New media as relations

With the coming of a Web 2.0 era based on new services, such as blog communication, new media communication has changed from a technique-oriented, monologue, linear communication model to one that is relation-oriented, dialogic, and holographic. Comparing this to Marshall McLuhan's saying “the medium is the message”, the authors propose “new media as relations” and put forward five observations: (1) New media communication belongs to the domain of relations communication; (2) the communication character of the new media is telelog; (3) Metcalfe's Law offers a good description for the communication effectiveness of new media; (4) the study of new media communication should be shifted from message communication (which focuses on websites) to relations communication (which regards people as the center of the study); and (5) the essence of new media communication is not technical message communication but dialogic relations communication.