinteraction, the rise of the Internet has brought about new foci in academic research.An issue of concentrated discussion in recent years is whether the Internet links upsociety or isolates people. Another related issue is whether the diffusion of theInternet reduces or increases social capital.

Nie and Erbing (2002) published the Internet and Society: A Preliminary Report,and one main argument in this report is that the popularity of the Internet is leadingto loneliness. The various activities on the Internet have taken a toll on people’scommunication with families, friends, and communities. Nie and Erbing maintainthat an e-mail keeps people in touch but it cannot let them share a cup of coffee or abeer or give a hug. The Internet may be an ultimate separation technology, enablingpeople to further reduce participation in community activities. Its effects on humanlife may be even more profound than the previous inventions of car and television.

On the contrary, Wellman (2002) argues that the inter-connections in modernsociety have changed, and social connections are quite often built on “networkedindividualism”. In other words, the network of community is based on individualsrather than on the traditional geographic communities. In his view, technologies ofinformation and communication can help strengthen these ties – the Internet canincrease social capital, the participation of all citizens, and the formation of onlinecommunities.

With the arrival of YouTube and Web 2.0, digital data communication, whichoriginally took “bit” as the fundamental unit, is gradually transferring to relationcommunication, which views “individual” as the fundamental unit. This relationcommunication is based on individual connections and common interest groups(for instance, blogger groups). The whole society is not the one desired by optimistictechnological evangelicalism but it is not a Schema Fracture declared by socialisolationism, either. Society has entered a new stage that is heavily involved

Chinese Journal of Communication 369

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in technology on a society-wide scale. According to a report about the Internet fromthe University of California, Los Angeles, Surveying the Digital Future, 63% ofAmericans keep in contact with family and friends by e-mail. The Internet has quietlymerged into people’s daily lives, and society is becoming more and moretechnological. Meanwhile, through a process of two-way integration, social software,such as blog andWikipedia, has reduced the differentiation between online experienceand offline face-to-face dialogue. On the one hand, the Internet is integrated into ourdaily lives. On the other hand, our daily lives are integrated with the Internet.

According toScottLash (2002), thedevelopmentofmodern sciencehasmadeanewtechnological culture that is different from the “re-appeared culture” that views thingswith the traditional dualism perspective. The re-appeared culture assumes there isdistance between subject and object. In other words, the subject (such as a reader, anaudient, or an observer) and the cultural system (such as media culture) are seen asisolated subject and object. However, a cultural system is the re-appeared result of thecultural entity. Yet in new media culture, the subject, cultural system, and culturalentity exist inoneworld.There is noway to separate themmeaningfully.Thenewmediaculture is not a re-appearance of any entity but a cultural system re-appeared in innerhuman beings. That is to say, the newmedia does not exist in material things but in therelationship between people and the new media, given the inseparability of the two.

From the viewpoint of communication ontology, the rise of new media has led tomajor changes in cognition and social relations through ever more intensifiedintegration between media culture and the everyday existence of human beings. Thisentails an ontological shift from information communication to relation communi-cation.However, recent researchonnewmedia ismainlybasedon the traditionalmediawith a focus on alterations and characteristics brought by Internet communication andthe activities of information communication (Chen, 2004). For instance, people’s ideasof the social functions of new media are still metaphors of “transportation” and“conduction”, such as the information superhighway or electrical channel. Thesemetaphors are useful for people to understand the Internet and its functions but theylimit the vision of research on new media and neglect the “relational angle” in theresearch, which is particularly obvious among mainland Chinese researchers, many ofwhom come from a mass communication or journalism research background. In fact,the newmedia does not only supply an interaction channel but also produces a specialset of surroundings, conditions, and power relationships. All of these have becomeaspects of social reality as conceptualized through such terms as “cyberspace”, “virtualreality”, and “network society”. This emphasizes the new media’s influence onorganizations and social cognition, which are derived from contact surroundings andorders established by the new media. It can also provide a theoretical resource forresearchers on the relations communication perspective.

McLuhan’s notion of “the medium is the message” may be a good beginning forus to conceptualize “new media as relations”. But to substantiate this new relationsperspective, we shall borrow from Boulding (1956, 1978), who identified threedimensions in understanding the attributes of media. First is the degree ofparticipation required by the media, which refers to the information experienced bythe audience in its physical state. Second is the media’s potency radius, i.e., the abilityof feedback through the media. Last is the density of information transmitted by thecarrier. Based on the generic insights from this framework, we put forward threepropositions for the broad argument “new media as relations”:


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(1) “Relations communication” manifests the attribute of new media.(2) “Electronic dialogue” manifests the communication character of new media.(3) “Metcalfe’s Law” and “Long Tail” offer good descriptions for the

communication effectiveness of new media.

In the following, this article will concentrate on key new media phenomena,including the Internet, blog, and mobile phone. It uses a meta-communicationperspective instead of traditional ones in order to ponder on the effect of the newmedia system on interpersonal communication. In so doing, it highlights the relationsapproach and explicates its significance for new media research.

The attributes of new media: relations communication

In the current trend of media convergence, the subject of communication becomespersonalized, and communication methods become inter-personalized. With theinformational highway gradually linking up the planet, the media world is evolvinginto a global system of networks, which takes inter-personalized media as the subjectof concern. What, then, is the attribute of this networked medium? Is it interpersonalcommunication or Internet communication? Is it intergroup communication or masscommunication? There is no simple answer to these questions. Some scholars haveattempted to invent new concepts to describe new media communication. Forinstance, Walther and Parks (2002) proposed that communication via computer-based intermediary possesses the characteristic of “over-interpersonal” communi-cation, which is more friendly, socialized, intimate, and even superior to face-to-facecommunication.

The distinction between “information communication” and “relations communi-cation” should, of course, not be overemphasized. In defining the essence of newmedia, we cannot simply rely on the conventional categories of interpersonalcommunication, small group communication, and mass communication. Yet it wouldstill be useful to begin with the distinction between the transmission view and theritualistic view, as conceptualized by Carey (1992). The former is the binary,numerical, and content-oriented expression, whereas the latter is presentationalcommunication by using symbols (e.g., posture, emotion, background in thecommunication process), which are apt to express relationships. Shannon andWeaver (1949) studied communication behavior along numerical linear expressionsand presented communication as a type of information transmission, so didLasswell’s “5W” model. However, these earlier communication researchers did notpay sufficient attention to the “relations” of communication. In fact, a core aspect ofcommunication lies in its construction of relations with and interaction between thesubjects of communication. Communication is conformity of social relations, andrelations are always embedded in the message according to the communicators’ will.Communication reflects, explains, and at the same time maintains a kind ofrelationship carried by the message content. The relationship is more fundamentalthan the content; it influences and even decides the content.

When the relation between sender and receiver achieves the most saturatedcondition, communication will produce a kind of hypnogenesis effect. At thismoment the information content approaches zero. The content may be nothing, but apure communication relation is still there. For example, when lovers are engaged


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in endless small talk, there is little information exchanged but their relationship isconsolidated.

Bateson (1972) was a pioneer in researching the “relationsmessage”. He noted thatthe human spirit does not exist in the cerebrum or parts of the body but in the relationsamong individuals. He therefore uses the concept of “spiritual ecology” to emphasizethe importance of communication relations of individuals. He maintained thatinformation is of a dualistic nature. Each interpersonal exchange contains twomeanings: the “reporting”message, which refers to the content of communication, andthe “instructing” message, which is the relations in communication. These two aspectsare also called “content message” and “relations message”, or “communication” and“meta-communication”. The Palo Alto Group headed by Bateson takes the networkof relationships between focal individual and other individuals as the unit of analysisand is called “the school of relations information”. It was a revolutionary approach tobe distinguished with the traditional mainstream communication paradigm. Someregard this focal transformation from the individual to the social network (from objectto pattern) as a paradigm change of the Copernican type (Wilder, 1979).

The relations communication approach, which abandons the linear communi-cation mode, proposes a different ontological expression of communication theory.The first axiom is “one has to communicate”. It emphasizes that we are always,intentionally or not, affecting others’ perceptions. This axiom emphasizes that anyperceivable behavior is potentially communicative. It means that when in the presenceof another person you are always communicating something about your relationshipwith that person, including the possibility that you may not want to keep therelationship with the person. The second axiom is that every conversation, no matterhow brief, involves two messages – “a content message” and “a relations message” –as discussed above. The third axiom is that interaction is always organized by thecommunicators into meaningful patterns called “punctuation”. Interactionsequences, like sentences, cannot be understood as a string of isolated elements.To make sense there must be punctuations. The fourth axiom is that people use bothdigital and analog codes. The digital code includes language, sound, and words, whilenonverbal signs are analog codes. The fifth axiom of communication is the matchingof messages in interaction (Chen, 2005, 2006).

According to the above axioms of communication, we maintain that thefundamental attribute of new media communication concerns “relations communi-cation”. The newmedia can provide a fertile ground for developing relationships. In avirtual community, people can directly enter any space in which they are interestedand chat with anyone they want. The new media amplifies the opportunities forpeople to establish relationships with others in an infinite way. For instance, fans ofthe “Super Girls” phenomenon in China (Meng, 2009) can find companions easilyand share their excitement and joy in cyberspace. People are able to take note ofothers’ manners, attitudes, and experiences easily. Although some relationshipsstarted on-line are then shifted to the real world, strong communities can still beformed interactively on the Internet. The networks can replace semiprivate salons,like cafes, clubs, and parks. Personal interactions have already become privatized,whether they are relational or communal. By using the new media, relationships arebased on interactive communication between “you and me”. One party in therelationship may share his/her thoughts with the other. Communication is used as atactical tool for establishing interactional relationship.


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In terms of quality in new media’s communication, relations communication canbe divided into three layers: “interpersonal relations”, “social relations”, and“cultural relations”. The relations on the interpersonal layer are emotional in nature.The relations on the social layer indicate role relations based on the working divisionof information in society. The relations on the cultural layer reflect the basicdifferences in world views. These three layers of relations are integrated into onecontinual communication process.

Regarding the role of relations in social stratification, online relations certainlyare not interpersonal but social. This is because online relations are established onsocial clues instead of those on an interpersonal basis. Compared with face-to-facecommunication in which personality can be recognized at first sight, networkdisseminators cannot immediately distinguish visual cues or differentiate inter-personal clues. They have to be turned into a nonpersonality online. In other words,they are a “category online” or a “role online”. For instance, for students or teachers,their online interactions are based on their roles as a distinguishing feature and areestablished through social classification. Therefore, this is a kind of social attractionrather than an interpersonal one. In other words, one is attracted by any one of thesecommunities and their members are similar and substitutable. QQ chat (the Chineseequivalent of MSN instant messaging service) is a typical example.

The value relations in cultural stratification include three sublayers: general,collective, and individual. The values in general stratification are the most basic andare shared by humans, including some basic expressive behaviors, such as smiling andcrying. The values in collective stratification are shared by certain groups instead ofall. In some associations or categories, they have common values, such as the CEOblog group, the scholar blog group, the Super Girls blog group, the McDonald’s bloggroup, etc. Individual values are the most unique and they display fully in the newmedia culture. The Mu Zimei phenomenon, the Lotus Sisters and the NarcissusSisters phenomenon, also known as China’s female sex bloggers (Farrer, 2007), aresome examples. The three stratifications in cultural values are constituted byindividual culture, group culture, and social culture. They become the three types ofclose-knit content in new media communication.

Emotional relations in interpersonal stratification manifest the core drivers ofindividual relations. The individual emotional dimension is not only the foundationbut also the result of all emotions; therefore it occupies the central position of theentire relations communication. For instance, in QQ chatting, both sides in relationsare allowed to enter the intimate emotion relations layer in a more direct way throughnetworked technology. When both sides feel comfortable and intimate enough, theywill utilize different kinds of media, even face-to-face exchange, to maintain therelations. Compared to face-to-face relations, the development of network emotionalrelations is simple, temporary, and time-lapsed.

From the above, we can see that the new media as “a relational referral” has aprofound influence through predictable and unpredictable ways to people’s rolerelations, cultural relations, and emotional relations.

The characteristics of new media: telelog

Compared with traditional forms of media, such as writing, printing, film, andtelevision, the most distinctive characteristic of the new media is its interactivity.


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Networked media makes use of the spatial dimension and to some extent restoresinterpersonal interaction as through the face-to-face channel. However, in contrast tothe direct contact experience among people, the network has providedmore widespreadinteractive opportunities and the ability to create more interactive experiences.Interactive media is not about information but experiences. Ball-Rokeach andReardon(1988) proposed the concept of “the electronic dialogue” (telelog). They stated thatmassmedia is amonologue-like communication, whereas interpersonal communicationis more like a dialogue. But when new technology takes on the role of “informationalcommunication”, it becomes an electronic dialogue-like communication.

In proposing the concept of “modern dialogue”, Buber (1958) stated that dialogueincludes approval to others’ values. This regards others as people, not merely as a toolto achieve the desired goal. Buber emphasized that people should regard others assubjects – not only “I–you” but also “I–thou”. Buber’s works have been establishedon the basis of reciprocity, interdependence, involvement, and openness. The essentialfeature of a dialogue is synchronized docking or a combination of different sounds ata time, and each sound maintains its own distinctive features. By fusing and mutuallymaintaining the state of each one’s relative independence, a dialogue can manifest theinteractive feature in new media communication.

In telelog, a compound relation of “I–It–You” exists, which is the relation of“person–machine–person”. The relation to “It” is only a kind of relation betweenexperience and utilization but not true relations. “I” is the center of the world. It is “I”that perceives the world and thus the surroundings are perceived by me. Myexperience of “It” indicates that “I” just perceives this world out of the boundary of“It”. But the experience only exists in “my” mind. “I” is a subject to experience anduse “It”. “I” as the subject has the ability of changing something to be an object, but“It” is just an object. The relation of “I–It” belongs to the realm of instrumentalrelation. The utilization of Web 2.0 pushes the conversation between people andmachine into one between people and people. Meanwhile technology takes a stepbackward to become a media and platform to support the relation of “I–You”.

The relation of “I–you” is less utilitarian than dialogue-like. This is a markedfeature of networked communication through Web 2.0, which is different fromtraditional communication. When we are walking down the electronic trail, we meetsome people; then we may begin a conversation while examining their journeyscarefully (Buber, 1958). Thus, the meeting creates an opportunity for exchange andconversation. The meeting is the premise of “the dialogue”. In the relation of telelog,when one is confiding, the other makes the response. The telelog enables bothindividuals to maintain respective characteristics and also bring them closer together.Specifically, there are the four features of telelog:

(1) Cooperation: In telelog all individuals have their own positions, and thedialogue is a premise to transform interlocutors into subjects seeking mutualunderstanding and trying to realize their own positions. The dialogue is aprocess for the people to understand each other, which is about everyoneopening up to others and accepting others’ views.

(2) Equality: Telelog preserves an equal relation. The speaker is regarded as aperson and not an object. There is no prejudice in the dialogue. People inexchange are equal. The equality is a precondition, and there is no contestintended. In telelog, there is no authority or superiority. The speakers may


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discuss any topic at will. Although the speakers have a different status in thereal world, the authority in reality is unable to operate or control the directionof conversation in the virtual world.

(3) Approach: Telelog initiates a kind of language exchange that takes placesimultaneously in three layers: information, culture, and emotion.The approach has three aspects: positivity, opening, and interperson.Through positive dialogue, both sides enjoy the relations. Opening enhancesan exposed degree of the ideas and feelings. The interperson is composed offriends and the willingness to spend time with them, for example, via blog,Super Girls’ fan clubs, online environmental groups, and so on.

(4) Risk: In telelog, risk may also increase because, if everyone knows more, it iseasier for someone to discover the weakness of certain individuals who thenbecome more vulnerable to attack and ridicule in cyberspace. There are alsoother unintended consequences, such as the collective approval of erraticcommunication actions.

The effect of new media: Metcalfe’s law and long tail

In the information technology (IT) industry, a key principle is Metcalfe’s Law(Metcalfe, 2000; Shapiro & Varian, 1999). It was put forward by Robert Metcalfe,founder of 3Com Corporation and inventor of the Ethernet. The main point of thislaw is that the expansion of the network economy is directly proportional to thesquare of its network nodes. The value of the Internet grows in arithmetic progressionalong with the growth of the users’ quantity. In other words, the value of a networkdoes not lie in its technical value but the relational value between network nodes.

Metcalfe’s Law is based on the fact that each new user can get more informationexchange because of others’ accessibility to the Internet. It refers to the network’scharacteristic of having exterior and positive feedback features. With morenetworking users, the larger the network value would become, and then a largernetworking benefit follows.

The relations network has already contributed to the popularity of social capitaltheory, widely recognized in sociology and other social science disciplines. This theorystates that the relations network is a productive resource in nature. The relationsnetwork can become a highly trusted cooperation mechanism that connects differentindividuals (Kolankiewicz, 1996). It also facilitates the allocation of resources. Thereis a difference between resource allocation through a network and that through themarket. The market mainly depends on price to indicate general value informationbut the market is weak in indicating less quantifiable information. This is a typicalmethod for resource allocation for industrialized society but not for informationsociety. Based on everyday value exchanges, the network helps allocate resources andaccumulate individual user values and demands a one-to-one correspondence.Moreover, the ability of allocating resources is no longer restricted to individuals butcan be extended to the relations between nodes. Since the new media is interactive innature, the resources online can not only be consumed without abrasion (for instance,a poem from the Tang dynasty can be consumed from ancient to now without actualexhaustion) but can also be consumed while being produced at the same time.

The more types of resources there are in a given market, the more total benefitswould be enjoyed. This is the famous “long tail effect”. Anderson (2006) in his


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“Long Tail” theory postulated that in the virtual world of Web 2.0, the result of a bignumber (products in a long tail) multiplied by a relatively small number (the volumeof each long tail product) is still a big number, and this number will only becomebigger as the variety of niche-market products increases. For example, the majority ofGoogle’s revenue does not come from big advertisers but from many small ones. Thatis, they are from the long tail of advertisements. eBay is also doing long tail businessmainly for niche products. Since there is a new network mechanism for participationwithout barriers, organized mass exchange has become possible.

Thus, as representatives of the new media, blogging and social network serviceschange the nature of relationships. The production of the network of relations(long tail) is not only a new mode of communication but also a new mode ofproduction. Due to the openness in network relations, the network has carriedinformation, knowledge, feelings, trust, and other soft elements to build the relationsnetwork to allocate resources.

Although the relations in networking groups or communities are weaker, morealienated, more heterogeneous, and wider in scope, the word-of-mouth produced bythese relations has been spreading and rewriting the rules of the game. We are leavingthe information age and entering the relations era. Relations have become theproductivity links between supply and demand. In other words, the role of new mediaas proposed by Metcalfe’s Law and long tail theory demonstrates our argument of“relations as productivity”.

The significance of “new media as relations”

“The medium is the message” is arguably the most famous insight from McLuhan(1995). Instead of stressing the information content transmitted by a medium,McLuhan highlighted the importance of medium characteristics and their influenceon people and society. He proposed that it is the media format that affects andchanges the entire society.

McLuhan (1995) considered that when a new medium appears, regardless of theconcrete content it transmits, the new form of communication brings in itself a forcethat causes social transformation. The medium itself represents a new “message” ofthe age. The essential matter in communication is not the content but the mediumitself. It is the form of medium that can change the world and the process of thinking.The truly significant “message” is from the medium’s own nature. Hence, “themedium is the message”.

McLuhan’s argument is among the most quoted statements of technologicaldeterminism in judging the value of media. He proposes that traditional media is anextension of the human body. The new media is the extension of the human nervoussystem. Any new media will change the equilibrium between human sensual organsand the world and affect human psychology and society. The extension of humansenses will change our thoughts and behaviors and the ways we perceive the world.In this sense, the media is an extension of human biology but less of society. In thefinal analysis, what McLuhan truly cares about is the technical possibility and theinstrumental feature of information existence. “The medium is the message” istherefore merely a technical inscription of media.

In recent years, research on new media has been based on a McLuhanianperspective that is technically oriented. The birth of the new media seems to have


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verified McLuhan’s predictions, as stressed by Yin (2003), with regard to theprofound significance of McLuhan’s theory to new media research. However,McLuhan’s research interest mainly looks at features of modern media’s psychologyand ecology based on the technological characteristics of a medium. His interest is notin the relations between senders and receivers. His research object at the time wasprimarily television, and he did not touch upon the relational essence of the newmedia that came to the scene after his time.

Along with the popularization of the Internet and the continuing advances ofinformation technologies, more new media communication research has changed tofocus on “interaction”, “relations”, and “social group”. More researchers inmainland China realize that new media research should focus on human interaction,information exchange, status identification, virtual community, virtual reality, and soon. For instance, Chen (2007) and Peng (2008) have started to study interpersonalrelations and interpersonal communication in the new media context.

In this article, we propose the idea of “new media as relations” stressing theinfluence of new media on relational communication. We do not simply followMcLuhan’s notion but try to build on it, wishing to shed more light on how the newmedia influences the forming and maintaining of relations among people, and we tryto understand the relational characteristics of the new media and the attributes ofrelations communication.

The idea of “new media as relations” helps shift new media research fromcommunication technology to communication relations, from technical informa-tional communication to dialogue relations communication, from informationalcommunication focused on websites to relations communication concentrated onhuman beings. Bruner (1983) asserted that in the history of technologicaladvancement each technical progress not only changes the relations between peopleand nature but also the relations between people and people. Behind the new mediathere are interpersonal networks, concretized through such entities as virtual groups,discussion groups, chatrooms, and QQ. They not only connect people’s new socialrelations but also new social lifestyles. The age of relations communication is coming,just like Rogers (1994, p. 101) once said: “the interactionist perspective will eventuallybecome more widely understood and accepted among communication scholars”.

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Documents

New media as relations