New Media All India PR

Working at the prestigious Asian Academy of Film & Television, Dr Albeena Abbas has earned a distinguished place for her in the media education field of the country.

Throughout her illustrious career, Prof Albeena Abbas has worked in various disciplines, including film, media, academia, and administration. For almost ten years, she has been a member of the AAFT family. Prof Albeena has worked as a radio jockey at Radio Tarana 105.3 FM Wellington (New Zealand), a copywriter at Sunrise Radio London (UK), a sub-editor at Newslink Services, an Eenadu Television (ETV) programme associate, and more. She has received the AMU Women Association’s Women Achiever Award 2018 (Education), the IYF South Korea’s Global Education Award 2019 (Media Education), and the Dr Sarojini Naidu International Award 2020.

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Summary of the Presentation
By Mr. V.S.R. Naidu
Chairman
Amaravathi Chapter

My dear Sirs & Madams,

The 8th PRSI Orientation program of “New Media” is most relevant & very very important not only to those who are already in the field of PR, Journalism & Mass Communication but also for upcoming youngsters.

But how & why it’s so important….to know about it & to be well versed with the topic, it’s essential to listen to Dr. Albeena Abbas, AAFT University, Noida.

To enable the audience to understand the technology, the speaker explained the meaning of New Media, as a catch-all term used for various kinds of electronic communications that are conceivable due to innovation in competitive technology in contrast to traditional/ old media that includes newspapers, magazines, books, telegrams, and such other non-interactive media.

What is then the New Media comprises? It has -Websites, Online Videos/audio streams Pandemic being the example, e-mails-the most formal form of communication and connection such as people in business and offices, online social platforms, online communities, online forms, blogs, internal telephony, and web advertisements

New Media is helpful because it’s fast and cheap compared to 30-50 yrs ago, it’s accessible to everyone, decentralised because it doesn’t pertain to a particular company or organisation, it’s democratic because it’s equal to everyone and not depending on any kind of equipment or limited to any person, it’s flexible because anyone at any time can have access to it, it’s rapidly changing media and it’s Massive as new technology is coming into the picture very rapidly.

There is increasing datafication of our lives, she pointed out saying that we are doubling the amount data created in the world every 2 years. Imagine In just 1 minute, 156 million e-mails are sent, Facebook receives 900,000 logins and more than 450,000 Tweets are posted.

There are certain technologies in the world where every media, a person or a student getting into and they are categorised as;
Virtual Reality (VR) where one feels that something is happening but not real. Virtual Reality is 2 types viz Immersive Virtual Reality where a person feels that he is in a particular environment, moving around and experience as if he is there. Immersion to virtual reality is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world and the other type being Non-Immersive Virtual Reality which is very interesting where one can have a feel that he is participating in a game or sport by looking at the screen although he is not at the real site.
Virtual Reality(VR) means feeling the imaginary (virtual) world rather than the real one. VR is a term used for computer-generated 3D environments that allow the user to enter and interact with alternative realities. The definition of ‘Virtual’ is near and ‘reality is what we experience as human beings.

Another type of technology is Augmented Reality (AR), a combination of a real scene viewed by a user and a visual scene generated by a computer that augments the scene with additional information.
AR is a big innovation and it’s used in medical training, for example being dissection and study of a human body to locate the organ such as a heart and to identify the exact place of a problem like leakage of blood. AR is used in Retail where one can view a thing, for example; a Chair. AR is helpful to Repair & Maintenance, Design & Modelling, Business Logistics, Tourism industry, Classroom education, Field Service, Entertainment Properties, Public Safety.
Application of AR is used in Google Maps & in Google Lens.
AR is not a new technology and getting popular for the last few years.

Coming to Immersive Technology, a passionate and fastest-growing technology today comprising virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality with digital environment application in different domains such as web application, healthcare, transportation, construction, gaming. This technology is gaining momentum every day and hour. In fact, Virtual Reality is not new, started way back in 1800 when practical photography came into existence. Morton Heilig invented a multimedia device known as Sensorama (1957) considered as one of the best reality. Jaron Lanier (1987) made a further contribution in this field. Some of the best companies investing in this sector are; Amazon, Google, Intel, Samsung, Sony, Oculus, HTC.

Facebook came out with a new idea-Facebook Horizon, an ever-expanding VR community where one can explore and create.
360 D makes impossible as possible. It is an audio-visual communication where one can look around in any direction like in movies.

The best voice assistance of 2020, a design of Immersive technology is an invention of Amazon Alexa which even provides unknown information when asked, helping everyone including the children, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri are other means of information providers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now ruling the world. It’s a connect of human intelligence to machines. AI encompasses everything from symbolic artificial intelligence to deep learning. To put it simply, whenever a machine completes a task based on a set of rules that solves the problem. It’s the intelligence not inherited but developed. An example being Alexa, an artificial device fed into a machine that can also understand the emotions of a person. The incredible explosion in data, allows computers to; See facial recognition, Read -analysing social messages, Speak-Alexa being able to answer you, Listen-Alexa standing by to answer your every command, Gauge your emotion -affective computing.
Artificial Intelligence is the engineering of making up intelligent machines & program ( Alexa -answers what is asked; Amazon) whereas Machine learning is the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed (Google). There is yet another learning-Deep learning based on Deep neutral work ( black & white image turning into coloured).

Block Chain-a very very imp & popular technology for Banks, Hospitals, Insurance, and Organisations requiring data security.
To put it simply, Blockchain technology allows both businesses and individuals to make instant transactions without any middlemen such as banks, the bigger advantage being the transactions are completely secure and can be kept as a record of what happened. The codes used in this technology ensure that the record can not be affected after the transaction is completed.
Blockchain technology is a very practical solution to the problem of storing, authentication, and protecting data. It’s estimated that 90% of major European & North American Banks are exploring Block Chain solutions since this technology ensures a secure way to store sensitive information, establish trust, reduces cost, improve speed & enhance productivity.

The very very interesting topic being the Internet of Things (IoT)-a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical & digital machines, objects, animals, or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
IoT is focused on connecting everything in the world to the internet. Even if you are outside the house, you can put on ACs, light the bulb, etc by command.

Yet another interesting, impt & common platform for service and infrastructure as service is- Cloud Computing, where all the information and data is stored in a computer and it’s secured. It is extra protection for the data. It is an infrastructure for services like movies, music, pictures, encyclopedia, online banking, etc ( eg: Google Drive ).

Big Data is something that as the information is coming from everywhere and every corner of the world abundantly, the machines are automated -like Robots. The more intelligent the machines become, the more they can do for us.
But the dangers of automation are that about 47% of US jobs are at risk; functions & systems can be automated thro’ algorithms or robots; jobs that are likely to be affected by automation would-be truck drivers to bricklayers to doctors. Humans will no longer be needed to do the jobs that machines can do faster, cheaper, and more accurately.

She also touched upon Advocacy Marketing; a form of marketing that emphasises getting existing customers to talk about the company & it’s products. More than 80% of shoppers research online before buying, and having people publicly advocating for the product gives these researchers something to find out and study (Amazon).

Dr. Albeena Abbas ended her presentation pointing out that there is a marked shift from Mobile web usage overtook web usage through traditional computers in 2016 to all businesses are integrating their products with the likes of Siri, Alexa, and Google Asst in 2018 and now to a stage where 50% of all the searches will be voice searches and around 30% involving no screen at all.