Afiqah: Have the new media changed our lives for the better?

The new media have positively impacted our daily lives by cultivating an interactive relationship with media consumers. With the amalgamation of traditional media and the interactive power of communications technology, computer- enabled consumer devices and most significantly the Internet, new media permits individuals to gain access to unlimited information content accessed online at any place of time of the day. It highly promotes user feedback, creative participation, thus allowing individuals to express themselves with ease in online forums and various discussion web pages such as blogs and photo logs. This dynamic capacity of the new media have cultivated participative users of the Internet as it encourages responses thanks to the commenting and liking tool made available on many informative sites. However, not all of these responses are beneficial. Immature and irresponsible users of the Internet may provide upsetting comments which could lead to a case of cyberbullying.