"New media" has become a catchword describing the digital delivery of media via the Internet, DVD, and digital television. It is also a reference to the changes such technologies have brought to media more generally. And yet the nature of the transformation from old to new media has been over-hyped and little understood. The New Media Book features twenty accessibly written, newly commissioned, provocative essays designed to be used in a range of courses, providing a critical framework for understanding the field of moving image studies.

The book is divided into five sections: "Technologies," "Production," "Texts," "Consumption," and "Contexts." Throughout the essays ask how new media is both embracing and altering the existing media landscape; consider the changing methods of production, distribution, and exhibition within the media industry; and look at how the histories of traditional media have influenced the development of new media.