Impact of New Technology on the Traditional Media : A Special Issue of trends in Communication

Dedicated to the theme of the impact of technology on the media, this special issue evaluates the extent to which technology is actually changing the mass media and whether these changes represent a fundamental restructuring of the industries in the short, medium, and long term.

The different approaches to the issue of new technology is reflected in the contributions--four of which engage critically with the idea that new technology offers some kind of panacea.

Although these papers point to the changing nature of the media industries, they are also careful to point to the difficulties that the media industry is faced with in the current climate of technological change.

Taken together, the articles demonstrate that there are many challenges to the existing media industries by developments in technology that not only offer opportunities to be harnessed, but also difficulties ahead.