I’m a huge reader—I read every free moment I have, to be honest, so I decided to take a look at how new media is affecting literature. Marshall McLuhan, author of “The Medium is the Message,” spoke about how different modes of media are affected by the ever changing world that introduces new digital steps forward very often. In this instance, media is defined as “various material ways information can be communicated.” In the instance of literature, methods for creating and presenting it are changing, and along with these methods, the ways by which we consume this media changes also.

As McLuhan says “the media through which literature is communicated is no longer considered secondary to the literary content or form, but deserving attention in its own right.” Literary content and forms are influenced by the media of their transmission. Suddenly, both the kind of literature and how it’s read or accessed are equally important.

To start with, we have regular books. Made of paper, some have illustrations, others have pop-ups, but they’re all pretty simple. Then came eReaders. eReaders allowed us to access books on different media platforms; we had the option of buying books from the websites of the companies that produced the eReaders, but eventually, libraries catered to eReaders as well with their overdrive system that is basically a digital library. I, of course, still think you should be able to scan the barcode of any book you own and access it on these eReaders, and while you can’t do that, the steps we’ve taken allow us to work with books in the same way over the internet as we do in real life. We’ve been given venues to both buy and rent them. As far as the media platform being just as important as the material itself, while eReaders have gotten more sophisticated to the point where they are basically tablets, so too have eBooks. Books exist that you can interact with, some have little videos in them, and they all change and evolve as their platform does.

eReaders have also made magazines more accessible, Time Magazine in particular has windows you can scroll through, videos you can play, and interactive diagrams—very similar to the new concept of the online interactive textbook. As media changes, it also becomes more prevalent in schools. These interactive textbooks are coming on the heels of bringing iPads into classrooms and ensuring all students have access to their own computer.

But it’s not just eReaders and iPads that are changing the way we see literature, but the internet and social media itself. There is the concept of blogging novels; where authors post novels piece by piece. One such blogging author reports liking it, but also being aware that in order to blog her novel, she had to rewrite her work from its original story. In order for it to fit within word count limits, she had to shorten her work. While this makes things a little more accessible, it also means the story could lose some of its meaning. Another type of literature that’s gaining popularity is “Twitterature,” which is basically flash fiction on Twitter. In particular, people have taken to “rewriting” classic novels to fit the character count of a tweet. Twitterature is an interesting concept because writers receive immediate feedback, as well as gain followers and fans, however the platform limits viewers. Those who are not as tech savvy are excluded from the audience. It’s also not as coherent because the character limit of 240 characters limits the use of the English language. There is also the increase in the possibility of plagiarism.

While these new media types of literature are interesting, and I might be interested in trying “Twitterature,” I think for the most part, I’ll stick to books.