摘要：The last two decades have witnessed a rapid transformation of traditional media into new media that encompasses digital, computerized, and networked information and communication technologies. This shift has raised concerns and discussions around the positive and negative implications of the new media, and other issues such as: control of information, volume and speed of communication, Habermasian democratic public sphere, and the global influence of media conglomerates. Marshall McLuhan’s theoretical research on communication technologies has enriched the historical understanding of social change. He argued that the dominant medium in a given time relatively shaped the way we perceived and understood the world around it; hence, we cannot understand a given technological experience without studying its social setting.
