ABSTRACT
New media studies as developed through critical and cultural studies perspectives represent a dynamic and burgeoning field of enquiry within communication and media studies. The emergence of new media as an object of media research brings a distinct set of theoretical and methodological concerns to the fore. Feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and queer theorizations of the characteristics and cultures of new media complicate the one-dimensional framing of the "real" and "virtual" as a switch that is on/off at the moment of logging in or logging out. The body of literature has emerged around network and digital cultures, where the critical focus of the interventions is related to locating the politics of network and digital culture. At the outset, critical histories of new media seek to arrest, disrupt, and ultimately overthrow the uncritical and utopian emphases on the unprecedented, unique, and radical newness of media culture in the age of computers.
