Multimedia and its implications for the news message

This thesis is about meanings in multimedia, and how the interaction of multiple media affects those meanings and the messages they create. In other words, the structure of the multimedia and the intermedia perturbations generated by that structure create the message. It is not about communication or the communication of communication. While meaning does involve interpretation and different people interpret meanings differently, meanings here are based on the social norms of a target audience. An important focus is the effects of intermedia perturbations that are generated by the relationships between the media. These intermedia perturbations are critical in determining the news message and understanding the way changes in meanings result from intermedial relationships and, in addition, whether or not these changes are overt or covert as occurs when using subliminal or liminal techniques. This understanding is a prerequisite to creating multimedia that communicates the intended message. The project includes a survey undertaken to better understand current use of multimedia in online news. In addition, it looks at how the construction of meaning in multimedia can be understood drawing on a number of different theories and models from various fields. These theories and models include autopoietic theory, systems theory, complexity science, emergence theory, added value, the generalized theoretical framework for the analysis of multimedia with its three models of multimedia, and the model of film music perception. A proposed model of multimedia that incorporates aspects of these various theories and models is constructed to enable analysis of an existing multimedia text or creation of a new multimedia text with the message determined for a target audience.