Relationships with Media

There are four primary relationships that a person can have with media—as a tool-builder, content-creator, content-distributor, or as an audience-member. The content-distributors of a medium deliver the content of a medium to an audience, such as television broadcasters who broadcast television programs to viewers, or web hosting companies who provide web sites for users of the World Wide Web. Content-creators are the people who use the tools of a medium to create content, such as the producers of television programs, or the developers of web sites. The tool-builders of the television medium are the people and corporations who manufacture the technologies for creating and broadcasting television programs. The designers and manufacturers of technologies used in the distribution of web sites are also tool-builders.

Tool-Builders and Content-Creators

Before a medium can be used as a system of communication, its technologies must first be constructed and made available to content-creators and audiences. The tool-builders of new media are the electrical engineers, computer programmers, and corporations that design, manufacture, and distribute electronic media technologies. A company that manufactures a computer system is a tool-builder, and so is a company that writes computer graphic software for that computer. In addition to creating tools for the creation of content, tool-builders also provide the technologies for distributing content to audiences. A corporation that manufactures DVD video players is a tool-builder for the distribution of video content. Similarly, a corporation that creates web browsing software is a tool-builder for the distribution of Internet content.
The content-creators of new media are the artists, designers, musicians, and directors who use new media tools to create content. A content-creator’s relationship with a medium is different from a tool-builder’s relationship. Content-creators are typically more concerned with using a medium’s functionality and less involved in developing its functionality.

Content-Distributors and Audience Members

Content-distributors are the people, institutions, or corporations that deliver content to audiences using distribution-tools. Web hosting companies, electronic art festivals, new media art galleries, and DVD retailers are all content-distributors. Art curators are also designated as content-distributors because they decide which artworks will be exhibited to audiences.
A person can also relate to media as an audience member who receives content through distribution-tools. Being an audience member is the most popular relationship that people have with media. More people in the world are audience members than content-creators, tool-builders, or content-distributors. Even though they do not create media technologies or content, they are critical to a medium’s existence because it is unlikely that a medium will persist if audiences do not like its content or when access to its technology is too expensive.

© Don Ritter